Introduction to FileNet Capture ADR Definer - Fixed Form

Definer features an interface that allows configuration changes to be made quickly and includes an embedded Recognition engine that allows the effect of changes on the recognition process to be tested immediately.

There are two different types of processes available to configure the form definition.

1. Fixed Form

2. Free Form

Fixed Form is used to configure the structured documents while the Free Form is used to configure the unstructured or semi-structured documents. 

Below I have explained about the Fixed Form configuration. In the Fixed Form we need to define the fields and registration points which are became a reference points for the recognition to extract the data.

There are 2 different configuration files are used in the Definer.

1. Definition File (.idf)

2. Script File (.ifv)

Definition file specifies the location of the fields on each document type and details of expected character types, typefaces, noise removal strategies, etc. Specifies registration points used for document type identification and to correct for document misalignment. Specifies how fields are to be processed in Correction. Script file is used to transform the recognized data prior to output from Recognition.

Important Terminology:

Fields: An item of data that is to be captured is called a field. Fields can be of the following types: single line text, multi-line text, mark sense, mark grid, table or bar code.

Registration point: It is feature on the document used to recognize the document type. The position of all data fields is defined relative to the registration points. Registration point can be a corner mark, blob (for example logos), line and text.
Segmentation: It is the process of separating the text, marks or barcodes to be recognized from the background of the form and separating a field of text into individual characters.

Introduction to FileNet Capture ADR

Filenet Capture ADR (Advance Data Recognition)  is a set of modules that provide additional automatic data recognition and advanced keying (indexing and validation) functionality to Capture. ADR modules can be added in the capture process after the document assembly and the extracted data can be used for indexing process. Depending on the requirement the images are either the scanned copies or the imported images.

Advantages:

1. Indexing process is automated to reduce the cycle time.

2. Documents classification can be automated based on the key word search

There are 6 different modules in the ADR

1. Recognition

2. Document Review

3. Correction

4. Completion

5. Verification

6. Scripted Export

There are 8 different tools are used in the ADR

1. Definer

2. Recognition Trainer

3. Recognition Test Tool

4. Script Editor

5. Template Editor

6. Document Review Project Editor

7. Batch Compare

8. Transformation Studio

We will discuss about these tools in the next session.

FileNet Capture Architecture

IBM FileNet Capture provides the capability to add documents to the Content Engine object store or Image Manager repository. Capture supports the automating the document entry process which saves lot of time compared to manual entry. Apart from image capturing tools like ADR (Advanced Document Recognition), OCR (Optical Character Recognition) are available to read the data from the captured image. FileNet Capture supports three document capture methods.

1. Scanning

2. Faxing

3. File Import

FileNet Capture supports a wide variety of scanners from low volume personal scanners to high volume production scanners. 

The FaxEntry portion of the Capture product provides an automated method for automatically capturing inbound faxes.

The Capture File Import capability provides a method to import existing documents from user directories. 

There are two different API are available to develop custom applications apart from the out of box capture application.

1. Capture COM API 
2. Remote Capture Services .Net API

Capture COM API set provides Capture repository objects and ActiveX controls for image acquisition (for example, scanning and document upload), batching, advanced document recognition (ADR), and others.

 

Remote Capture Services (RCS) provides a .NET framework for developers to build custom .NET Web applications. The RCS toolkit includes Web interface controls, the RCS framework, as well as Capture repository objects.

 

There are two different capture applications are available

1. IBM FileNet Capture Desktop
2. IBM FileNet Capture Professional

Capture Desktop is intended for low volume applications where as Capture Professional intended for high volume applications. Capture Professional is allowing us to save the documents to both Content Engine and image services repository where as in Capture Desktop we can save the documents only to Content Engine repository.

FileNet Application Engine Architecture

Today I will discuss about the Application Engine architecture in the FileNet. The Application Engine represents the out-of-the-box user interface for the FileNet P8 platform. Workplace is the user interface for the FileNet P8 and it provides the folder based view of an FileNet P8 content repository along with various components like inbox, public queue and step processors. Based on the roles users can access the admin tools like Process Administrator, Process Confiugration Console and developer tools like Process Designer.

Major components of the Application Engine is application server, Java API and Component Integrator. Currently FileNet P8 is supporting the below application servers.
1. Websphere
2. Weblogic
3. JBoss
Java API is used to communicate with Content Engine and Process Engine. Workplace can be customized by using the WAT(Web Application Toolkit).
Component Integrator is used to integrate the custom components to the Process Engine. The component can be a jar file, web service or JMS. Component Manager is process engine component but hosted and managed on the application engine. By default IBM is providing the custom component for CE Operations for performing the basic Content Engine operations like copy, delete and moving documents etc.The Application Engine also supports the integration with Microsoft's Office and WebDAV.

Filenet Process Engine Architecture

Today we will discuss about the FileNet Process Engine architecture. Process Engine is used to manage the workflows among people  and systems for content and  processes. It supports supports process standards, such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for modeling and the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) for definition and executionProcess Designer tool is used to design and develop the workflow. There are tools available to analyze and simulate the workflow. We can integrate the third party rules engine with the workflow to associate with the steps.

Process Service is core of the business process management system. It provides workflow services on behalf of the Process Engine.
Process Task Manager is an admin tool to configure and manage process-related services on the Process Engine server.
Email Notification Enables automatic transmission of e-mail to users when specified process-related events occur. E-mail notification can also be used to track workflows.

There are three different APIs are available to develop the process engine applications.
1. Java API
2. PEWS (Process Engine Web Services)
3. Process Engine REST Services API

Process Engine Java API: IBM FileNet Business Process Manager contains a full featured Java API set that allows for various interactions with the PE server. This API set may be familiar to a lot of IBM FileNet experienced programmers from the eProcess versions through IBM FileNet P8 4.x. This API set provides access to define, administer, and control runtime workflow processing. It can also be used to build custom Step Processors and Work Performers.The PE Java API uses the CE Java API for authentication. Authentication-related calls can be done with EJB or WSI transports, though the use of the Web services transport is the normal configuration.
Process Engine Web Services: Process Engine Web Services (PEWS) provides a WSDL-based interface to communicate with PE. PEWS is a functional subset of the PE Java API. Because there is no native PE .NET API, PEWS is ideal for development with .NET. Similar to the CEWS, PEWS is also compliant with Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.0 and WS-Security.

Process Engine REST services:

A new feature introduced in IBM FileNet P8 4.5 is the PE REST Service. The PE REST Service provides access to the PE by following the Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture style. PE objects are exposed as REST resources which are accessible by standard HTTP methods. This API is ideal for Ajax-based Web applications that need to talk to PE.

FileNet Content Engine Architecture

Hi, Today I am going to explain the architecture of the FileNet Content Engine. Content Engine serves as
1. Main content management
2. Security management
3. Storage management engine for the family of IBM FileNet P8 products.

We can install and implement IBM FileNet Content Manager as a stand-alone product. The Content Engine is written in Java as a J2EE application. Developers can use the Java API , Net API or Web services to develop the applications based on the Content Engine. In the FileNet P8 v3.x we can use the COM API to develop applications using Content Engine. COM API is useful for developers who came from VB background. This COM APIs et is now supported as a compatibility layer in P8 4.x, allowing many COM-based custom applications that are written in P8 3.x to continue functioning in P8 4.x with a few configuration changes.

In the Content Engine, document is a mix of content as well as the metada (you may call it as document properties). You are also classified this as sturctured (metadata) and unstructured (content) data. In the Content Engine all the structered data will be save to the RDBMS and the structured data will be saved to a filestore. A file store can be a shared drive, database or tape drive. The file store can be configured using Filenet Enterprise Manager (FEM).

The content engine uses the directory services to authenticate the users. All the users and roles are defined in the directory services. Based on these roles and users content engine authorize the users to a particular document or object. Security privileges can be defined at a class level or at object level based on the requirement.

Any Web service call first route to the Web services listener and later it will route to the EJB Listener which is stateless, which demarcates the transaction and authentication boundaries into the server.

FileNet P8 Architecture

Hi All,  Today we are going to discuss about the FileNet P8 Architecture. FileNet platform contains 3 servers we can call them as engines.
1. Application Engine
2. Content Engine
3. Process Engine
Apart from that there are different tools available like Capture, Records Manager and workplace to perform different activities.  The FileNet platform can be integrated with different  repositories like Image Services, Content services and other third party repositories using the Content Federation Services.

 

Introduction to FileNet blog....

Hi All, I am Naveen and I am working on FileNet technologies for some time. I have observed that there are very less resources are available on the internet regarding the FileNet product. The main objective of this blog is to close that gap and became a forum to share the knowledge and discuss the issues related to FileNet.