topic Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me? in Alfresco Archive

Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

peter-l — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:26:26 GMT

Hello folks,I've been researching this for the past few days and was hoping to have some real world advice around my requirements and if Alfresco + some plugins are for me?Basically I want to create a file share per user where they can scan documents in TIFF/JPG/PDF these will then get picked up and

Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

mitpatoliya — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:17:49 GMT

AFIK OCR is something which is not available in Alfresco.
But you can easily integrate third party OCR tool like (Kofex) with alfresco.

Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

peter-l — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:06:06 GMT

Thanks, thats what I was starting to think. Though im struggling to find an opensource alternative to FlexiCapture/Kofax as they are too expensive (needs Form Based Template Recognition and OCR)

Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

heiko_robert — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:17:23 GMT

Hi Peter,
my experience is that you will not be happy with the quality of open source OCR products. We integrated a product for < 3000€ which works on PDFs (allready OCRed) with zonal extraction support and nice admin GUI-tools: http://www.pdfprinter.at/de/pdftools-pdfprinter/pdftools-pdfprinter-pdfmdx.html
For OCR support in Alfresco you can use the AutoOCR-Engine: http://www.ecm-market.de/alfresco-module.html?___store=english&manufacturer=70

Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

ivo_c_costa — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:57:04 GMT

Hi Peter,

I did this same search a few years ago an no opensource ocr was available that matched the capabilities from Kofax or Abbyy. I ended up learning about Abbyy and got everything to work really nicelly.

I did find a work in progress opensource project named OCRopus. It was still in early stages but it did offer layout analisys. Not sure how is it doing these days. Take a look at it, and if you try it please send me some feedback (I haven't had the time to look at it again for a while now)

Regards,
Ivo Costa

Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

jpotts — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:27:34 GMT

Peter,

I cannot vouch for the quality or service level these guys offer, but I came across them at a conference and thought I'd throw it out there:
http://www.ocr-it.com/

They offer OCR-as-a-service. That might be an interesting alternative to on-premise or open source OCR. Seems like it would be easy enough to write a little action that calls their API.

Just a thought,

Jeff

Re: Is Alfresco + Plugins Right for Me?

rroic — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:41:00 GMT

Hi Peter.

This is a very common use case for Alfesco, a classical document management and indexing project. While executing some rules is an added value, it is easily done with Alfresco.

OCR is not included in Alfresco and probably should never be, since it is a science of its own. Most other ECM venders also use 3rd party systems or have acquired OCR/FEC companies.

From the two you mentioned, I guess Abbyy will be much cheaper for the same features. But, as I said, OCR is a science which depends on your requirements, your language, state of your forms, tolerance for mistakes (use case scenario), etc.

I do not know any details from your case, but my first hint would be Abbyy recognition server, which easily fits the mentioned scenario through Alfresco rules. You can even get by with super affordable Abbyy product that just listen on hot folders, which would in fact be Alfresco CMIS folders. There are many ways…

Keep in mind that most Abbyy components are Windows only, as is the case for Kofax.

Good luck!