Adding custom metadata through desktop interface

[coffman]

At our enterprise we are evaluating Alfresco as Document Management Software.
We mainly needs to scan a lot of invoices, and them insert a lot of custom metadata (such as invoice number, provider, and more data, …). There are one person that scan all invoices and them goes through the web interface and sets the needed metadata this is a  time consuption task .

We need to insert the invoices data (documents metadata) with a simple Windows (or java) desktop application, is this possible or exist any tool to achieve this ??

Ideally the user scan a lot of invoices(10-20), software converts it to a TIFF and place it into a CIFS directory, them the user starts this application and he can fill metadata for all documents on this directory.

Thanks for any response.

[helpchris]

I just wanted to add, for you developers out there, that in our environment where most employees add and search content on a regular basis (distributed scanning), it would be nice to see something developed with the following features:
* autopopulation of metadata based on the active record in a CRM system for content that is added to a space/file plan
* autopopulation of search categories, etc based on the active record
* functionality like kwiktag.com where metadata can be linked to a barcode, for later addition to the repository

I believe this is exactly what the previous user was asking about, but wanted to let people know this functionality is really in demand…

Alfresco looks great so far, though it seems to me that the records manager module needs some more work.

[bsawler]

Hi,

You can create a script using JavaScript language to automatically fill out the document properties on all scans into a space.
Upload the script into the space and then you can run a rule on all incoming documents to run the script which will enter your specified metadata.  So if the document has common metadata this would considerably reduce the amount of time of entering the metadata.

An example of how to do this is included in Chapter 13 of the Alfresco Book (recommended for us newbies)

Cheers,
BS