Search Results

Fiche Tips: Small Code, Big Impact (Laserfiche Forms) Today, we want to show you a little piece of code for Laserfiche Forms. And I promise you, if you’ve built a Laserfiche Form, you can implement this code in seconds. So here we go! Here’s the problem… If you’ve ever used multi-line text fields in Laserfiche Forms, you probably know that you can’t always predict how much someone is going to type. And while you can increase field height or set character limits, again, you may not know if someone is going to type a sentence or multiple paragraphs. And sometimes, you get what is displayed in the above video, which is needing to use a scroll bar on the field to read through all the information. It makes reading large amounts of information difficult, and I don’t like it. So, Is there a better way? Of course, there is! If I go to the CSS and JavaSript area for my form, I can drop in the following code: textarea { resize: vertical !important; } So, I’ll save this, go back to my task, refresh, and you can see that I can now resize this field as needed to see all the information EASILY. I love this; it makes reading the information in some fields much easier. All right, thanks for checking in, and we’ll see you next time. CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

By Kyle Knebel September 2023 Consultants Corner Setting up an automatic stamp in Workflow Whether you use Laserfiche Cloud or Laserfiche on-premise, Laserfiche Workflow has an Apply Stamps action. Workflow can only apply image stamps. They must be marked as Public. Laserfiche Annotations like Stamps are used with Laserfiche scanned TIFF image files only, not e-docs or PDFs. So, what is required to automatically apply stamps to document images using Laserfiche Workflow? Step 1: For image stamps, you should begin by using the Laserfiche Client to create your Public Stamp. As long as you have public stamps available, you can use them in Workflow Designer. If you don’t already have any public stamps, follow the steps below. Open an image document in the Laserfiche Document viewer and click on the Stamp Annotation icon on the toolbar. Create a new stamp: This will be either a custom stamp like a date token, or an image stamp created from an imported image file (BMP, PNG, GIF or JPG). Name and save your stamp as a Public stamp. This is required in order to use the stamp in your workflow. Step 2: Create a new Laserfiche Workflow using the Workflow Designer Step 3: Add the Apply Stamp activity to your workflow and begin configuring the properties. The Options for Stamp, Appearance, and Placement settings should all be configured on the right side. The “Stamp” setting can be customized using any Public stamp. Click the ellipsis button [...] to select an available Public stamp. The Appearance options allow you to apply color, opacity, and rotation settings. The Placement options allow you to define what page and where on that page to place the stamp. Merging options exist if a stamp of the same type already exists. Stamp Protection: You can also set the “Protection” level on this stamp. What do these protection levels mean and what would be best practice? BEST PRACTICE: A Public Stamp allows any user in your organization with enough rights to annotate a document to use or edit this stamp from any computer. This would be recommended best practice in a workflow like this. A Private Stamp is like a personal stamp in that it is visible only to its creator. This would not be common in a workflow like this. A Protected Stamp will only be available to the user that creates it and may only be modified by its creator or the document owner. This would not be common in a workflow like this. Step 3: Publish the workflow and set the Conditional Start Rule. You want to make sure that any document that gets annotated by this workflow does have image pages, so let’s build the rule to check. When publishing the workflow for the first time, it will ask you if you want to create a condition rule. Step 4: Set the conditional start rules in the wizard and, in this case, define a condition to check that the document has image pages on which we can apply the Stamp annotation. In the example below, the start rule is running when the document is created and then in the 2nd condition, checks for a page count. This will ensure that the workflow doesn’t terminate and will apply the stamp, although you should make sure that the page count matches the page on which you are applying the stamp. It would not do any good to check for documents with at least 1 page, but apply a stamp on page 10, when the document only has four pages. Logically it passed the test, but the activity would fail. Step 5: Publish the start rule and test by uploading or scanning a new image page document to the repository. You’ve now created a workflow to apply a stamp to your documents. It should look something like the example below. We hope you learned a new Workflow capability today! See you next month, and have a Great Paperless Day from CDI! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Fiche Tips: Help! Where Did My Scans Go? Never Lose Your Scans Again Today, we want to let you in on a tip to ensure you never lose your scanned images again. Let’s jump in! Here’s the problem: Launching Laserfiche scanning will default to stored images in the folder you are in when you launch it. For example, if you are in the “Incoming Scans” folder, which you can tell based on the location address bar at the top (Remember that because that’s important!), then if you launch Laserfiche Scanning and select “Start Scanning,” your scanned images will be stored in the “Incoming Scans” folder. That is where we’ve noticed people have an issue. Sometimes, when working in the Laserfiche Client, you might select a folder in the display area. If that’s the case, you will notice although you’ve selected the folder in the display area, the location doesn’t change in the location address bar. So, users think they’re scanning into a selected folder, but their location is technically in a different folder. They then scan and store the image, but not where it should be. To ensure this never happens, we recommend always selecting the folder you want to scan into within the folder pane on the left-hand side. Whatever you select in this area will be the location that you’re in. Thanks for stopping by, and we’ll see you next time! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

By Danika Olson August 2023 Consultants Corner What Are Bots? Bots, or Robotic Process Automation Technology, is a feature Laserfiche offers to automate routine or redundant tasks your staff completes. Bots work across multiple application interfaces and simulate the actions a user would typically complete. I.e., copying and pasting, data entry, and other everyday activities. Which of My Processes Can I Set up a Bot For? Utilizing a Bot works best for processes that are prone to mistakes or human error and require little decision-making. You will want to confirm the following: Is the process completed the same way every time? Can a Laserfiche Bot interact with the application? Limited or no decisions need to be made; if decisions need to be made during the process, ensure that it is a data-driven (If this, then that) decision the Bot can determine from the application. (Example, waiting for an approval on a forms process) Is the application the Bot needs only installed or accessible on one machine? These are great examples of when to use a bot: Manual Data Entry Gathering data from a Laserfiche Form or Workflow and entering the data into a third-party application Setting up new employees (IT or HR Onboarding) You need to integrate with a system without using an API How to Set up a Bot Before you begin, you will want to identify and document the steps the Bot needs to complete, run the process manually, and confirm all available access and applications. Open the application(s) you will be using; in this case, I will need Excel and Laserfiche Forms. We have a .csv file with our scenario's building permit applicants. We will use each row on the .csv to fill out a Laserfiche Form to submit and flow through an internal process. In Laserfiche Cloud, Under Process Automation, select Bots. Select New, and enter a Name for your Bot and a Description. For our scenario, we will first add the Group Activity from our Toolbox to collect all our subsequent actions into the same Group. Next, we will add the Read CSV File activity to our Group. Enter a name for your process and the file path where your .csv file resides, and then Select Sample File and navigate to the location of your .csv. Now we will add a For Each activity. Set the Value to Row, and choose the Building Permit Applicants token we created in the last step. Now, we will add the Add Recording activity and select Open the Bot recorder. If you do not already have the Bot Recorder installed, you will be prompted with the downloader on your screen. Select Open on the Recorder pop-up. This will minimize your web browser window and open the Recorder Application. Select Record – You will get an information pop-up. Wait for the red rectangle to appear before starting your activities. The red rectangle indicates recording has begun and the field and action(s) will be recorded. Open Your Browser and navigate to the webpage (Laserfiche Forms) or application where you will record your steps. Note: If you are using Chrome as your Browser, you may receive a pop-up notification that Chrome is not configured – please pause your recording and use the button to Launch a new instance of Chrome After launching, you will see this message. For our example, I will click on Applicant Name, which will be highlighted with the Red box. Click on the arrow icon on the right, and you will be prompted to Edit the Value. Instead of manually typing a value for this instance, I want to use the rows from our .csv. I will again Click the Arrow next to the Input Box and select Existing Bot Tokens > Building Permit Applicants > Applicant Name. NOTE: The red box indicates the recorder is running and can perform the action(s). And then, continue down the rest of the form, filling out the Fields with our data from the .csv. When done, select Finish Recording. You will be automatically brought back to your Browser where you were building your Bot. Review the steps your Bot recorded for accuracy. We will want to hit Save and Validate on our Bot Process. And then, we will hit the Play button to test our Bot. Since I only have a few values in my .csv, I will select Repeat for every token value. The Bot will Open your Browser, begin filling out the form, and then Submit it. You will see the Bot window open, run through the tasks, and alert you to errors or failures. To confirm the data was entered correctly, I will verify the Forms process was submitted successfully and went to the next step. We can see our Bot successfully filled out AND submitted our form. Now, you can start building your Bot to improve processes for your organization! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Fiche Tips: Covered in Sticky Notes Discover the hidden powers of Laserfiche Sticky Notes Today we’re going to talk about sticky notes in Laserfiche. Yes, you heard that right, sticky notes. They have an amazing hidden power that you may not know about. So, let’s take a look! When you add a sticky note to an image, you can open it up and type in whatever you like. You may not know that if you right-click on a sticky note and go to properties, you can set some additional options. For example, if you go to the metadata tab, you can make your sticky note private. Meaning no one else can see the sticky note. You can also protect it, meaning others can't edit what you've typed. The last thing I would note is if you go to the history tab, you can check the box where it says, "keep history." If you do that anything that you type will be recorded throughout the life of that sticky note. This could be great for collaborating with others, or to just leave yourself notes. Okay, thanks for checking in. We'll see you next time. CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Fiche Tips: Colors on Template Add Color on Template to Laserfiche Web Client & Thick Client Today we have a great Fiche Tip on the line. We'll be looking at the Web Client, but those Thick Client users can use it too. Have you ever wanted to add color to your user's life? You can by changing the icon colors by assigning a template a color! First, log into the administrative console and choose the metadata tab. From there, you navigate to the Templates tab, select a specific template, navigate to color, and choose your favorite color. Now if you assign one of your documents a specific template, you'll notice it takes on a new color. Did you know that you can also assign templates to folders? Well, it's true! You can assign a template to a folder with colors on your documents and folders! Okay, thanks for stopping by. We'll see you next time. CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

By Kyle Knebel July 2023 Consultants Corner Setting up shared calendar usage for Holidays in Laserfiche Forms In Laserfiche Cloud, when using an activity in Laserfiche Forms that allows you to “Exclude weekends and holidays,” Forms uses any Holidays configured in the Forms Settings. They are not configured by default. Configuring your Work Schedules and Holidays within the Forms system is highly recommended. This configuration is only found in Laserfiche Cloud. On-Premise Forms does not use Work Schedules or Holidays at the time of writing of this article. So how does one go about setting up Holidays in Forms? First, you’ll want to use the Application Picker (the waffle-looking icon at the top right) and select Process Automation. Select the “Settings” tool from that screen, as shown below. Highlight the “Holidays” option on the left, then use the “Click here to create a holiday” link to create a single holiday. Or press the “Import” button to add a few pre-built holidays. Enter a new Holiday name if it is not found in the list of Holidays that you can “Import.” When creating your custom Holidays, you can define the most common ways they can occur. For example, the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving occurs on the fourth Thursday of November. Other holidays occur on an exact date. Weekends can be ignored, as well. And any Holiday can be edited after it has been created. Usually, this would be to toggle the “Observed” status to off. Holidays can be deleted, as well. This concludes our brief overview of how to add shared holiday calendars in Laserfiche Forms. Have a Great Paperless Day from CDI! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Fiche & Tips: Restore Your Document Viewer Laserfiche is very customizable; one area you can customize is the document viewer. You can easily drag the thumbnail pane around, the image pane, or the metadata pane. What happens if you accidently move those around? How do you get back to square one? Easy! Click on view, then panes, and finally restore default layout. There you have it, back to square one and ready to work. Alright, thanks for checking in, and we'll see you next time! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

By Kyle Knebel June 2023 Consultants Corner I Have New Subscription Users – How do I Add them to Directory Server? For Laserfiche customers with Laserfiche Directory Server (LFDS), like a RIO or Avante system, licensing can be purchased through a Subscription plan, which provides lower up-front costs, and more bundled features as compared to non-subscription licenses. There are just a few simple steps to add new users to your system. This month’s Consulting Corner article from CDI will show how. Laserfiche Directory Server (LFDS) is an easy-to-use tool that is accessed via a web browser. The LFDS “site” allows a Laserfiche administrator to update the system with new user counts easily. This usually is necessary when you need to add additional users who need access to Laserfiche Forms or to Laserfiche repositories. Specific User accounts can then be added through the Account section once the licensed user count has been updated. Step 1: Updating the User count. a. Access the LFDS site via your web browser link or from the LFDS Server. b. Navigate to the “Settings” section (#1). c. Press the “Renew Master License” link (#2), which will update the system with the latest users counts or newly purchased application licenses. d. Optionally, you can toggle the automatic license renewal switch (#3). Note: Check to see that the license counts are correctly reported on the Overview section prior to proceeding! Step 2: Configuring new users. In LFDS, navigate to the Accounts tab. a. Click the “+ Users” button to add the Windows Active Directory User account. This could also be an AD Group if you desire. b. Next, leave the Organization drop-down choice set to (Root), then click on the Register directory user(s) button on the right side. c. Search for Users or Groups in your Active Directory domain. If you search for an AD Group, you can add all those members, then selectively remove some of the members (if not all will be using Laserfiche), prior to finishing the process. d. In the Search results pane, select one or more users that are listed in the “Search Results” list, and then press Add All. This will add that user or set of users to the Added Users list. e. Press OK at the bottom when ready to add them to LFDS. f. Next, we need to allocate a license to this new account, so find the new user in the list of Accounts, and select it. g. With the General tab of the user selected, select the appropriate License type for the user. Your system may have more (or less) choices than shown here. Once you’ve set the License type, this user will have that type of access in other Laserfiche applications (like Forms) or repositories that they are added to. Add the User to the Repository Since registering a user in Directory Server does not automatically add that account to your Laserfiche repository, one needs to grant them access to the repository. Otherwise, they will not be able to sign in to even one repository. a. In the appropriate server, open the LF Admin Console of the appropriate repository(s), then navigate to the Users & Groups node, and add the account as a New Windows Account… entry. b. Set their Authentication as “Trust: allow access.” Also, make sure to assign Feature rights or Privileges, as normal. Press the button in order to add the user’s Windows account to this repository. c. In the “Select User or Group” pop-up, type in the user’s name in the white box then press “Check Names.” At this point, you can select the name and press OK. d. Press OK to finish selecting the Windows user account. e. If needed, select the Rights tab, and set the users’ Feature Rights. f. Then press OK to complete the User configuration. This concludes our brief overview of how to add new Subscription users to the Laserfiche Directory Server. Have a Great Paperless Day from CDI! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Fiche & Tips: Teleport Through Your Laserfiche Client Your Laserfiche system is undoubtedly filled with critical information. But it doesn’t all apply to you. So why do you need to see it? Well, you don’t! If there's a folder that you frequent where you spend 90% of your time, simply navigate to that folder left, click on that folder and hold that left click down and drag to your desktop. That's going to produce a shortcut, and now if you open Laserfiche from your new shortcut, You're instantly teleported to that folder, and you don't see anything else in your repository. Alright, thanks for checking in, and we'll see you next time! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

By Kyle Knebel May 2023 Consultants Corner Users of Laserfiche Cloud can customize many areas of the Cloud system. I like to set my “Home” page as my default. This gives me quick access to my commonly used widgets displaying key statistics, important documents, and tasks. Under your user name, in the top-right corner, choose “My Account.” At the “Default Location” option, choose from the drop-down list and set it for “Home”. This page will now appear when you first login to Laserfiche Cloud. “Home” will take you to the Home Page, containing widgets displaying key statistics, important documents, and tasks. The Laserfiche home screen as seen above is a dashboard-style home page that serves as a central access point for various Laserfiche Cloud products.. The home screen is the default landing page for Laserfiche Cloud. If you are on another page in Laserfiche Cloud, you can access the home screen by clicking on the app picker in the top right corner and selecting Home. The home screen consists of the following sections: Home: This is the landing page containing widgets displaying key statistics, important documents, and tasks. Documents: View summaries of favorite folder locations and starred documents and perform searches within the repository. Tasks: The page for managing tasks in your business processes. Reports: View statistics about your processes and repository. Submit Forms: Quickly access forms that you can submit to start a business process. Note: Some sections of the home screen described below may be unavailable because of security settings on your account or because your organization did not purchase certain Laserfiche features. Home Tab The Home tab contains repository information, task information and help links. Repository Information and Task information is shown on the main page. I’ll highlight the repository-related information sections here. You can view a list of Starred Documents. This list is sorted with the most recently starred documents on top. View a list of Recently Opened Documents. This list is sorted according to how recently the documents were opened, with the most recently opened ones on top. Search the repository under Document Searches. The Saved Searches subsection displays the 6 most recently saved searches. If there are too many recently opened documents or starred documents to display in the limited display area, you can click on More details to see the complete lists of documents in those categories. The Help Center section at the bottom right in the Home tab helps you find tutorials, forum posts, and documentation on Laserfiche Cloud. If your organization uses Laserfiche business processes, you may have tasks assigned to you or your teams. The Home tab displays the numbers of these tasks and also provides lists of: Tasks assigned to you, in My Active Tasks. These tasks are sorted with the most recently assigned tasks at the top. Tasks assigned to you that have urgent, high, or medium priority levels, in My High-Priority Tasks. These are ordered from the highest priority to the lowest. The Forms section allows you select and submit a new form. If there are too many tasks in these categories to display in the limited display area, you can click on More Details to see the tasks that cannot be displayed. The Documents Tab The Documents tab on the home screen provides you with a quick view of your starred documents, and contents within your favorite folder locations and provides quick searches of the repository. You can configure the five widgets to display frequently used folders or a list of starred documents from the repository. To configure one of the widgets: Click the Add button. Select the folder to be displayed in the widget or select Starred in the left pane to display a list of starred documents. Click Apply to activate the widget with the selected options. To change the widget options, click the context menu button( Context Menu Image ) at the top right corner of the widget pane. Saved document searches provide quick access to frequently accessed information through the Search widget. To manage your tasks, click on the Tasks tab. The Tasks tab on the home screen lets you manage tasks for yourself and your teams. The Reports tab on the home screen lets you view statistics and reports about business processes, forms, and documents. Process Reports Select a process or form in the Process menu in the top right corner and choose one of the following types of reports to view. Note: If your form is within a process, you should select the process' name under Process to view submission data for that form. If your form was created in Surveys, select the survey's name instead. Performance: View data about how quickly your process instances are being completed. Work in Progress: View statistics about in-progress instances of business processes. Task Loads: View a color-coded heat map that depicts which user tasks in a process are accumulating too many tasks and potentially creating bottlenecks. Form Reports: View the field values of individual submitted forms and aggregate data from all submissions of a particular form. Workload: View which users or teams have in progress and completed tasks. Irregularity: Troubleshoot suspended or terminated tasks. Repository Reports In the Repository section, you can quickly access the following reports on repository activity. Page Creations: View data on newly created pages. Entry Deletions: View data on successful entry deletions. Audit Reports: View a list of all reports you've made in Audit Trail Reporting. The Submit Forms tab on the home screen and the Forms section on the Home tab list forms that are available for you to submit. By clicking on the relevant form, you can start business processes that start with a form submission. To submit a survey, go to the Manage section of the Surveys page or use its starting link found in the Survey details pane. This concludes our brief overview of the many easy-to-use features of the Cloud Home page. Users will find it to be an easy way to manage their work. See you next month! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more!

By Kyle Knebel April 2023 Consultants Corner Want to know when Laserfiche is being used and not used? Run an Audit Trail Report. With the Laserfiche Audit Trail optional add-on, Laserfiche Administrators and users can run reports on activity in Laserfiche repositories. For example, you can find out when a document was uploaded. Or you can find out when a user account last logged into a repository. We will access the web-based reporting tool using your default browser to create a report. The Audit Trail main page has a “New Report” button, which allows you to create a custom report of monitored activity in your system. There are four basic filters, but you need to use three for this report. We’ll use Date Range, User, and Event Type. First, select the date range for this report. This can be a “relative date range” or other date range. Second, select a specific user, or leave the “Everyone” group if you want to see all account names in the report. For this report on user logins, we will leave the “Everyone” group in the list. Note: If you want to see a specific user’s information, clear the “Everyone” group and then type in the user name in the input box. Third, select the Event types by clicking the “Add” hyperlink to the right. This will open a pop-up list. You can select many different Event types from the pop-up. Events are grouped by Category so that you can select the entire category, or just a specific Event within that category. Once selected, you’ll see the selected audit event listed on the right side of the pop-up under the “Selected” column. Click the green Add button at the bottom right corner of the pop-up. This will display the selected Event types on the left panel. At this time, press the green Apply button at the bottom of the panel to generate the report results. Next, you will want to customize the displayed columns, since there may be a few that you don’t need. For example, your initial report might look something like shown below, but you want to customize the columns displayed. To configure the displayed columns, click on the Column Picker icon at the top-right corner. From this pop-up, you can double-click an item to add or remove it from the list. Click and drag your Visible Column items to arrange their left-to-right order. Click OK, when done. With your report in view, if you want to exclude a user from the report, you could easily add that as a filter. Just right-click on the cell where you see the user name, and filter with the “Is not[User: Name = {name}],” as shown below. Here’s a completed and filtered report from my “training” system for all user logins, not including the “Admin” user. If you have selected Everyone as the User and you find that there are users that don’t show up in the list, they never logged in during that time frame. Alternatively, if you select a specific user and there are no login events reported, they did not log in to the system. If you like what you see, you can print or download the results as a report. Downloaded reports are in Microsoft Excel format. Further refinement of your reporting can be accomplished within the Excel spreadsheet if you wish. That concludes this month’s article about the Laserfiche Audit Trail reporting tool and how to generate a list of login sessions. As a Laserfiche Administrator, this is a great way to manage those user licenses! CDI NEWSLETTER Stay updated with all the latest Laserfiche news, CDI webinars, blogs, and more!