We regularly get asked what scanners we recommend for use with Net.Scan, our document imaging software.  The quick answer is "any one you'd like."   Although we don't sell or support any hardware, we have worked with a wide variety of devices and can offer some guidance on the options that are available.

Scanners can be segmented into three main categories:  Workstation, Network-Attached and MFPs

Workstation scanners are directly connected to and managed by software installed on a PC.  This software - typically OmniPage - is used to select what type of document is to be scanned.  These scanners tend to be the cheapest, thus they have lower duty cycles, are slower but are good for lower volume locations. The Xerox DocuMate line is popular among our customer base - we use a DocuMate 152.

Network-Attached scanners have many more options and thus cost more.  They connect directly to your network and are typically managed via a browser interface, although some have specific administration software.  In most cases, OCR software must still be installed on a PC or workstation to convert the raw scans into searchable PDFs.  Multiple network attached scanners can scan to a single workstation, eliminating the need for multiple copies of the software in large installations.  Some of the newer scanners come with OCR software embedded in them.  This eliminates the need to purchase OCR software to create the searchable PDFs.  Although I have heard that Canon and HP have new scanners with this capability, the only one I have used is the Fujitsu fi-6010N.  This device is a bit complicated to configure, but once configured works great.  Fujitsu now has another scanner that is a bit cheaper that still has the capabilities - the ScanSnap N1800 - but we have not yet used one of these devices.

Large printer/scanner/copier/fax devices (MFPs) work nicely, but are by far the most expensive option.  If you already have one, you would most likely only need to install the OCR software on a workstation, although some MFPs have an OCR option.  Because of the cost of these MFPs, I do not recommend adding one just for Net.Scan.  We have worked with Canon, Ricoh and HP MFPs all with great success.

If you have a question or comment about a specific scanner, add it below so.  Just because we don't have experience with the device, doesn't mean that none of our users have.

One year ago, our first customer went live on our hosted solution.  In the last year, we have added new customers, uploaded tens of thousands of documents, as well as suffered through two of the largest storms to ever hit Connecticut. 

Total Users:  196
Although the number of active users varies from day to day, 196 users have access been given access to this service.

Uploaded Documents (Net.DFM & Net.Scan only): 178,757
MB of Uploaded Documents (Net.DFM & Net.Scan only): 44,370
All document stored in Net.DFM are uploaded using the Net.DFM Upload Service.  This service manages the upload to ensure that no files are lost during the transmission from your office to our data center.  At this point, files published to Enlighten.Net are managed using this service, thus we cannot track the number uploaded or edited.

Total Documents under management: 1,536,728
Total GB of documents under management: 252
These numbers include all documents in Net.DFM and Enlighten.Net. 

Uptime: 99.954%
The past 12 months have been eventful in Connecticut:  last September Hurricane Irene pummelled the state and left large portions of the population without power for many days; last October Winter Storm Alfred dumped ice and snow on us before the leaves had fallen, which knocked power out to almost the entire state for more than 7 days.  The total downtime for our hosted service during these two natural disasters:  Zero minutes.  The only downtime our service has experience was caused by a network configuration error that was resolved within about 2 hours. 

We're pretty proud of track record.  Our customers are happy and have more time to focus on their business rather than maintaining servers. 

Contact us for more information..

Practically every business is plagued by wobbly information – irregular, often unexpected information that staggers clumsily through your organization, leaving bits and pieces of itself all over the place.   A company’s core business software is usually pretty good at managing the information associated with line of business transactions.  Unfortunately, most transactional software systems aren’t flexible enough to deal with the unstructured nature of wobbly information.

Just what kind of information are we talking about here?    Just about anything; free form comments, dates, references to the people involved, status information that manages some process, part numbers, serial numbers, order numbers and on and on.  The specific information information that is being stored will vary with the type of activity that is being managed. 

Most of us don’t have a problem identifying wobbly information, we’re surrounded by it.  Our problem is that we lack a single system that is flexible enough to efficiently deal with this type of information.  Consequently, we’ve invented a bunch of convoluted ways to use the tools at hand to manage wobbly information and the activities that create it.   

Regardless of how we’ve chosen to muddle through managing wobbly information, our solutions usually suffer from several problems. Not centralized – the information is scattered all over the place.  Not available to everyone.  Are too complicated to become routine.  Too compartmentalized – we can’t see the big picture.  Handles some of the information well, but forces us to cram some of it into unintuitive places.

Net.Activity will manage wobbly information and the activities that create it.  An activity can be anything you need it to be.  You might create an activity for each customer return or for each A/R collection effort.  These two different types of activities will each manage a different set of data.  You can define as many types of activities as you need.  Multiple people can enter comments against an activity and all these comments will be visible to the other people involved in the activity.  Anyone involved in an activity can ask someone else to perform an action.  Net.Activity’s dashboard will allow everyone to track the status of the action requests that they have made and will also show them action requests that have been made to them by others.

Net.Activity is currently in the design stage of development.  This is the perfect time for you to share your thoughts with us about how you would like this product to work or about the problems you are having that this product might be able to solve.  You can can call or email me anytime about this product or any of our other products.  I’ve love to hear from you. 

Ray Hrdy
CTO, Enlighten.Net
rhrdy@Enlighten.Net
860-269-8007 

If you receive an email from "support@enlighten.net" with the subject "Changelog 2011 update", it is *NOT* from Enlighten.Net.  Do not open the attached HTML file.

If you are unsure if an email came from us, contact us and ask.

In the last few weeks, I have had to help 2 different customers recover from major hardware problems.  In both cases their backups failed - although for different reasons.  In the first case, the backup was running but not backing up the correct information.  In the second case, the backup was functioning as it should, but wiped out the good backup, with a backup of "nothing".  These two instances led me to write this article about backup procedures.

What do I back up?

The most fundamental part of any backup plan is ensuring that you are backing up the correct data.  Regardless of what backup solution you utilize, be sure that you are backing up the following directories.  Your data can be spanned across multiple drives, so check each drive for these directories:

• enetdata1
• data_discreports
• data_netreports1

Enlighten.Net software uses SQL Server to store some data.  This data should also be backed up regularly.  To facilitate this, your Enlighten.Net/Net.DFM server should have a scheduled task that backs up the SQL database to a flat file in the enetdata1 directory. You should confirm that this task runs successfully nightly.

Likewise, we have installed a second scheduled task that backs up the configuration files and registry to the enetdata1 directory.

How often do I back up?

The obvious answer to this question is to backup each night.  However, in some cases a nightly backup of all data won't complete before the work day starts again.  In this case, you can do a full back up on the weekend and only backup the data that was added or changed since the last backup was run.  A full backup is the easiest to use when recovering from a complete disaster, but takes up more space on the backup device, and takes longer to backup.  Consult the documentation for your backup software for details on backup strategies.

What do I backup to?

10 Years ago everyone backed up to tape drives.  In many cases however, tape drives are not large enough to hold a full backup.  Tapes that are large enough are prohibitively expensive.  External USB devices are the most common backup device for small to medium size businesses.  Regardless, you should alternate the backup device on a rotating schedule.  I recommend 3 or 4 devices to be certain that you don't overwrite a back up too soon.  Lastly, you should take the devices that are not in use out of the office so that in case of a total disaster (flood, theft, etc) you still have your data.

Did it work?

All good backup software will generate a report that gives you the results of the backup, the size of the backup and how long it took.  You should review this information frequently.  If one report varies greatly (duration or storage used), you should investigate further and not consider that backup successful.

How do I restore from the backup?

During an emergency, you do not want to find out that you don't know how to restore the files you need.  You should periodically restore a file or two to test the backup and your procedures for restoring. 

Now what?

This was a quick overview of the issues you should be thinking about in regards to your backup and is not intended to be a comprehensive look at this subject.  If you would like assistance with this topic, please contact Customer Services.  Please note that designing, testing or implementing backup solutions is not included in any of our service plans and will result in additional fees.

Cloud Computing, that’s the IT buzzword of the moment, but what does it mean for you? How does it affect Enlighten.Net, Inc. and our software offerings? As with any buzzword, this one has grown from the original idea and morphed into a more generic term. Commercials show home users, accessing cloud-based software to do everything from edit photos, to file sharing, to remote controlling your home PC.  These are actually examples of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a buzzword from a few years ago.  Although technically incorrect, “Cloud” sounds better than “SaaS”, which in turn sounds better than "Hosted Solution" -- the previous term used.

Regardless of what it is called, this new service allows companies to subscribe to the software applications they need over the internet rather than purchasing and installing the software on a server of your own.  The vendor takes responsibility for the server including applying updates and fixes to the software, interoperability with other software installed on the server, backing up the data and application, and more. By taking on these responsibilities, the software vendor allows users to focus on their core business. 

A few months ago, Enlighten.Net, Inc. started offering a cloud based versions of Net.DFM and Enlighten.Net.  This doesn’t have to affect our existing customers, but if you are sick of purchasing new server hardware every 3-4 years (no, you shouldn't just wait 7 years), or of worrying about how updates to one application will affect the other applications on your server, then contact our sales department at: 860-269-8005. 

We moved!

Hopefully you've heard by now, but we moved our offices across the street.  Our new mailing address is:

11 Talcott Notch Rd
Farmington, CT 06032

Our phone numbers have not changed.

Please update your records accordingly.