Business Challenge

The customer, an insurance company, was experiencing difficulties with handling massive volumes of paper-based information and would like to streamline its document management processes.

The challenge was to develop a system for digitization of paper documents with their subsequent organization within third-party document management system. Another requirement was that scanned documents should be bound up with internal records of FileMaker database management system.

Project Description

Scan Connect is a desktop application that allows end-users to easily scan or select already scanned documents (consisting of up to 10 pages) and add them to KnowledgeTree document management system.

Application uses software and TWAIN driver provided with a scanner device for preview, selection and scanning. After the document is scanned, corresponding policy number and company name are entered. Then the system performs a search in FileMaker database and automatically generates a unique key which allows to bind information being added to document management system with FileMaker records. Along with that links to "Terms & Conditions"-type documents are copied to enterprise SQL-database for centralization purposes.

Technology Evaluation

The following technologies were considered at technology analysis and evaluation stage:

• .NET, C#
• Java
• PHP

Eventually Java was chosen as the best alternative for developing a platform-independent desktop application capable of interacting with FileMaker via JDBC driver.

Technology Stack
OS:	All operating systems that support J2SE 5.0
Runtime Platform:	J2SE 5.0/Swing
IDE:	Eclipse 4.x, MyEclipse 3.x
Programming Language:	Java2
Database:	MySQL 4.x
Interfaces	TWAIN, KnowledgeTree 3.x, Filemaker Server v8 Advanced
Methodology:	RUP
Project Team:	Project Manager (20%) Software Architect/Developer (65%) QA Engineer (15%)
CASE Systems Used:	MS Project 2003 Rational Rose 2000 TestTrack Pro 6 MS Visual SourceSafe