Workaround for ImageRight and Remote Desktop Display Bug

Many months ago, I wrote about using ImageRight via Server 2008 RemoteApp.  There's been a problem with accessing some of the drop down menus and as we've upgraded ImageRight a few times since then, I've been hoping the issue will just go away.

But after moving to 5.4 and having more and more users accessing ImageRight via RemoteApp, the issue really need to be addressed. Turns out there is a quick and easy workaround.  Hold down the CTRL key when you select the drop down menus. Simple and effective.

Now, go forth and be Merry for the Holidays!

The Next Rev: ImageRight 5.4

My office is a week or so post-upgrade to ImageRight 5.4 from version 5.2.  While this version integrates some post-5.2 hotfixes to resolve some annotation and image display issues, it comes with it’s own post-5.4 hotfixes that need to be installed after the primary installation. If you deploy the desktop client with Group Policy, you’ll need to create an MSI file and a third policy to fully deploy the software and hotfixes automatically.

While the desktop client hasn’t changed much from a user standpoint, there were some security additions and tweaks that are important to know about.

• Alphabetizing Lists and Annotations – In previous versions, many of the lists that users interacted with were sorted by creation date.  This was less than ideal when selecting from a long list of private annotations or selecting from the document type tree drop-down. Those list displays are now alphabetized. 
• Read/Write permissions added to File Notes – while this is a great addition as a security feature, it’s turned on by default post-upgrade with the result being that users can’t see or add any file notes.  I needed to make a support call to find the odd place that permission change was located. (The Security properties of the "Storage Types" container in the EMC.)
• Annotations Limited to Specific File Types - There is a feature in version 5 where you can filter or limit on what file types an annotation is available for use.  When migrating from version 4 to 5.2 the system defaulted all the private annotations to be available on all file types (which was the behavior in previous version), but didn’t automatically check the “include all file types” option box.  In version 5.4, the check box status is enforced, which may make private annotations seem to disappear for the end users.
• New Permissions for "Desktop - Modify Document Date" - also defaulted to not having any permission set in 5.4, users will need this permission added to change a document date.  Also new is some functionality to track the date and time a document is received ("Desktop - Modify Receive Date and Time"), you may or may not want to let users change that.

Also, if you do any automated processes where you are using the FUP tool for updating file information, it's not working correctly.  Hopefully, that one is resolved quickly.  We don't use it often, but when we do we tend to have a lot of files that need a change and a manual process would be tedious.

Overall, ImageRight 5.4 brought several new features and welcome changes to the document management product, with a relatively easy upgrade process from 5.2.

Rotating Pages in ImageRight

Looking for the super-secret keyboard shortcuts for rotating multiple pages in the ImageRight Desktop 5.2? Oh, it's very secret, it's not even in the list of keyboard shortcuts in the help file.

1) Click to highlight at the document level (if you want to rotate all the pages in that document) or control/shift click to select the multiple pages you want to rotate.

2) Press Control + Shift + F to rotate 180 degrees.

3) Press Control + Shift + S to rotate 90 degrees.

You can also use just Control + F or Control + S on individual pages.

The How and Why of an ImageRight Test Environment

Over the last few days, I've coordinated setting up a new test environment for ImageRight, now that we've upgraded to version 5.  Our previous test environment was still running version 4, which made it all but useless for current workflow development.  However, workflow development isn't the only reason to set up an alternate ImageRight system - there are some other cool uses.

ImageRight has an interesting back-end architecture.  While it's highly dependant on Active Directory for authentication (if you use the integrated log on method), the information about what other servers the application server and the client software should interact with is completely controlled with database entries and XML setup files.  Because of this you can have different ImageRight application servers, databases and image stores all on the same network with no conflicts or sharing of information.  Yet, you don't need to provide a separate Active Directory infrastructure or network subnet.

While our ultimate goal was to provide a test/dev platform for our workflow designer, we also used this exercise as an opportunity to run a "mini" disaster recovery test so I could update our recovery documentation related to this system.

To set up a test environment, you'll need at least one server to hold all your ImageRight bits and pieces - the application server service, the database and the images themselves.  For testing, we don't have enough storage available to restore our complete set of images, so we only copied a subset.  Our database was a complete restoration, so test users will see a message about the system being unable to locate documents that weren't copied over. 

I recommend referring to both the "ImageRight Version 5 Installation Guide" and the "Create a Test Environment" documents available on the Vertafore website for ImageRight clients.  The installation guide will give you all the perquisites need to run ImageRight and the document on test environments has details of what XML files need to be edited to ensure that your test server is properly isolated from your production environment.  Once you've restored your database, image stores and install share (aka "Imagewrt$), its quick and easy to tweak the XML files and get ImageRight up and running.

For our disaster recovery preparations, I updated our overall information about ImageRight, our step-by-step guide for recovery and burned a copy of our install share to a DVD so it can be included in our off-site DR kit.  While you can download a copy of the official ImageRight ISO, I prefer to keep a copy of our expanded "Imagewrt$" share instead - especially since we've added hotfixes to the version we are running, which could differ from the current ISO available online from Vertafore.

Because setting up the test enviroment was so easy, I could also see a use where some companies may want to use alternate ImageRight environments for extra sensitive documents, like payroll or HR.  I can't speak for the additional licensing costs of having a second ImageRight setup specificially for production, but it's certainly technicially possible if using different permissions on drawers and documents doesn't meet the business requirements for some departments.

The Post-Mortem of a Domain Death

The past few days have been busy as we've been performing the tasks to remove our failed domain controller and domain from our Windows 2003 Active Directory forest.  Now that everything is working normally and I can check off that long-standing IT project of "remove child domain" from my task list, I'd like to share a few things we've learned.

• NTDSUTIL will prompt you several times when it comes to removing the last DC in a domain using the steps in KB 216498. It will even hint that since you are removing the DC in the domain, that you are also removing the domain itself.  But you are not.  You must take additional steps in NTDSUTIL to remove the orphaned domain, see KB 230306 to finish up.
• How do you know you have an orphaned domain? Check AD Domains and Trusts.  If you still see a domain in your tree that you can't view the properties of, you aren't done yet.  Also, if your workstations still show the domain as a logon option in the GINA, get back to work.
• You might remember to clean up your DNS, but don't forget to also clean up WINS.  WINS resolution can haunt you and keep your workstations and applications busy looking for something that isn't there anymore.
• Watch your Group Policy links.  If you've cross-linked policies from the child domain to your forest root or other domains, workstations will indicate USERENV errors referencing the missing domain.  Policies from other domains won't show up in your "Group Policy Objects" container the GPMC.  You'll need to expand all your other OUs in the GPMC to find any policy links that report an error. 
• If you are using a version of Exchange that has the infamous Recipient Update Service, remove the service entry that handles the missing domain.  You'll see repeated MSExchangeAL Events 8213, 8250, 8260 and 8026 on your mail server otherwise.

I've used NTDSUTIL in the lab and in production several times to remove failed domain controllers, but removing an orphaned domain happens far less frequently.  While the majority of our Microsoft applications handled the existence of references to the orphaned domain with grace until we completed the clean up, one of our third party applications, ImageRight, was far more sensitive about it. 

We found that a combination of the WINS resolution and the orphaned trust relationship distracted the application enough that it was slow to operate, sometimes refused to load at all, and hung on particular actions.  If you happen to be an ImageRight customer who uses the Active Directory integration features, keep in mind that it likes all the AD ducks to be in a row.

While we had a little a bit of pain getting to this point, I'm really happy that our AD forest is neater and cleaner because of it.  It'll make it much easier to tackle other upgrade projects on the horizon for Active Directory and Exchange.

ImageRight Hotfixes = Happiness!

My last post about ImageRight covered two defects that we were experiencing that will not show up in the release of version 5.3.  However, since they were critical to actually viewing and interacting with images in the system, last week we received the hotfix that address both of those items.

The fix updated five DLL files on the client side and was provided to us as a self-extracting executable file that needed to be ran on each desktop.  I'm not a fan of sending executable files to my end users to click on via email, since that encourages some email habits I'd prefer to avoid.  Thus, we (meaning my rockin' programming co-worker) repackaged the hotfix as a MSI file that I could easily deploy via Group Policy.  I tested the fix on my desktop and we rolled it out to the rest of the staff the following morning for installation at the next desktop reboot. 

One little caveat that would have been nice to know ahead of time... Once a user has the fix installed, ANY .tif document they add to the system will cause a "red X" error on a non-fixed ImageRight client.

I discovered this after installing the fix on my machine and then adding in some expense reports for processing.  I then had to go over and install the hotfix on an accounting computer so my tasks could be processed.  Going forward, that user would create documents than everyone else in the office wouldn't be able to view until they had the hotfix.  So it's imperative that this particular fix be rolled out en mass, so users don't see even more errors.

Overall, kudos to the ImageRight Support team and the developers for working hard to make sure that ImageRight continues to work for us.

ImageRight 5.2 Growing Pains – 2 Bugs, Almost 2 Fixes

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the recent upgrade to ImageRight 5.2 was highly successful, though we did find several bugs and oddities.  Most have been resolved with calls to ImageRight support and some, while interesting, just aren’t critical.  But I’ve got two tickets open that have been escalated to official defects and are worth noting.

Bug 1: Annotation Wrapping and Resize I’ve mentioned the annotation wrapping issue before and this stems from the new 5.x feature where you can control the ability to wrap and resize annotations on a per-annotation basis.  This is no doubt a great feature that adds a lot of flexibility to annotations and stamps.

In our 4.x environment, we have several long annotations that were resized and wrapped to fit specific areas of a page.  In 5.2 version, those 4.x “legacy” annotations are no longer wrapped, often spanning off the printable page area.  This stems from the fact that the older stamps do not have the “wrap” and “resize” flags activated, something that is controllable whenever you created an annotation in 5.2.  Upgrading from 4.x to 5.2 should have automatically defaulted the existing annotations to have those flags, as that is the native behavior of annotations in the older versions.

This will be corrected in the next revision of 5.3, but a hotfix is also expect to be available soon.  It's important to note that if a page has an affected annotation and a "new" 5.2 annotation is added to that page, all legacy annotations will be "frozen" and not corrected when the fix is applied.

Bug 2: The Red X – Desktop Can’t Display a Page Image When you see this red X in the viewing window instead of the page you selected from your file, you know you have a problem.  The big error message thrown by ImageRight Desktop that can close the application also makes it clear something is amiss.
Turns out some documents can have a DPI issue related to when annotations are placed on a page.  As I understand it, some third party import processes can put in images at a different DPI than expected and when annotations are added it makes the 5.2 software unable to load them in the viewer.  We’ve had some odd DPI issues in the past that were caused by our small Canon desktop scanners and I suspect these are the same images that are unable to be loaded by the viewer now.  We've been able to recreate the issue using the desktop scanners, so this issue is not only a legacy problem, but an ongoing one.

It’s possible to export the page to PDF and view it that way, so there is a temporary work around for viewing the page, but the user can’t annotate the file without printing that PDF copy back in.  This may be acceptable in some cases, but the document would then have a disconnect with the annotation history that might not be acceptable.

The fix for this issue is expected in version 5.3.29.1350, but a hotfix is also planned for release.

Recap of the ImageRight Connection Tour in Las Vegas

I had a great time catching up with some of the ImageRight staff and some other ImageRight administrators in Las Vegas last week.  While nothing beats the bigger ImageRight conference that happens every odd year, this was a nice chance to chat about a product with others who enjoy some of the same benefits and experience some of the same pains as I do.

Below are some features and changes you can look forward to in v5. While I don’t do the workflow design and administration for our system, I’m happy to bring back some new workflow features to share.

• Deadlines can be added to manual steps to help prevent tasks from stagnating in task lists if someone is out of the office.
• “Split and Rendezvous” allows a single task the capability to break into sub-tasks that then don’t move forward until they all come together as completed.
• "Authorized user checking" can help prevent tasks from being assigned to a user who can’t view a document.

Another great session was the “Tips and Tricks” for what’s new the “New Architecture” (versions 4.x and 5.x).

• Attributes can be added at the document level, as well as at all other levels.  These attributes can also be used for reporting purposes.
• The “thumbnail workpad” was replaced by a combination of the ability to launch additional viewers in new windows and to collect and reorder pages from multiple documents using the “send to” feature.
• Redaction adds the ability to blackout information in a file that applies to all view of the document, even printing or copying without annotations, based on user rights.
• Electronic signatures can be used to digitally sign versions of documents.
• The new Outlook interface and the web desktop will bring new ways of easily accessing ImageRight without needing the full desktop program available.

Hopefully we’ll be able to make use of some of these new features in the coming months to help our office make ImageRight an even more useful part of our company’s day to day operations.

ImageRight 5.2 FYI - Some Issues and Defects

If you are looking to move from ImageRight 4.x to 5.x, here are two bugs we've found post-upgrade that have made the official ImageRight defect list.  One is totally minor but interesting to know and the other is more of a big deal.

Window Size Changes after "Printing" in a Document
The ImageRight Desktop application has two main windows, the "image view" which displays whatever page you are working with and the "file manager" which allows users to navigate between different files, documents and pages within them.  If you have multiple monitors and happen to like to have the file manager window maximized to fill one monitor, you'll notice that if you print or import a new document into the application when the "Import" confirmation/configuration window appears, the file manager window will change size, reverting to whatever size it would be if you had clicked the "restore down" button in upper right side of the window header bar.

Current workarounds include clicking the "maximize" button again to make it fill the screen, or to just make the non-maximized version of the window larger and not use the Windows maximize feature to fill the screen.  This currently affects version 5.2.42.5220.

Annotations Resized/Wrapped in 4.3 Are Not Wrapped in 5.2.42.5220
The ability to annotate or add "stamps" to documents in ImageRight is one of the greatest features of the product.  In 4.3, it was possible to have the text of an annotation wrap to another line by resizing the text box.  After the upgrade to 5.2, annotations that were previously wrapped in this manner essentially "unwrapped" themselves, running the full text on one line.   This line of text could then cover valuable information on the orginal page or cover over another annotation.  Sometimes it even runs off the printable area of the document itself.  

While it's possible to turn hide the annotations in order to see the complete original document, users generally place annotations in a way so that do not disrupt the ability to read the document.  Also, if any documents need to be exported or printed for another purpose the annotation may be a critical part of the document history and need to be rendered correctly. 

Workarounds are currently setting the Image View windows to "Fit to Height" which will show annotations that run off the page to the right, or resize the view window to allow for more viewable area on the right side.  This is a handy temporary fix so that you can see the complete annotation text.

The second suggested workaround is to promote a previous version of the document (or create a new document copy without annotations) and re-apply the necessary annotations.  While this might work for some documents, if you use annotations as part of a workflow where you generate several by different people or your stamps are considered part of your audit trail for official documents, this workaround is simply not acceptable.

Our company extensively uses annotations for approving invoices for A/P processing, complete with dates that line up with check runs and batch numbers.  Not only would simply redoing annotations be impractical as we have thousands of potentially affected documents, it's simply doesn't pass muster from an audit standpoint - all the annotations would have a new date history.

This issue has been given a "Priority 1" status at ImageRight and I hope to see a fix for it soon.

ImageRight 5.2 Has Arrived!

Over the weekend, I worked with Vertafore support staff to upgrade our ImageRight installation from 4.x to 5.x.  While it wasn't a flawless process, it was successful in the end.  The support techs had to reinstall several of the server-side components twice, but this could have been related to the fact that our 4.x system was an upgrade from a 3.x version and there was a lot that needed to be cleaned up.

Outside of that hurdle, any other delays or issues we ran into over the weekend stemmed purely from a "documentation" standpoint.  For example, I was provided with the "Installation and Upgrade Guide" which I reviewed before the upgrade.  There were a couple things to note in there that weren't the case when we were actually doing the implementation.

• The application server software lists Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (Not SP1) as a requirement, but SP1 was okay to have.
• It was noted that there were two new functionality rights for the enterprise scanner software that needed to be enabled - "Scanner - Scan to File" and "Scanner - Scan to Workflow".  However, "Scanner - Source Menu - Scan Batch" is also required.  There are several new scanner related functionality rights that control other options that you might need to enable as well, depending on what features your scanner operators already use.

When tackling the client desktops there were a few more road bumps.  I was missing the very important "ImageRight Desktop Installation Using Push Technology" that provided some key information for getting the desktop application deployed with Active Directory group policies.  For the 4.x version, we only had to deploy the desktop MSI file.  This time around you need two policies to deploy some prerequisite components that the manual installation process automatically call, as well as a transform file to make sure your application server and authentication information  gets in the local configuration files on the workstations. 

All of that (and more) is detailed in the "Push" guide - I didn't even use all the recommendations because I thought they were a bit too lenient for GPOs just used for software installation. Also, it was recommended that we completely uninstall the previous components from the workstation, so we pushed a different script first to remove all the ImageRight software and then applied our new GPOs.

Finally, we do have a post-upgrade issue with annotations not displaying correctly when "wrapped".  There were some added features related to annotation control, specifically the ability to control if an annotation can be resized or not.  Many of our users resize boxes to automatically wrap the text in a text box or stamp, so it's likely this display issue stems from that feature change.  Hopefully we'll have a good resolution for that shortly.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to joining other ImageRight users at the Vertafore Connection Tour next week in Las Vegas.  I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about!

ImageRight 5.2 Improvements

I'm looking forward to spending a couple days in Las Vegas next month at the Vertafore Connection Tour so I can chat with other people who are using ImageRight. We'll be looking to upgrade to version 5.2 soon and here are some of the new and improved features. You can find these and more in the version 5 release notes.

• The ImageRight Application Server is certified for Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit).
• The ImageRight Desktop is certified for Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit).
• Installer was improved to make the selection of native vs. integrated (AD) security more user friendly.
• Created a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that will allow users to work ImageRight tasks directly from Outlook. (additional licenses required)
• The user interface for Business Process Reporting has been redesigned for a better experience. Includes reports for managers to see volume of images being added by users.
• The enteprise scanner application now has keyboard shortcuts and Windows access keys for many of the menus.
• ImageRight Desktop can now run inside IE 7 or higher, by utitizing Click Once technology. (This will probably be great for remote access scenarios!)
• Export utility allows for bulk exports based on file search or flat file parser. (There used to be a bulk exporter in version 3.5, but it was not ported to version 4.0. I'm looking forward to having it back in version 5.2.)
• Device Merge Utility provides the ability to merge images from an existing storage device to one or more other storage devices.
• The burning service can now support blu-ray discs.
• Retention Management functions have been added, to allow sites to set retention and cut off dates throughout the system. (additional licensing required)

Many of these features are just what I've been wishing for. I hope its all worth the wait!

SharePoint and Document Management

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a free seminar that featured a document management solution that integrated with SharePoint. As a new SharePoint administrator for a company that already has a content management system in place, I was curious has to how they compared.

KnowledgeLake has several product components that can be used to capture, image and manage enterprise content from various sources. The seminar demonstrated several of the products running on top of SharePoint 2010.

• Imaging - View, annotate and index images from a web browser using a SilverLight based document viewer; scan batches of documents; centralize the configuration of indexing, database validation and lookups; scan and index documents without ever leaving the SharePoint interface.
• Capture - Scan documents in batches; use OCR technology to extract document meta-data; use “key from image” technology to easily apply document meta-data; save documents to SharePoint from anywhere you have a web (HTTP) connection.
• Connect - enables users to save content on an ad-hoc basis - such as Office documents, PDF files and e-mail messages; provides integration to virtually any line of business application; monitors the files you retrieve from SharePoint and updates SharePoint as you save changes to your documents.
• Workflow - attach a business process to documents in Microsoft SharePoint, including routing of documents for approval, reviews and/or the document's lifecycle. Workflows can be user-initiated or automated based on the actions of the scanning and capture software.

Since we started looking at managing our documents electronically through our enterprise, I’ve been an advocate for using technology to help streamline processes, make important documents easier to find and better protect data that might not otherwise be recoverable in the event of a fire or flood.

While I won’t be looking to replace our current document management system, ImageRight, I was please to see that there are other products available that have a similar feature set, while taking advantage of a portal that a company might already be utilizing.

Managing Linked Pages in ImageRight

ImageRight has a nifty feature where you can “link” pages from a document in one file to another file. When annotations are made on those linked pages in either file, they show in both locations. You can link pages from one file to multiple files and the annotations will remain synced on all of the linked copies.

It’s important to know that “all linked copies are equal”, there is no master version of the a page once a linked copy is created. If File A has a link to File B and File C, annotations on any version will be synced to all other copies. If you delete the page from File A, the linked version in File B and File C will still continue to share annotation updates between them. However what happens when the original document was incorrect and needs to be swapped out? Or how do you figure out which other files are referencing a document?

Turns out, there isn’t an easy answer. In my particular scenario, it was discovered that File A (the original document) was determined to be inaccurate and needed to be replaced with updated pages. If those pages were deleted outright, there would be no way to determine which other files were linked or how to notify users of those files of the error.

My suggestion is to put an annotation on what was the source document stating that it had been superseded by a new version and where the updated version could be located. That annotation would sync to the other linked copies, wherever they may be. Finally, the pages could be replaced in the original file. The link with the original location would be gone, but whenever someone came across the notation on the older version in another file, they could reference the new file and re-link fresh copies if desired.

I've requested that ImageRight add the ability to determine which pages or documents are linked, so maybe we'll see that as an enhancement in a future version.

Version History in ImageRight 4.0

When our company started out with ImageRight 3.5, adding annotations to documents was one of the big features that made the system easy to adopt. However, much like writing on a document with a pen, annotations couldn't be undone individually. One had to be very sure they were putting the proper annotation in the right place, because once it was committed to the page there was no turning back.

One of the improved features that came with ImageRight 4.0 is the addition of version history with documents. This feature allows people with the appropriate permissions to view the history of changes made to a page. While regular users can see the history of individual annotations by view the properties of each, the version history allows the quick review of each set of changes and a previous versions can be promoted to be the current version in the case of errors. This has allowed me to help some users "roll back" changes, which has saved them time and made people a little more comfortable with experimenting with different uses of annotations.

For .TIF images it shows the annotation history and for non-image files (like Word docs or spreadsheets) complete copies of the changed files are stored. This is an improvement over the 3.5 version where annotation history was maintained for the sake of being able to review who added what marks, but didn't allow for any type of administrative "undo" of annotation that were made in error.

When it comes to .TIF documents, it is possible to create a "new" version of a document without making a visible change. It's important to have an idea of the scenarios where these extra versions can be created in case you are tasked with doing some type of detective work regarding the history of a document.

Here are several examples of when a new version can be created without any visible annotations.

• Adding an annotation and then deleting the annotation prior to saving or moving off a page


• Clicking on a sticky note, without moving or modifying the content


• Deleting a sticky note


• Add a text box with no text and deleting it prior to saving or moving off a page

As people get more comfortable moving within ImageRight and using annotations, these actions will happen less and the true history of each document will remain pretty clean. The addition of this feature provides valuable details that are worth the hit in disk space taken to maintain the versions.

ImageRight and a Remote Desktop display bug

This week starts our official "pilot" roll out of Server 2008 RemoteApp. This is our planned replacement of Citrix for remote access to several of our regularly used applications. We are only using the Server 2008 (not R2) on the application server because our imaging application, ImageRight (version 4.3), does not support 64-bit. If you are planning on doing something similar, there is a minor display bug when access ImageRight v4 through the Remote Web Applications interface and it's likely related to how the drop down menus are rendered using ActiveX. The problem is not repeated when one logs onto the server directly.

In the "File Open" menu, there are drop-down menus for choosing the drawer and file type of the file you are looking for. In this example, the drawer selection defaults to "All Locations," but depending on your personal settings, it may default to a particular drawer that is used most often.

When a user attempts to drop-down the drawer menu to select another option, the menu appears to snap closed quickly and does not allow a selection, making it impossible to switch drawers. (The File Type selection menu works fine.)

This display bug is not scheduled to be fixed in ImageRight version 4 of the software and it's not a problem in version 5.0 according to ImageRight support. Meanwhile, the work-around is simple. Right next to the "File Open" tab, is a "Search" tab. The Search tab allows for more specific options to selected - down to page types and document descriptions. However, it all does the same basic features as the "File Open" tab.

In my office this isn't a commonly used tab, we have another search tool that searches across other records databases at the same time, so I have to make sure to point out the issue to new users and provide the work-around information up front. While I'd like our remote access to ImageRight to be a seamless as working in the office, this display issue isn't a showstopper.

Because It's Already Here

A colleague of mine asked a valid question about my last post regarding how my office IT department uses ImageRight for document management instead of something else, like a Wiki. Of course a Wiki would work just fine. So would SharePoint or any other software the helps manage documentation and allows for collaboration.

I'm not saying that ImageRight is the end-all, be-all for document management. It's just that ImageRight is what we have. One of the big topics that came up at the Vertafore Connections conference I attended a few months ago was that many companies using the product only deploy it to one or two departments to perform very specific business functions. I've found that it can be used by many other business areas if one just takes the time to carve out a place for their specific documentation and processes.

There is that old "law of the instrument" that can make a familiar tool look like the panacea of all problems, but I'm not trying to make an unsuitable piece of software meet our needs. We are simply using a product that our company has already invested in, instead of looking outside our existing infrastructure for a new solution. Not only does this save licensing, installation and maintenance costs for an additional product, it encourages members of our department to use ImageRight regularly, making us better able to support the other staff members in the office. We are not only supporting the backend of the program, but interacting with it as an end-user as well - a win-win for everyone.

Document Imaging Helps Organize IT

Since our implementation of ImageRight, our Network Operations team has embraced it as a way to organize our server and application documentation in a manner that makes it accessible to everyone in our team. Any support tickets, change control documents, white papers and configuration information that is stored in ImageRight is available to anyone in our group for reference.

This reduces version control issues and ensures that a common naming (or "filing") structure is used across the board, making information easier to find. (For reference, an ImageRight "file" is a collection of documents organized together like a physical file that hangs in a file cabinet.) Plus, the ability to export individual documents or whole ImageRight "files" to a CD with an included viewer application is a great feature that I'm using as part of our Disaster Recovery preparations.

I have a single file that encompasses the contents of our network "runbook". This file contains server lists and configuration details, IP and DNS information, network maps, application and service dependencies, storage share locations/sizes, support contact information, etc. It consists of text documents, spreadsheets, PDF files and other types of data. I keep a hard copy printed at my desk so I can jot notes when changes are needed, but ImageRight ensures I have an electronic backup that I can edit on a regular basis. Plus, I regularly export a updated copy to a CD that I add to the off-site Disaster Recovery box.

The value of ImageRight in a disaster scenario expands beyond just our configuration documents. In an office where we deal with large amounts of paper, encouraging people to see that those documents are added to ImageRight in a timely manner will ensure faster access to work products after an event prevents access to the office or destroys paper originals.

Restoring ImageRight in the DR Scenario

Our document imaging system, ImageRight, is one of the key applications that we need to get running as soon as possible after a disaster. We've been using the system for over 2 years now and this is the first time we've had a chance to look closely at what would be necessary in a full recovery scenario. I'd been part of the installation and the upgrade of the application, so I had a good idea of how it should be installed. Also, I had some very general instructions from the ImageRight staff regarding recovery, but no step by step instructions.

The database is SQL 2005 and at this point it wasn't the first SQL restoration in this project, so that went relatively smoothly. We had some trouble restoring the "model" and "msdb" system databases, but our DBA decided those weren't critical to ImageRight and to let the versions from the clean installation stay.

Once the database was restored, I turned to the application server. A directory known as the "Imagewrt$" share is required as it holds all the installation and configuration files. We don't have all the same servers available in the lab, so we had to adjust the main configuration file to reflect the new location of this important share. After that, the application installation had several small hurdles that required a little experimentation and research to overcome.

First, the SQL Browser service is required to generate the connection string from the application server to the database. This service isn't automatically started in the standard SQL installation. Second, the ImageRight Application Service won't start until it can authenticate its DLL certificates against the http://crl.verisign.net URL. Our lab setup doesn't have an Internet connection at the moment so this required another small workaround - temporarily changing the IE settings for the service account to not require checking the publisher's certificate.

Once the application service was running, I installed the desktop client software on the machine that will provide remote desktop access to the application. That installed without any issue and the basic functions of searching for and opening image files were tested successfully. We don't have the disk space available in the lab to restore ALL the images and data, so any images older than when we upgraded to version 4.0 aren't available for viewing. We'll have to take note of the growth on a regular basis so that in the event of a real disaster we have a realistic idea of how much disk space is required. This isn't the first time I've run short during this test, so I'm learning my current estimates aren't accurate enough.

Of course, it hasn't been fully tested and there are some components I know we are using in production that might or might not be restored initially after a disaster. I'm sure I'll get a better idea of what else might be needed after we have some staff from other departments connect and do more realistic testing. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with how easy it was to get the basic functionality restored without having to call ImageRight tech support.

Paper vs. Electronic - The Data Double Standard

One of the main enterprise applications I'm partly responsible for administering at work is our document imaging system. Two years have passed since implementation and we still have some areas of the office dragging their feet about scanning their paper. On a daily basis, I still struggle with the one big elephant in the room - the double standard that exists between electronic data and data that is on paper.

The former is the information on our Exchange server, SQL servers, financial systems, file shares and the like. The the latter is the boxes and drawers of printed pages - some which originally started out on one of those servers (or a server that existed in the past) and some which did not. In the event of a serious disaster it would be impossible to recreate those paper files. Even if the majority of the documents could be located and reprinted any single group of employees would be unable to remember everything that existed in a single file, never mind hundreds of boxes or file cabinets. In the case of our office, many of those boxes contain data that dates back decades, containing handwritten forms and letters.

Like any good company, we have a high level plan that dictates what information systems are critical and the amount of data loss that will be tolerated in the event of an incident. This document makes it clear that our senior management understands the importance of what the servers in the data center contain. Ultimately, this drives our IT department's regular data backup policies and procedures.

However, IT is the only department required by this plan to ensure the recovery of the data we are custodians of. What extent of data loss is acceptable for the paper data owned by every other department after a fire or earthquake? A year of documents lost? 5 years? 10 years? No one has been held accountable for answering that question, yet most of those same departments won't accept more than a day's loss of email.

Granted, a lot of our paper documents are stored off site and only returned to the office when needed, but there are plenty of exceptions. Some staffers don't trust off site storage and keep their "most important" papers close by. Others in the office will tell you that the five boxes next to their cube aren't important enough to scan, yet are referenced so often they can't possibly be returned to storage.

And there lies the battle we wage daily as the custodians of the imaging system, simply getting everyone to understand the value of scanning documents into the system so they are included in our regular backups. Not only are they easier to organize, easier to access, more secure and subject to better auditing trails, there is a significant improvement in the chance of the survival when that frayed desk lamp cord goes unnoticed.

64-bit ImageRight support? - The "drivers" are in control.

The disaster recovery testing is touching more areas then I even though possible related to what options we can consider in our production and emergency environments. It's bringing to light how interconnected software has become, and how those connections can sneak up on you, even when one is dealing with them everyday.

A basic premise of our recovery plan is to provide access to our recovered systems remotely, until we can make office space and desktop systems accessible to everyone. In order to keep things "simple" and provide the quickest possible up time, the plan calls for using Windows Terminal Services (aka "Remote Desktop Services" in 2008 R2) technology.

Due to the improvements in the offerings available directly by Microsoft related to remote access and the relatively small number of applications we need to make available, we determined that bringing terminal services up initially would be faster than recreating our Citrix environment during an emergency.

In conjunction with this (and the fact that we have only a small amount of remote use in production) we are currently planning to reduce licensing costs by only providing access using Microsoft products. Windows Server 2008 (and now R2) has many of the features we were looking to Citrix for in the past. While it's possible for us to meet most of our needs with Server 2008, we'd much prefer to use 2008 R2.

While I was at the Vertafore Conference, one of my goals was to find out their schedule for 64-bit support. As one of our main enterprise applications, its important that it's available on our remote access solution. Since I was unable to run the software on my 64-bit Windows 7 computer, I wanted know how far they were from addressing that.

Turns out, it all comes down to third-party drivers for peripherals. ImageRight works with several popular hardware vendors when it comes to scanners, including Kodak, Canon and Fujitsu. This allows customers to take advantage of more of the built-in scanner features that come with the hardware, instead of writing a generic scanner driver that could reduce the functionality native to the device. They also use the drivers to provide desktop features that allow end users to import documents directly from their PC.

Because of this, 64-bit support for the ImageRight software is directly related to how quickly scanner vendors make 64-bit drivers available. ImageRight claims that the makers of these key peripheral devices are complaining that Microsoft didn't give them enough warning between Windows Server 2008 and the release of Server 2008 R2 regarding the official "death" of the 32-bit version of the OS to provide 64-bit drivers for all their devices.

ImageRight is planning to have support for 64-bit operating systems by the end of this year. We aren't planning on a widespread upgrading of desktop hardware to 64-bit any time soon and will be able to wait without too much suffering. However, it does alter our plans for our remote access changes in the next 3-6 months. A disappointment for sure.

Also, the delay doesn't help existing ImageRight clients or upcoming new ones that hope to run (or at least begin to test) an important software product on the most current hardware and operating systems available. An interesting domino effect that ends in needing to reconsider what I'll be using for remote access during my recovery testing this month.