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paper barcodes

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Level 2

I am trying to put together a project for our users so that they can scan documents from our warehouse storage and also future files (Papers printed by clients and or office staff) into our document imaging system (DI) using cover sheets. We are doing it currently with our DI reading text fields, however, sometimes our workflows do not read the text well, paper may be scanned in skewed, may have spots on it and or may be scanned in incorrectly, and we end up needing user interference to fix/edit the issues before the documents go to their final storage place.

We experimented with barcodes and found that if we added barcodes to the coversheet we could allow the DI system to search a whole page for a barcode and it would read it with 100% accuracy.

So we created bar codes on our coversheets that would calculate themselves depending on how a user filled in a particular text field such as an employee ID or a registration number such as a jailing ID, a date of the event and the name of the type of form. This would dictate where the form would be stored in the DI system. Our DI system imports documents, reads the pages, if it finds a bar code it will assume it is page 1 of a document, the next process will read the bar codes and determine how to populate the meta data in our DI system and store it accordingly or email a user to tell them that a user must add any missing items.

This works perfectly if one uses Adobe Livecycle Designer to create the form and inserts Paper barcodes and puts in some code to let the barcode get its value from another field, however there is a catch. The user filling in the coversheet and then printing it MUST have Adobe Pro. If all the users within our organization must have Adobe Pro and not use any of its features this could be quite costly. And... how about if the public needs to fill in a form and send it to us, they would also need Adobe Pro. At the moment we are talking about 20 perhaps 30 different barcodes and forms, however, if every department within our organization starts to use this to save time, we could be talking about hundreds.

If we could delegate one person per department as the person to create the forms and have the "Reader Extension" Plug in for Livecycle Designer for each of these persons we could perhaps save cost, as this is what this whole procedure is supposed to do in the first place. However, I cannot find out if I can purchase a plug-in for LiveCycle Designer (I have ES4) and how much it would be and for "how many" forms I would even be allowed to use it, or is it unlimited.

Anyone have any ideas?

1 Accepted Solution

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Correct answer by
Level 2

Could it be if my users buy a license and install Adobe Reader Standard that I would not need that license (for internal only I assume because anyone from the public would not have that version)?

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Employee Advisor

Reader Extension is actually a Adobe LiveCycle Server module, it is not LiveCycle Designer plugin. For using that you have to install the LiveCycle ES4 Server with Reader Extension module.

You could also check this feature of Acrobat : http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/WS58a04a822e3e50102bd615109794195ff-7e0d.w.html

-Wasil

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Level 2

Thanks but the reader extensions in Adobe Pro do not work on paper bar codes. So that won't help me. I was told by Adobe to get a license for Livecycle Reader Extensions, but getting a quote is proving more difficult than I thought.

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Correct answer by
Level 2

Could it be if my users buy a license and install Adobe Reader Standard that I would not need that license (for internal only I assume because anyone from the public would not have that version)?

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Employee Advisor

Can you explain a bit more ?

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Level 2

I create forms with for instance a jailing number field. The user uses Acrobat Reader to fill in a jailing number field which in turn creates a bar code on the form so that the printed form has a bar code that represents the jailing number. Users with Adobe Pro can print the form no problem, users with Adobe Reader only cannot print the bar code because it puts a grey square over the bar code. I think with Adobe Standard it might work as well but I have to find a user that has that installed so I can test it. I was hoping I could license my LiveCycle Designer to create forms that work for Reader as a cost effective solution, however, if I have to buy some expensive "Server" license it may not be very cost effective at all. We may just have to buy a few Pro's or Standards and do it that way or abandon Adobe software all together and find something else. Our Document Imaging system is 100% error free when it reads bar codes and not when reading text, so with bar codes I would need 0% user intervention in our importing of documents.

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Level 8

You do need a server in order to enable the barcode capability.

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Employee Advisor

That's correct. Reader Extension is required to enable the barcode capability.

-Wasil

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Level 2

In answer to all of this. The server is about 200K. Users with Reader standard (at approx. $80 can print barcodes). Looks to me like I will be buying standard for my users and going that route. It is MUCH cheaper than buying the server license. Wish it wouldn't have taken 5+ weeks to get this answer, which I finally got from a source other than Adobe. Still have not had a number from them directly.