Keep Backup Copies Of Your Most Important Documents – Digital Archound – For Windows and WHS

Go paperless at home, in the office or your grannys house. I have been using this software for nearly two years. Simply put – A bill, invoice or receipt comes in. I pop it in the scanner, hit scan.. wait… Digital Archound pops up and grabs the scanned file. Asks for a title, category and details if I want. Then it whisks it away safely to my server and archives it. When I need to look up the document, I quickly hit Search By Keyword and there it is… INSTANTLY. Review: Digital Archound Needed: Scanner, Digital Archound, Windows Home Server or Regular Windows XP, Vista and 7 Level: Beginner Cost: $49.95 – Desktop Version. $79.95 – Windows Home Server version

Installation

To install it, its pretty straight forward.

For Windows Home Server Installs:

Click the above links, and download a trial version. For Windows Home Server – go through the normal routine, of dropping the .MSI in your \\server\software\addins folder. Once you’ve done this, you head to the console and settings – add ins – and available – finally click install. You need to then navigate to your shared folders and you’ll see a new folder in there called Digital Archound. In there you’kk find the client connector software. Run this on all clients who will use the software.

For Windows XP/Vista/7 Installs:

Download trial from their site, and run it as a normal install. Click next all the way to the end.

My Experience

This is really a simple piece of software, which I enjoy using. I am using the Windows Home Server version. But you get almost the same functionality with the desktop version. What happens is I get some business mail in the post. For example, a bank statement. I open it up, place it on the scanner and then scan it to my PC. (I am fortunate enough to have a network scanner and can choose who’s PC/Laptop to scan to. But this isn’t necessary. I am just boasting.) Once the document is scanned in, Digital Archound pops up like this screenshot on the left. It asks for a few details. So I type in AIB Bank Statement. Choose Bank Statements from the categories drop down box. Enter the statement date and click Save. Thats it!. The more detail you enter before hitting save, the better the search function becomes. The more tags you add, the easier it is to find exactly what you are looking for in one search.

 

After that you have a Manage Archives function. This simply lets you browse all your scans by category.

WHS Console View

Great Features

• You can completely control the categories. Which is great because here in Ireland, we dont use certain preset categories. These are changed with a right-click.
• Allows you to perform backups of the archives in case you ever lost anything or damaged your pc.
• Once your archives are filed – they become centrally available to anyone you allow
• Allows you rotate or crop and split PDFs before filing them.

Support

Great!! I have had the oppurtunity to test their support on many occasions. And everytime, it has been a great experience. I had a very techinical query recently.  I broke it!!! I was reconfiguring my WHS to allow my blog to run alongside the normal Server website. But this broke Digital Archounds webservice which rendered DA dead. I emailed them, knowing I broke and expected them to say “sorry”… You know the usual…” its not our fault”… “we dont support you having fun with your own equipment”… FAR FROM IT. They not only explained what needed to be done, they remotely log in and showed me what to do. (Simply put, when you use host headers to allow more than one site to exist in IIS, you need to recreate the locahost for the default website.) What I’d Like To Change Licencing setup. I find the licencing method a pain. WHS users tend to break their servers a lot because of tinkering. This requires re-installs a lot. Dont get me wrong, if you use WHS the way it was intended, it never breaks. Anyway, this isn’t Digital Archounds fault, but you have to reinstalled and re-licence the software. It requires an email to be sent each time to reset the code. Not a big deal I know, but I prefer knowing I can reinstall anytime I want. Anyway, word from them recently suggested they were moving away from this method. Price. I personally feel $79.95 for the WHS is a little steep. I think I would see people being put off a little on this one. Especially since the desktop version offers very similar features and is $30 less. However, I have still been extremely satisfied with the software. And sometimes, these days, thats rare. Website. It really needs an overhaul. Yes it works. But as a web designer, I may be picky… I like to see it really show off the product.

Summary

Its really a fantastic product. Very dependable and reliable. Great support and helpful staff.