Scan documents

DocView Capture scans straight from your browser. The DocView Scan Agent, a small program on your PC, talks to the scanner, and the pages appear on screen as they are scanned. You can then check them, put them in order, split them into documents and send the batch on.

Before you start

You need the Scan entry in the left-hand menu. If you do not see it, ask your administrator for the scan permission.
The DocView Scan Agent must be installed on your PC. The Scan screen offers it the first time; see Scan Agent.
No scanner? You can still import files on the same screen. See Import documents.

Start a scan batch

Click Scan in the left-hand menu.
Under Scan from a scanner, choose the Batch Setup. It decides how the batch is processed (cleanup, OCR, document types, fields and export).
Optionally choose a Priority (1 is highest, 10 is lowest). Default uses the Batch Setup's priority.
Check the Batch name. It is generated for you. If the Batch Setup allows it, you can change it here; once the batch is created the name is fixed. The copy button puts it on the clipboard so you can write it on the paper stack.
Scanning a box that was booked in? Scan its label (or type its code) in Booking item. The client's Batch Setup is chosen and the batch is named after the box. See Bookings.
If the Batch Setup asks for batch fields at the start (a purchase order, a job number), fill them in under the Batch Setup. Required ones are marked with a star; the batch cannot be released without them.
Click Create batch and scan to create the batch and start scanning at once, or Create batch to open it first (for example to change the scan settings or choose a document type).

The scanner is shown next to Create batch and scan, with a dot: green when it is ready, amber while it connects, red when it is not available. Click it to choose another scanner or to look for scanners again. Create batch and scan can only be clicked while the scanner is ready; if the Scan Agent is not installed, click Create batch and install it from the Scan screen.

Tip: If the box came with a header sheet, just scan it as the first page. DocView Capture reads it as soon as it is scanned, links the batch to the box, shows the new batch name and does not keep the sheet, so it never becomes a document.

DocView Capture remembers the last Batch Setup you chose, on any PC you sign in to.

Note: Only Batch Setups that start with a Scan step and that your role may use are listed.

The Scan screen

The screen has a ribbon at the top, page thumbnails on the left and a large preview on the right.

The Home tab holds the scanner, capture, page, document and batch commands.
The View tab has Preview pane, Fit width, Fit page, Zoom in, Zoom out, Thumbnail size, Previous page and Next page.
The quick access buttons to the left of the tabs stay visible even when the ribbon is collapsed (Ctrl+F1).

The badge at the top left shows the Scan Agent and scanner status. When it is green you can scan:

Badge	Meaning
Connecting to the scanner…	The Scan Agent is opening your scanner. This takes a few seconds.
Scanner ready	The scanner is open and waiting. Pressing Scan starts the feeder straight away.
Scanning	A scan is running.
Scanner not available	The scanner could not be opened. A yellow bar under the ribbon says why — for example it is switched off, unplugged or asleep, or in use by another program. Fix that and the scanner connects by itself; Try now connects at once. See Troubleshooting.

Choose the scanner and settings

The scanner is the first button in the Capture group on the Home tab: its name, and under it its state (Ready, Connecting…, Not available, or what the Scan Agent needs, such as Not installed – click to install). The dot on its icon is green when the scanner is ready. Click it for a list of scanners: click one to use it instead. The list also shows why the scanner is not available, the scan settings (for example 300 dpi · B/W · A4), Install or Update the Scan Agent when needed, Look for scanners again, Reset scanner connection and Scan settings….

Nothing blocks the screen when the scanner or the Scan Agent is missing: the scanner button says so, and you can still import files.

On the Scan settings tab, pick your scanner in the Scanner list. Each entry shows the driver type (TWAIN or WIA). Your choice is remembered on this PC.

As soon as the Scan screen opens, or you pick another scanner, the Scan Agent opens the scanner and keeps it ready, just like a desktop capture program. That is why scanning starts at once when you press Scan. If the scanner is off, it connects by itself as soon as you switch it on. The status, every page scanned and the end of a scan show on screen as they happen. The Scan Agent keeps the scanner connected until you choose another scanner or release it in the agent's tray menu, also when the Scan screen is closed and after the PC restarts. If the scanner is switched off or goes to sleep, the agent notices and connects again as soon as it is back. When you press a scan button, the agent always tries the scanner, waiting a few seconds for one that is just waking up, so you never need to reconnect by hand.

If you choose another scanner in the agent's tray menu, the Scan screen follows. 2. Pick a Scan profile. The first one is the Batch Setup's profile (or the default profile); Custom means you changed settings by hand. Every setting of the profile is used for every scan of the batch. 3. The Scan settings tab is laid out like Home, in groups. You can change any of the profile's settings for this batch:

Scanner & profile: the scanner and the scan profile.
Image: Resolution, Colour (Black & white, Greyscale, Colour, or Automatic colour detection when the scanner can do it), Threshold (black & white), JPEG quality (colour), Brightness and Contrast.
Paper: Page size & cropping (see below), Both sides (duplex) and Stop on double feed.
Done by the scanner: Rotation (Automatic, None, 90°, 180°, 270°), Straighten (deskew), Remove blank pages, Remove specks and Drop out colour.
Driver & batch: Driver properties, Show driver dialog when scanning, Back to the profile.

Each scanner option can also be Scanner's setting: DocView then leaves what is set in the scanner's own driver as it is, so a setting you made with Driver properties is not reset.

Page size & cropping: Automatic – each page at its own size (the default) crops every page to its edges, so there is no black scanner background around or below it; Whole scan area keeps everything the scanner sees; Scanner's setting uses what is set in the driver; or a fixed size (A4, A3, A5, Letter, Legal).

Pages come from the feeder; the Flatbed button scans one page from the glass. 4. For the scanner's own options, click Driver properties. It opens the driver's own settings dialog (TWAIN drivers, such as Kodak, Canon, Fujitsu, Epson). What you save there is kept for that scanner on this PC and used for every batch; DocView's settings apply on top of it, except those set to Scanner's setting. Click Forget driver settings to stop using them for this batch.

When you press a scan button, the screen switches back to Home, where Stop scan and the page commands are.

When the scanner cannot do a setting, the Scan settings tab says so, and pressing a scan button first lists what the scanner would ignore, for example It cannot scan both sides (duplex). Choose Change the settings or Scan anyway. You are not asked again for the same settings in this batch.

Colour – one and Colour – all scan in colour for that scan only; the batch's settings apply again afterwards.

Changed settings stay with the batch until you close (save for later) or release it. The next batch starts again from the Batch Setup's settings. The settings and the Scanner list are locked while a scan is running. Back to the Batch Setup settings resets them.

Note: Scanner progress windows, such as Kodak's Scanning from Document Feeder, are hidden: the Scan Agent asks TWAIN drivers not to show them. They appear only when Show scanner dialog when scanning is ticked. A few drivers still show their own window; if yours does, turn it off in the driver's own settings.

Scan pages

Command	Shortcut	What it does
Scan all	Alt+S	Scans until the feeder is empty
Scan single	Alt+1	Scans one sheet; with duplex, that is its front and back
Colour – one		Scans one sheet in colour; the batch's settings stay as they are
Colour – all		Scans in colour until the feeder is empty
Stop scan	Esc	Stops the scanner at once; every page scanned so far is kept
Import files	Alt+I	Adds PDF, TIFF, JPEG or PNG files to the batch, one after another with their progress under the pages; you can keep working meanwhile

The arrow next to Scan all has one-off options that change only this scan:

Flatbed – one page from the glass (passport, bound or fragile)
Colour, one side and Colour, both sides (duplex)
Insert before selected page, Replace selected page and Rescan selected pages

Watch the pages as they are scanned. With Scan Agent 1.5 or later, each page shows in the large preview the moment the scanner delivers it — marked Live · page N — before it has reached the server, so you can check the image quality while the stack runs through and press Stop scan as soon as something is wrong. Uploading, thumbnails, barcodes and separation carry on in the background and never hold the scanner up. When the scan ends, the preview shows the last stored page.

Thumbnails appear the moment each page is scanned: they are made on your PC from the Scan Agent's copy and wait at the bottom in a dashed box, Being stored, until the page has reached the server, when the stored page takes its place in its document. The page list scrolls to the newest page. While scanning, the status area at the top right shows the pages scanned, stored and still to store, so you know how long to wait. Each page is stored at once; separating the pages into documents (barcodes, blank pages, page sizes) happens straight after, in the background, and the status shows separating N page(s)… until it is done. Until then, new pages wait at the bottom in a dashed box, Still to process – being sorted into documents, and each page moves into its own document as soon as it is decided: they never show in the previous document first. Several waiting pages are read at once, and the backs of sheets are not read for barcodes or blank pages unless the Batch Setup uses backs for separation, so the box empties quickly.

Backs of sheets. When the scanner says which side each page is, separation looks at the fronts only: a back (for example a blank back, or the back of a separator sheet) never starts a document by itself and stays with its front; the back of a removed separator sheet is removed too. To separate on backs as well, switch on Use the backs of sheets for separation too on the Batch Setup's General tab.

Close, Suspend and Delete batch are not available while a scan is running: they become available as soon as every page is scanned and stored (or after Stop scan). When you close, suspend or release, DocView first finishes separating any pages still waiting.

Note: If the Scan screen offers an Update for the Scan Agent, install it to get the live preview and the immediate stop.

The scanner button's list has Reset scanner connection. You rarely need it: use it when the scanner jammed or was switched off during a scan, or seems stuck. It stops any scan and opens the scanner again. See Troubleshooting.

Tip: If you reload the page during a scan, the running scan is picked up again and you can still stop it.

Check and arrange pages

Thumbnails keep the shape of the page, so landscape pages show landscape. Change their size with Thumbnail size on the View tab (Thumbnails group), from very small up to large.

Most production scanners (for example Kodak, Fujitsu/Ricoh and Canon) report which sheet of paper each image came from and which side. Their thumbnails are labelled, for example Sheet 3 · front and Sheet 3 · back. Imported pages, and scanners that do not report sheets, show plain page numbers.

Select a page by clicking it. Use Ctrl+click to add pages and Shift+click for a range. Select all and Clear selection are in the Pages group.
View a page large by clicking it; double-click fits the whole page. Use the arrow keys to move between pages.
Rotate with Rotate left and Rotate right, or the small arrow under each thumbnail.
Delete selected pages with Delete or the Delete key (if your role allows it).
Reorder by dragging a thumbnail onto another page; it moves in front of that page. Drop it on Move to the end of this group to put it last in a document.
Add files by dragging them from Windows onto the pages. Drop them on a page to insert them before it.
Enhancement preview shows the page as scanned next to the page after the Batch Setup's image enhancement (deskew, black and white, despeckle and so on).

Virtual page (ribbon, or the page menu) inserts a notice such as Poor quality original or Page missing, or an uploaded sample image, before or after the selected page. See Virtual pages.

Right-click a page (or press Shift+F10) for the page menu: View large, create, split or merge documents, Scan and insert before this page, Rescan (replace) this page, rotate, Enhancement preview and delete.

Note: When pages are labelled by sheet, rescanning or replacing one side rescans the whole sheet: the front and the back are replaced together.

Split pages into documents

When the Batch Setup's separation rules need no OCR — a fixed number of pages, barcodes, patch codes, blank pages, page sizes or each file — the pages are split into documents while you scan, so you see the documents the batch will have. With rules that read the text (keywords, document type changes) or Manual separation, the pages stay under Pages without a document and are split after release (or by an operator).

Documents you make or change by hand stay as they are; the rules only re-plan the documents they made themselves.

To separate by hand:

Create document makes a document from the selected pages.
Split here starts a new document at the selected page.
Merge with previous joins a document to the one before it.
Let rules separate removes your document boundaries so the rules decide again.

Some of these commands depend on your role and the Batch Setup.

One-touch scanning: document type buttons

Some Batch Setups use one-touch scanning (sometimes called manual sorting). Instead of separator sheets, you tell DocView Capture what each document is as you pick it up. A Document types panel beside the pages shows a button for each document type, often with a key such as F1.

Pick up a document and press its type button (or its key).
If the type has fields to key, a small window asks for them first, so you can type the values from the paper in your hand. Fields marked * are required. Press Enter to start, or Esc to cancel.
Put the paper in the feeder. A new document of that type starts and, if the scanner is idle and the Batch Setup says so, scanning starts by itself.
The pages go into that document. Its group header shows the type and Scanning into. Press another type to start the next document.

On a new batch, if you press Scan before choosing a type, you are asked to choose the document type first and the panel flashes.

Good to know:

The document type is your decision. These documents are not split or classified automatically, and the values you keyed are kept (extraction does not overwrite them).
If you press a type and then scan nothing for it, that empty document is dropped when you release the batch.
Use Find a type… to find a button in a long list. The arrow button moves the panel to the other side; drag the panel edge to make it wider or narrower, and double-click the edge to reset it. Your side and width are remembered for you on any PC.

Administrators set up the buttons in the Batch Setup. See Image cleanup and separation.

Close, release, suspend or delete the batch

Note: A batch with no pages cannot be closed or suspended, so empty batches never wait in the queue. When you click Close on an empty batch, you are asked to Stay and scan pages into it, or Delete empty batch. If you go elsewhere through the menu, an empty batch is deleted and a batch with pages is kept for later, without asking; a notification says which. Deleting an empty batch does not need the Delete batches permission.

The Batch group has a Batch menu with Properties, which shows the batch name, its Batch Setup and page count, and Delete batch. You can change the Priority there (1 is the most urgent). The name cannot be changed once the batch is created.

Close / Release (Ctrl+S or Ctrl+Shift+Enter) is one button. Once the batch has pages and no scan is running it shows Release, and the prompt offers Release batch (to the next step), Keep for later (the batch stays under Waiting in the scan step) or Stay. Before that it shows Close, and the prompt offers Save and close, Suspend…, Delete batch or Stay.
When the Batch Setup needs every batch linked to a booked box, the batch cannot be released or closed until it is: choose the box, scan its label or scan its batch header sheet first.
Suspend (Alt+P) takes the batch out of the queue until a supervisor resumes it; choose or type a reason. Its pages are kept.
Delete batch deletes the batch and all its pages, after you confirm (if your role has Delete batches).

These buttons are also on the Quick Access Toolbar at the top of the window, so they are there when the ribbon is hidden.

Scanned pages are saved as they arrive. If a scan is still running when you suspend or close, the prompt says so and the scan is stopped first; the pages scanned so far are kept.

If you leave the screen another way, DocView Capture asks whether to Keep batch for later or Discard batch.

Important: Scan is one module per user. If you open Scan in a second window or on another PC, it continues there at once, without asking; the first window stops and shows a bar with Use this window to take it back.

Batches returned from quality check

If a quality check fails, the batch comes back to Scan. A red message says Returned from quality check and the failed pages carry the reason. Right-click each flagged page, choose Rescan (replace) this page, then release the batch. The new pages are checked again.