We run Opeen Doc Man o­n a 4U Dual P3 1.2GHz box. 1GB RAM, 3ware 8 port RAID5, 1.2TB of storage. We have a duplicate machine ready as a backup.

The back ground. We started scanning our paperwork in July 04 – hundreds of documents per day. Our Agency Management System (AMS) lets us attach these images to a customer file and detail the image with activity notes. These attachmenst are file refrences, we elect NOT to imbed the images in or MSSQL DB as it is already quite large. The issue with the AMS is that if we elect to move to another AMS product, the image activities typically do not get converted into the table structure of the other AMS products – that would lock us into the current product, or force us to run a leagcy version of our AMS. The licensing and support fees per user are excessive – 1350.00 per user to license, and 25.00 per user monthly o­n top of the standard monthly support fees. We have over 100 users. Additionally, when the AMS is down – due to hardware, software, network, or maintenence issues – we still need access to the scanned customer files. So we use ODM as a “backup” to our AMS. It is duplicate entry, but at the time the best workable solution for us. When images are attached in the AMS we set a suspense to another user to add the images to ODM. Images are scanned in as PDFs and digital photos are saved as JPGs. Document retreival is also much quicker for satellite locations than in the AMS, as it is very slow at best over a WAN.

St James Episcopal Church, Hibbing, MN

PS: Check out http://stjames.hibbing.mn.us/opendocman/for the front entrance!