Frequently Asked Questions
What is Remote Data Entry?
Traditionally, there have been only a few not-so-good options for capturing the data from your paper forms. You can do the data entry yourself, taking time away from focusing on your core business tasks. Or, you can ship your paper or entire scanned images to an outsourcer, with all the associated security risks and infrastructure headaches. Or, you can run automated OCR/ICR recognition on your images, getting low-quality data riddled with errors.
vcapture desktop takes secure snippet images of the fields on your forms, and sends them out to an Internet workforce of real people, reducing your workload, maintaining data confidentiality in a simple workflow, and giving you high quality 100% accurate results.
How does vcapture desktop capture images?
vcapture desktop supports scanning your paper forms directly into the software using most TWAIN compliant scanners. On Windows Vista and Windows 7, certain WIA scanners will also work. As the black-and-white images are scanned, they appear in the vcapture desktop processing screen to begin the work necessary to prepare them for remote data entry. As an advanced feature, vcapture desktop supports interacting with a TWAIN scanner through the scanner’s own scanning window.
Can I load from a disk?
If you prefer to use third-party scanner software, or if your form images come from off-site, vcapture desktop supports loading form images directly from your file system on your hard drive. vcapture desktop can read standard image file formats including TIFF, JPEG, and BMP. Images are copied on the fly to 200 dpi black-and-white images for optimal processing (your original images remain untouched).
How long can I keep vcapture images?
After processing and data entry is complete, vcapture desktop archives copies of the form images in your common documents folder. By default, these images are deleted after a month, to preserve disk space. However, if you choose to use vcapture desktop’s images in your document management system, the vcapture desktop software can be configured to preserve these images indefinitely.
Can vcapture create templates?
Yes! When you scan or load a group of forms to be remotely keyed through vcapture desktop, the software prompts you to create a template out of the first form it sees. The template is saved for future use. Creating this template is simple, and consists of just a few clicks to designate which fields will be keyed.
Remote data entry works by keying each field individually and completely out of context. Form template creation in vcapture desktop consists of telling the software where these fields are located. During template creation, just a few clicks are required per field to draw the box that represents the field position, choose a keying format for the field, and decide whether the field should be split into multiple snippets for additional data security. Each field that is drawn will result in one or more snippets for each form image that will be keyed by the vcapture Internet workforce.
After scanning, and prior to sending snippets out to be keyed, vcapture desktop takes each form image and processes it to match the field locations with those specified on the template. By automatically detecting the field locations, vcapture desktop ensures that the data that is keyed by the Internet workforce will be highly accurate. Internet keyers do not see the entire form image, just the snippet image for a single field at a time.
What is Secure Split?
While all fields are keyed remotely as out-of-context snippets, some individual fields have data, which is sensitive or confidential in nature. To aid with the security of these fields, vcapture desktop has the “Secure Split” option. When this option is chosen for a field during template creation, it tells vcapture desktop that these fields should be split into two snippets, so that no single Internet keyer sees the entirety of the field data. When the data is retrieved from the Internet data entry service, vcapture desktop stitches the keyed data back together to create a single result.
How do I know the data is accurate?
vcapture desktop provides 100% accuracy! Each snippet keyed by the vcapture Internet workforce is confirmed by two independent sources. This ensures that fields keyed by our Internet data entry service accurately represent the data in the fields over 99.9% of the time. vcapture customers love the fact that Internet data entry actually provides higher accuracy rates than traditional data entry mechanisms. This translates to fewer mistakes in your data while saving you time and hassle.
How long does processing take?
The first snippets are often keyed within minutes, and the entire group of forms takes anywhere from minutes to hours to be completely keyed. When all the snippets from a group of forms have been keyed, the data is ready to be exported.
What happens if vcapture cannot key a snippet?
Occasionally, the Internet workforce at the remote data entry service cannot successfully key a snippet. In this case, you are not charged for the field that was not keyed. To assist you to fully completing the data on your forms, vcapture desktop presents the images with fields that could not be keyed, and gives you a chance to manually fill in the missing data before exporting the completed data to a file. This is a very simple process. Just key each field of data that is presented to you by vcapture desktop. The form image is scrolled and zoomed so that you can easily see where on the image the data is located. Once the few exception fields are keyed, your data is complete and ready to be exported.
What is a CSV file?
When all the data has been completely keyed for a group of forms, you are given the option to save the completed data. By default, vcapture desktop saves this data as a Comma Separated Values file (a CSV file). CSV is a standard data file format, which can easily be opened as a spreadsheet in applications such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office Spreadsheet. This allows you to easily view the keyed data and make any additional adjustments that you require. Additionally, because the data is in the CSV file format, it can be easily imported into all kinds of different data applications, from databases such as Microsoft Access or SQL Server, to data management systems such as Microsoft SharePoint or SAP.
How long does vcapture save CSV files?
As each group of forms is completed in vcapture desktop, a CSV data file is created and can be saved to whatever location you require. The forms are now completely keyed, and no longer appear in the vcapture desktop remote data view. However, these data files are archived for future use by vcapture desktop, and the groups of forms and their CSV files can be accessed through the vcapture desktop history screen. By default, the history and data files are preserved indefinitely. If you desire, you can configure vcapture desktop to clean up the history after a certain period of time.