RU2380744C1 - Method for document flow control and comprehensive printing process control system - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: information technologies.

SUBSTANCE: document flow control system includes user device connected to printing device generating document image file, and printing control service server connected with converter unit, file-oriented image storage and database server. Also the system contains database server connected with units for context analysis and full-text document search which are in turn connected to file archive server and to user device of security system. Furthermore, the system contains remote file archive server connected with database server connected with file name assignment unit which is connected with converter unit. According to this method, the system additionally perform steps in which after document image file creation, obtained document image is sent to converter unit where document image is converted resulting in document image in PDF format; converted document image is saved in file storage, and information about it is written to database.

EFFECT: providing control of document printing processes, providing uninterrupted printing processes, increase in information security.

4 cl

Description

The invention relates to the field of data transmission networks, and more specifically to a system and method for managing document management and printing processes.

A well-known accounting system for the provision of postal banking services, providing automatic transfer of pensions to current retirement accounts, allows you to enter electronic document management, automation of mutual settlements, reporting and control (patent RU 2100841, G06F 17/60, 1997).

Also known is a device for counting documents, comprising a guide bar defining a guide surface for transporting documents, right, center and left sensors generating appropriate signals in response to the presence of a part of the document in the corresponding part of the guide surface, digital devices for sampling a signal of left or right or central sensors with obtaining their respective representative values and a programmable controller connected to a digital pick-up device Orc and programmed to receive the result of counting documents, control signals to control the operation of the device and status signals to monitor the operation of the device in response to the corresponding representative values (patent RU 2144697, G07D 7/04, 2000).

The described analogues are complex and not adapted to solve the problem of determining the average print and copy volumes in the presence of several users.

The closest analogue of the present invention is a document management system containing at least one server connected to a data network, and at least one user device is connected to said data network, while said server is connected to at least with two peripheral devices, said server being connected to at least one device for calculating print and copy volumes, at least one device for calculating volumes copy and copy for each peripheral device with at least one technical wear sensor for the peripheral device, and the server data storage device contains information on the cost of one printed or copied sheet for each of at least two peripheral devices (see patent RU 59857 U1, G06F 12/00, 2006).

In a competitive environment, it is necessary to maintain high quality standards and expand the range of services provided. Ensuring uninterrupted processes for printing documents is one of the objectives of the invention. Another objective of the invention is to increase information security.

In addition, data leakage through printing and copying equipment is becoming an increasingly dangerous threat to the company's information security every year.

According to statistics, the costs of organizing paper workflows reach 10% of the total costs of the enterprise: these are not only direct (the cost of consumables, spare parts, maintenance of equipment), but also indirect costs (time of employees to produce documents, downtime of equipment, illiquid balances of these materials in warehouses, etc.).

The above problems are especially relevant for large enterprises with large print volumes.

The most effective means of leakage protection is the use of integrated information products in document management systems, one of which is the proposed invention - ASUPiM (Automated Print Management and Monitoring System), which is the core of KSUPPiK (an integrated system for managing printing and copying processes).

Thus, the objectives of the proposed method are:

1. Improving the information security of the enterprise.

2. Creating a centralized system for monitoring printing processes in the organization.

3. Reducing the cost of paperwork and accurate planning of the corresponding estimates of future periods.

4. Improving the maintenance of equipment involved in the organization of paper workflow for smooth operation and, as a result, speeding up workflow and reducing costs.

The tasks are solved using the proposed integrated system for managing printing processes (KSOPP), which allows you to:

1. Control the processes of printing documents.

2. Management of printing processes.

3. Park management of copy and printer equipment.

4. Full maintenance of copy and printer equipment.

The technical results of the proposed management of printing processes are:

1. ensuring information security;

2. ensuring control over the printing of documents, including the determination of the average print volumes by departments and users;

3. determination of the average print volume for each controlled printing device;

4. operational control of the wear of each controlled printing device;

5. determination of document flows containing confidential information and requiring an increased degree of control;

6. redistribution of print jobs depending on the number of pages in the job in order to reduce the cost of paper work.

An integrated printing process management system provides automated control and optimized document management.

These tasks are solved by performing the following operations with an integrated printing process control system in stages: send commands from the user device to the printing device to print the document; create an image file of the printed document; receive a printing device command to print the document and the image of the printed document; printing a document with a printing device; after creating the document image file, the resulting document image is sent to the SpMS block; using a converter, convert the image of the document, receiving the text contained in the image; save the received text to a file as a text image of the document; transmit a text image of the document to the SpMS block; the image of the document is stored in the file storage and information about it is recorded in the database.

ASUPiM provides management of printing and copying processes, which significantly increases the information security of the enterprise, providing access to the electronic archive of all printed and copied documents. In addition, ASUPiM allows you to search in documents by keywords, as well as prevent unauthorized printing and copying of documents containing confidential information.

The technical results of the control of printing processes are:

1. receiving and saving statistical data on all printing and copying works;

2. Creation of an electronic archive of graphic images of printed and copied documents with the ability to view them;

3. the implementation of automated control of the contents of printed and copied documents in order to detect confidential information;

4. conducting a contextual search in the electronic archive of previously printed and copied documents to determine the user who printed the desired document, as well as the printing device, date and time of printing;

5. automatic identification of the fact of unauthorized printing of a chipboard document or a document containing confidential information;

6. receiving automatic notification by the information security service of the fact of unauthorized printing;

7. delimitation of the right of access to print or copy documents of a chipboard or containing commercial secret based on the contents of the text of the document.

Using the statistical data collected in ASUPiM, it is possible to carry out a corresponding analysis using a software product according to certificate No.2008611915, in which to evaluate print volumes in individual business processes and the organization as a whole, determine typical documents and analyze the distribution of document flow by technique.

This software product allows you to monitor the organization’s printed workflow and analyze the statistics of the print produced for the periods specified by the user; outputting the analysis results in tabular and graphical forms with the possibility of additional data aggregation operations; printing analysis results; and the preparation of a summary report on the press in the organization for the specified period.

The technical result, which consists in ensuring the uninterrupted process of printing documents, is achieved by redirecting print jobs to free devices or depending on the size of the print job to devices with lower printing costs, as well as using quotas for the unit or employees. In addition, the claimed invention allows by technical means to establish a prohibition system depending on the type of job, circulation, paper size, type of document, type of printing device, etc.

An important component of the claimed method is document management, taking into account the complete relevant information about the status of the printing and copying equipment fleet. Using the present invention, it seems possible to determine the load level of the equipment, compare the obtained data with a given (design) value, generate a control effect on the process of document flow and the process of printing documents.

When using the claimed group of inventions, monitoring of printing and copying machines is carried out. It is carried out through the use of software for monitoring the state of equipment and remote administration, which are part of the control system.

Document management allows you to optimize the load on the copy and printer equipment in accordance with the actual amount of copy and printer work.

An additional technical result from the use of inventions is to ensure the uninterrupted operation of copy and printer equipment, which is achieved due to regular monitoring of the technical condition of the equipment with the help of automated control systems and predictive potential damage.

Also, the indicated technical results for implementing a variant of a document management method that additionally implements a document search function among converted images of printed documents are achieved due to the fact that the method includes the steps of sending a search request command to a full-text document search unit; using the full-text search block, they find in the file storage files that have contents similar to the searched document; send to the full-text search block a list of the names of the documents found; transmit to the user device from the full-text document search unit the result of processing the text search command; display the text search result on the user device screen.

The servers, blocks, devices that are part of the claimed system are electronic computers used in local networks or the Internet, and can be implemented on the basis of well-known personal IBM-compatible computers, on the basis of computers manufactured by Apple, etc. .

The functionality of the servers, units, and devices that make up the proposed system is ensured by the developed software according to certificates No.2008611915, 2008611916 and 2008611917.

The program according to certificate No.2008611915 “Monitoring system of printed document management” is intended for monitoring the printed document management of the organization and analysis of statistics of the print for the periods indicated by the user; outputting analysis results in tabular and graphical forms with the possibility of additional data aggregation operations; printing analysis results; preparation of a summary report on the press in the organization for the specified period.

The program according to certificate No.2008611916 “Service for monitoring print queues” allows you to organize the collection of information about printing devices, printing processes in the system, as well as images of printed documents and recording information in a database; collects information from customer services when organizing print monitoring.

The program according to certificate No.2008611917 “Context analysis service server” is intended for organizing the connection of client applications of the context analysis and full-text search system with the search functions of server files on the SearchInform platform based on the TCP and UDP protocol, as well as the analysis of the received data in accordance with the specified parameters of the required information and user rights to print.

To implement the claimed invention, the following are used: C # language features on the Framework platform. NET 2.0 and using ADO.NET to write the working code of the program; C ++ language capabilities on the Framework 2.0 platform using MFC for writing working program code; Microsoft SQL server for creating and managing a database server; SearchInfom Server SDK for comparing the contents of a file archive server; SDK ACTMask Inc and SDK VeryPDF Inc.

The interaction of the servers and blocks that make up the proposed system is carried out using the TCP and UDP network protocols.

The proposed method of document management, implemented by the document management system, is as follows.

A command is issued on the user device to print the document, and the image of the document is in the printer format (if the user uses the Windows operating system, the file of this image will have the extension * .spl), which will be printed on, it will be sent to the printer itself, and to the print control service server (SpMS block).

The server of the print control service sends to the database server information about which user device the print request was made for, the login under which the document is printed, including information about the user's access rights under this login, the name of the document to be printed, and the time the image was created in printer driver format. At the same time, all received information is stored in the database server.

At the same time, the print control server sends the document image in the format of the printer driver to the document image conversion unit.

In the unit for converting document images (converter unit), the image of the printed document in the format of the printer driver is converted to a cross-platform format for electronic documents (preferably the Portable Document Format (PDF) created by Adobe Systems).

Next, the document converted to PDF is sent to the file name assignment unit, where the name of the received PDF document is sent and this information is sent to the database server, where the file name is stored, and the correspondence of the assigned file name to the information received earlier about from which user device the print request was made, login, under which the document is printed, including information on user access rights under this login, name of the printed document and time I am creating a document image in the format of a printer driver.

After sending the specified information to the database server, a PDF document with the name assigned to it from the file name assignment unit is sent to the electronic archive server, where it is saved.

Also, the present invention realizes the possibility of full-text search for printed documents. This method is implemented in the aforementioned document management system as follows.

A command is sent from the user device to the printing device (printer) to print the document. This creates the above-mentioned document image file in the format of the printer driver.

After the printer receives commands to print the document and image of the document, the document is printed by the printing device.

After creating the document image file, the resulting document image in the format of the printer driver is sent to the SpMS block, which redirects the received document image.

Using the converter program, they convert the image of the document in the format of the printer driver into a cross-platform format of electronic documents (preferably in Portable Document Format (PDF), created by Adobe Systems), obtaining the text contained in the image. At the same time, the received file in a cross-platform format of electronic documents is stored in the electronic archive server (file storage).

Then the PDF image is transferred to the SpMS block, which redirects the mentioned PDF image to the file storage, where the PDF image is saved, and a message containing information about the PDF document image saved in the file storage is generated by the SpMS block. , and is transferred to the database server, where the mentioned information about the image of the document in PDF format stored in the file storage is saved. This information includes information about from which user device a print request was made, a login under which the document is printed, including information about the user's access rights under this login, the name of the document to be printed, and the time the image was created in the format of the printer driver.

Then, a search command containing the searched text is sent from the user device to the full-text document search unit, which searches for documents containing the searched text in the file archive.

After the search is completed, a list of the names of the documents found is transmitted to the user device from the full-text document search unit and the result of the text search and information about the found files from the database are displayed on the user device screen.

This method can also be implemented using a computer-readable storage medium containing a software product that, when executed on an electronic computer, manages a document management system.

Claims (4)

1. The method of document management, including
sending a command to print a document from the user device to the printing device;
creating an image file of a printed document;
receipt by the printing device of a command to print a document and an image of a document to be printed;
printing a document by a printing device,
characterized in that it further comprises stages in which:
after creating the document image file, the resulting document image is sent to the converter block;
using the converter they convert the image of the document, receiving the image of the document in PDF format;
the converted image of the document is sent to the file name assignment unit, where the name of the converted image of the document is assigned;
the converted image of the document is stored in the file storage and information about it is recorded in the database under the corresponding assigned file name. 2. A document management method that additionally implements a document search function in a file storage in which converted images of printed documents are stored in a local data network, which consists in the following:
send commands from the user device to the printing device to print the document;
create a document image file;
receive a printing device command to print a document and image of the document;
produce document printing by a printing device, characterized in that it further comprises the steps of:
after creating the document image file, the resulting document image is sent to the converter block;
using the converter block they convert the image of the document, receiving the text contained in the image;
save the received text in a file as an image of a document in PDF format;
image of the document in PDF format is saved in the file storage and information about it is recorded in the database;
send a search query command containing the search text to the full-text document search unit;
search for documents containing the searched text among the file archive;
transmitting to the user device, from the full-text document search unit, a list of the names of the documents found;
display the text search result and information about found files from the database on the user device screen. 3. A document management system including at least one user device connected to a printing device creating a document image file, in addition, a print control service server connected to the converter unit, an image file storage and a database server, and also a server the database is connected to the context analysis and full-text search units of documents connected to the file archive server and to the user device of the security system, in addition, the system contains an ud server lennogo archive files connected to a database server connected to the unit assigning the file name, which is connected to the converter unit. 4. A computer-readable storage medium containing a software product that, when executed on an electronic computer, manages a document management system, while the system performs the steps in which:
send commands from the user device to the printing device to print the document;
create a document image file;
receive a printing device command to print a document and image of the document;
print a document with a printing device
after creating a document image file, the resulting document image
sent to the converter unit;
using the converter block they convert the image of the document, receiving the text contained in the image;
save the received text in a file as an image of a document in PDF format;
the image of the document is stored in the file storage and information about it is recorded in the database;
send a search query command containing the search text to the full-text document search unit;
search for documents containing the searched text among the file archive;
transmitting to the user device, from the full-text document search unit, a list of the names of the documents found;
display the text search result and information about found files from the database on the user device screen.