Iris CARDIRIS PRO 4, CARDIRIS User Manual

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GETTING STARTED
GETTING
STAR TED
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© 2007 I.R.I.S. All rights reserved
OCR technology by I.R.I.S.
Connectionist, Linguistic and Field Analysis technology by I.R.I.S.
© 2007 I.R.I.S. All rights reserved
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GETTING STARTED
Cardiris is the unbeatable productivity tool for your business cards. This busi-
ness card organizer allows you to archive, index and OCR business cards from
around the world.
In our information age, all key corporate information is contained in data­bases. W ith information being the key , Cardiris gives a comprehensive answer to the need to manage your business contacts: Cardiris goes the full circle from archiving scanned business cards to contact management. After all, isn’t it the business you want, and not the cards?
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ONE, CARDIRIS GIVES YOU GREAT IMAGES
Cardiris improves the everyday operation of your office by getting rid of all business cards. Enter any office and you’ll find the desk and drawers of the employees crowded with business cards of all types and places. Business cards suffer more than other documents from the known disadvantages of the paper world: they get lost easily , aren’ t available to your colleagues, can’ t be searched or sorted etc.
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Cardiris, the “electronic Rolodex” scanning the business cards, thus putting images in a database. Use this manage­ment tool to file your business cards and no more stacks of business cards will be lying around in your office!
So, all business cards can be thrown away or returned to the owner as soon as they have been archived. This means that you never lose any information con­tained on a card, not even the company’s colorful logo or slogan, the contact’s photograph or still a second telephone number or e-mail address which you don’t usually encode in your “traditional” contact manager or database.
When you are dealing with “exotic” business cards - in, say, Vietnamese or Arabic - which you simply cannot enter in a database, the advantage is all the more prominent: as you first archive the card images, Cardiris offers a unique
, puts a final end to all this. You begin by
solution here. Even if a business card can’t be read by OCR, the color image is there to be consulted!
As a wide range of dedicated business card scanners, flatbed scanners and
“all-in-one” devices or “MFPs” (“multifunctional peripherals”) is supported, what­ever scanner you may already own is fine by us.
Your Cardiris software may be bundled with the I.R.I.S. Card Scanner
“IRISCard Pro”, a USB-2 A6 color scanner, and with the “IRISCard Mini”, a USB A8 greyscale scanner . Dedicated scanners are optimized for scanning busi­ness cards and have many advantages over other scanner types: they hardly take up any space on your desk, they swiftly cope with business cards of varying paper and printing qualities and you never have to wonder about selecting the correct card format.
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The color, greyscale or black-and-white images are saved compressed to limit
the use of space on your hard disk. The scanned business cards are prominently displayed so as to make them legible without having to zoom. Optimal legibility is ensured, even on low-end monitors and the LCD screens of notebook comput­ers!
As Cardiris also allows you to add comments, it suffices to scan every busi-
ness card you come across and add some notes and you’ll never lose any infor­mation again!
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GETTING STARTED
TWO, OCR BRINGS YOU EDITABLE TEXT
Once the cards are archived, you can convert images into data by indexing and OCRing them. Indexing means that a business card is sorted by a primary search key - the company name is filled out and checked -, OCR means that the card’s data is extracted automatically from the image.
OCR stands for two things here: character recognition to convert the scanned image into editable text and field analysis. Optical character recognition (OCR) allows to encode business cards without the time-consuming task of retyping them. Think of your last exhibition when you came back with an entire stack of business cards and it took your secretary two days to encode them!
Cardiris incorporates specialized recognition technology, optimized for tiny characters, and supports countries from all over the world - North and South American business cards, business cards from the European countries, including the Eastern-European nations, African, Asian and Oceanic business cards, you name it! (The “Asian Edition” of Cardiris reads business cards from China, Ja­pan, Singapore, South-Korea and T aiwan. Business cards from these countries in English are supported by the “other” editions of the Cardiris software!)
Field analysis assigns the recognized data to specific database fields. Cardiris extensively uses a knowledge database, thus acquiring the necessary intelligence to discriminate the first and last name, a city and its state, a telephone and a fax number etc.
At this stage, Cardiris takes the layout of a business card into account. Each
country has a different “style” of composing business cards, Americans com­pose an address differently than the French do etc. In this way, Cardiris can process correctly business cards of all designs and countries: business cards with an American or European look, vertical cards as well as horizontal cards etc.
The recognition accuracy depends on the printing quality , whether or not a too
stylized font or “exotic” layout has been used etc. Cutting and pasting is available to edit and correct the recognized data, but so are “drag-and-drop” operations for maximal ease of use. To correct small errors, you can indeed draw a frame around the information and drag the frame to a database field - say , the city: the OCR gets done “on the fly”.
Interestingly , the scanning, indexing and recognition are separate phases. In-
dexing and OCR can be deferred, performed later on at any moment. Sales executives at an info desk or on the company booth at a trade show, secretaries at a reception desk may be too busy to perform the complete cycle of indexing and OCRing business cards, but surely they can quickly scan the business card of their visitors... When they do, Cardiris will keep trace of every single contact they come across with a minimal effort.
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GETTING STARTED
THREE, ITS A DATABASE
Once your business cards are converted into text placed in data fields, you have a real address database, similar to a cardfile system: the data is directly searchable by any field. Extensive sort and select functions are available, dupli­cate contacts can be found and resolved. Looking up a company, client or pros­pect is a cinch. Even with very little to go on, say , no more than the first charac­ters of a company name, you are sure to find your contact again instantly.
The resulting data is available for export. Cardiris smoothly complements such applications as contact managers, “customer relations managers” (“CRMs”), “personal information managers” (“PIMs”), general databases, spreadsheets or even word processors whose mail merge function allows to print letters, enve­lopes and labels. Or synchronize your Cardiris database with the contacts stored on your PDA - your Palm organizer, your Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) handheld device etc.
Exchanging data with the professional CRM software Microsoft Dynamics CRM requires a special version of Cardiris!
Some other clearcut advantages of Cardiris over the paper world are all too obvious: as you are dealing with a database, the information is centralized and available to all your colleagues. Also, databases are easily transportable on CD­ROM etc.
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
This guide gives a short introduction to Cardiris. It contains all you need to
know to get started with this I.R.I.S. product successfully.
However, this guide does not intend to be a complete user documentation of
Cardiris. To make full use of the many advanced capabilities of this software package, it is mandatory that you study the on-line help information closely .

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

This is the minimal system configuration required to use Cardiris:
a Pentium based Intel PC or compatible.256 MB RAM.150 MB free disk space.the Windows V ista, Windows XP or Windows 2000 operating system.
Your Cardiris software may be bundled with the I.R.I.S. Card Scanners
“IRISCard Pro” and “IRISCard Mini”. It takes a USB port to connect the scan­ner “IRISCard Mini” and a USB-2 port to connect the scanner “IRISCard Pro”...
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INSTALLING THE CARDIRIS SOFTWARE
The Cardiris software is delivered on an autorunning CD-ROM. To install,
simply insert the CD-ROM in your CD-ROM drive and wait for the installation program to start running. Follow the on-screen instructions.
REGISTER TO VOTE!
Don’t forget to register your Cardiris licence! Doing so will allow us to keep
you informed of future product developments and related I.R.I.S. products. The registration benefits, including free product support and special offers, are strictly limited to registered users.
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GETTING STARTED
Y ou can register in many ways: by sending in your registration card or faxing its electronic counterpart, by calling I.R.I.S. during working hours and by filling out a registration form on the I.R.I.S. web site!
STARTING THE SOFTWARE UP
Click on the Cardiris application in the submenu "I.R.I.S. Applications - Cardiris" or click on the shortcut to the Cardiris application on your desktop.
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IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO
The Cardiris application window is displayed. The database last opened is
loaded into memory automatically. (The first time, the sample database SAMPLE.CID is opened.) Use the command "Open" under the "File" menu to load another database. (You can access the databases last loaded directly under the "File" menu.)

Cardiris starts up in the album view mode: it displays 16 business cards in an

album-like presentation. Only the major data fields - company name, first name and name, job title and e-mail address - are listed.
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GETTING STARTED
A color code indicates the card status of each business card: new cards are yellow, indexed cards are green and verified cards are blue. The card status is a crucial concept and we’ll discuss it in depth later .
Click the arrow buttons below to navigate through the business cards: you’ll turn the pages of the album. Or click the "Letter" buttons: they bring you directly to the cards of companies that start with that letter. Click the "G" button and the cursor moves to the first card whose company name starts with the letter "G"...
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Double-click a card to open the card view mode (or click the "Card" button

on the Cardiris toolbar). The card view is limited to a single business card. It displays the card image, the card data or business contact, and the personal notes and additional information. Click the browse buttons to navigate through the busi­ness cards.
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GETTING STARTED
This view mode also allows you to scan the back of a business card and to attach a picture - a photo of your contact for instance - to the business card.
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Maximize the Cardiris application in both view modes to display the card
image(s) optimally!
A SHORT TUTORIAL
The best way to become familiar with the operation of Cardiris is undoubtedly
by using it. A sample database is provided with the software; it allows you to get started even when the scanner isn’t connected to your computer yet. Let’ s make use of it now.
Go to the first card of the sample database in the card view. You can see its
image and the empty data fields - company name, address, phone and fax num­ber etc. There’s ample room for comments below the image in the "Notes" tab.
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GETTING STARTED
Select the correct country with the "Card Style" button. (Reading business cards from China, Japan, Singapore, South-Korea and T aiwan requires the “Asian Edition” of Cardiris. Business cards from these Asian countries in English are supported by the “other” editions of the Cardiris software!)
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Special routines are used that allow the software to assign the recognized data
to specific database fields - company name, e-mail address and web site etc. When Cardiris recognizes the character string "John Williams", it “knows” that John is a first name and Williams a last name. In the same way so does the system recognize titles, such as "vice president", "engineer", cities such as Boise and Chicago, states such as Oregon and Maryland etc.
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GETTING STARTED
By selecting the business card’ s “style” in the button bar, you not only indicate the language of the text to be recognized, you also indicate the general layout of the business card. Each country has a different style of composing business cards, Americans compose an address differently than the French do etc. (Some card styles correspond to several languages: Belgium and Canada have two official languages, Switzerland has three! Cardiris detects the selected language auto­matically...)
Click the "Recognize" button to start the character recognition.
The image is converted into editable text, and the recognized text is assigned to the various fields: the company name gets placed in the company field, the phone number goes where it belongs etc.
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Y ou can make direct use of the contacts stored with Cardiris! Click the e-mail
address in the data fields and you create a new e-mail message for your contact automatically , click the URL and you visit his web site promptly! There are more “AutoActions”: click the "Telephone" button in any phone field to call up your contact with the VoIP software Skype, click the "Routeplanning" button to get travel and driving directions to your contact.
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GETTING STARTED
Check the results so far. Use cutting and pasting or drag-and-drop opera- tions to move data about - you then hold the left mouse button depressed in a field and drag the text to another field. (The command "Clear All Fields but Notes" under the "Edit" menu erases all data simultaneously with the exception of the personal notes you enter manually on via the keyboard.)
Click the status button "V(erified)" (or press F12) to indicate that the card is verified. The card status is a crucial concept of Cardiris, and you should under­stand its meaning fully before you start using the business card organizer exten­sively .
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When a new card has been scanned, the card’s image is displayed but the
contact’s data aren’t filled out yet. With indexed cards, the company name is checked by the user; these cards are searchable by the company name.
With verified cards, every field is validated by the user; these contacts can
be searched by any field, exported to other applications, the e-mail address, tele­phone and fax number can be used without any risk etc.
A color code is used to distinguish the various card statuses: new cards are
yellow, indexed cards are green and verified cards are blue!
Whether your cards are verified or not, Cardiris helps you find and resolve
duplicates! The software is even flexible: you can use broad nets or execute fine searches to detect the duplicate contacts. And resolving duplicates couldn’t be more user-friendly: just click on the data you want to maintain, the other data gets erased automatically...
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GETTING STARTED

CONSULTING THE CONTACTS

You now have a validated, verified contact in your database. Such addresses can be consulted, searched, printed, exported... you name it!
Let’s start with some search capabilities. How can you find your contacts back? First of all, you can limit the view to cards with a specific card status by clicking one of the status selection buttons on the Cardiris toolbar. (Click the button "All Cards" to display the business cards of any status.)
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The status bar indicates which selection is currently enabled (and how many
cards your selection holds). The album view can also be a good indicator that you’ve enabled a limited view mode because you’ll only see a single color!
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GETTING STARTED
SEARCHING CONTACTS
By executing such operations, you’re basically using Cardiris as a Rolodex. But there are more advanced ways of searching business cards: “free-text” search­ing and search masks!
Use the "Search" field to execute “free-text” searches on all fields simulta­neously . (Case differences are ignored.) Click the "Search" button or press Enter to execute the search.
When no card meets the search criteria, you’ll quickly notice it: the application window is empty and the status bar confirms that there are no cards to display.
The "Select" button executes “query by example” precision searches. This time, Cardiris looks for cards that start with the entered character strings, not for cards that contain the entered character string. Furthermore, you limit searches to specific data fields: the major fields of the database are used as a mask.
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In this example, we’re looking for a person we once met; the one thing we
remember for sure is the first name Homer . (And hooray for computers: imagine having to search for that contact in a physical Rolodex that contains some 400 cards...)
T o redisplay all cards, simply click on the status selection button "All Cards"!
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GETTING STARTED
EXPORTING CONTACTS
Obviously, your contacts are available for export. You can for instance save your contacts in the vCard format and enter them in your Windows Address Book (Windows XP) with a single click. Or send them directly to your PDA software or your contact management software Microsoft Outlook (Express).
Business card reading smoothly complements such applications as contact managers, databases, spreadsheets or even word processors whose mail merge function allows to print letters, envelopes and labels! (Exchanging data with the professional CRM software Microsoft Dynamics CRM requires a special ver­sion of Cardiris.)
The text result looks for instance like this when you send the results directly to
Microsoft Outlook.
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But as Cardiris is a comprehensive database in its own right, the buck doesn’t
stop here! You can import contacts from other databases and you can synchro- nize an external database (of your handheld computer for instance) and the Cardiris database with equal ease.
SCANNING BUSINESS CARDS
We could end our short tutorial here... but we haven’t scanned yet!
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GETTING STARTED
Your Cardiris software may be bundled with the I.R.I.S. Card Scanners “IRISCard Pro”, a USB-2 A6 color scanner, and “IRISCard Mini”, a USB A8 greyscale scanner. In that case, setting your card scanner up is easy: the Twain driver is already installed. Simply select the scanner as image source with the command "Scanner" under the "Settings" menu.
Y ou must select a scanning resolution of 400 dpi to recognize business cards successfully!
Use the Twain interface of the I.R.I.S. Card Scanners to enable the auto- matic scanning mode! Give the scan command once and enable the option "Scan Automatically" in the T wain user interface.
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You can now insert one business card after the other: as soon as a business
card is placed in the scanner, the scanning starts...
Here’s another tip: the “IRISCard Pro” scanner is equipped with two but-
tons. Press the large button to scan a business card! Cardiris starts running (if necessary) and the scanned card is inserted in the current database...
When you’re using a flatbed scanner, you can scan several business cards
simultaneously on the scanner’s flatbed and have them segmented by the soft­ware. The background must be black or white if Cardiris is to extract the various business cards. (Luckily, there’s a very simple way of creating a black back­ground: scan your cards with the lid open... Or scan them with the lid closed and you’ll add a white background to your images!)
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GETTING STARTED
Enable the option "Scan Multiple Cards" in the scanner setup or select "Mul­tiple Cards" under the "Settings" menu before you scan the cards! Select the option "Single Card" when you’re scanning the business cards one by one. (Or select the option "Detect Cards in Image" and let Cardiris handle this issue auto­matically...)
The complete page as you scanned it will never appear as such on the com­puter screen; only the segmented business cards will.
If you forgot to enable the image “splitting” before the scanning, select the large image and click the command "Extract Card(s)" under the "Process" menu to segment it into the actual card images, throwing away the superfluous black or white borders.
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GETTING ON-LINE HELP
This guide only discusses the major features of Cardiris. However, Cardiris is
a comprehensive, fully featured business card organizer that has many extra features which we did not discuss here. You are recommended to consult the on­line help system to obtain more information on its numerous capabilities.
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