Acrobat
A series of applications by Adobe, for creating, viewing and distributing files in PDF format
Application Program Interface (API)
A term used to describe a set of functions provided by a software developer to allow other programs to integrate. The V1 application suite uses APIs to integrate tightly with numerous accounting systems and other enterprise applications. V1 also provides its own APIs to allow partners and other developers to integrate its products with portals, websites and other software to create highly tailored solutions.
CBI
The CBI (Confederation of British Industry's) is a top business lobby organisation based in the UK
COLD
Computer Output to Laser Disk: originally used for the process of capturing computer output to optical disks for storage and re-printing. Later used as a generic term for any archiving or permanent storage of computer output.
DbArchive
Eliminate manual data entry & dramatically cut costs V1's document imaging solution allows automatic archiving for documents, scanning and structured storage for easy retrieval and access and can be tailored to the specific requirements of an individual organisation. DbArchive now forms part of our document management software
DbAuthorise
DbAuthorise was V1's document authorisation module, which enables the entire document approval process to be streamlined. Simplifying the document approval process reduces administration costs and errors. DbAuthorise now forms part of our solutions for finance departments.
DbCapture
Integrated into all major Accounting and ERP systems, DbCapture enabled organisations to automate and streamline the processing of supplier invoices. Incoming invoices are scanned and, using advanced Optical Character Recognition technology, DbCapture is advanced invoice scanning software that automatically recognises supplier invoices and other documents where the format and content can vary greatly.
DbCapture now forms part of our overall document management solution.
DbChequePrint/DbCheckPrint
DbChequePrint is an automated cheque printing solution.
CbChequePrint now forms part of our automated payments solutions.
DbFax
Integrated into all the main Accounting, Manufacturing and ERP applications, DbFax is enabling numerous organisations world-wide to achieve vast savings of time and money by automatically faxing business documents directly from their core business applications with just a couple of mouse-clicks when the email solution isn't a viable option.
DbFax now forms part of our document delivery solution.
DbForm
DbForm is an enterprise-wide white-paper printing solution, which automatically prints high quality business documents directly from core business applications onto plain paper on laser printers. As this eliminates traditional pre-printed stationery, DbForm boosts productivity, improves company image, significantly reduces costs and provides a very fast return on investment.
Seamlessly integrated into all major Accounting and ERP systems, DbForm is a highly effective output management solution, with an easy-to-use graphical forms designer and unique data-extraction and manipulation capabilities. DbForm now forms part of V1's document management solution.
DbMail
Integrated into all the main Accounting, Manufacturing and ERP applications, DbMail is enabling numerous organisations world-wide to achieve vast savings of time and money by automatically e-mailing business documents directly from their core business applications with just a couple of mouse-clicks. DbMail now forms part of our document delivery solution.
DIP
Document Image Processing: a dated term for storing documents as scanned images.
DMA
Document Management Architecture
DMS
Document Management System
Document Imaging
Document Imaging is a term for turning documents into images for electronic storage. It is used to cover the processes of scanning paper documents, microficheing and rendering text as images, as used in outbound archiving and COLD.
Document Management
A document management system (DMS) is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and/or store electronic documents or images of paper documents.
EDM
An acronym for Electronic Document Management
Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)
The process whereby standardized forms of documents are transferred between systems. The form and format of such documents may be defined by vendor specifications, CCITT standards, the ANSI X.12 standard, or the United Nations EDIFACT standard. EDI is also used in general to refer to electronic data interchange.
EPS
Encapsulated Postscript: a format for storing high quality graphical documents – popular with creative agencies.
Forms Description Language (FDL)
A keyword oriented language used to define the appearance of forms including lines, boxes, text, etc. May be used for printing forms onto paper but now primarily used with electronic forms designed for online completion and data capture.
Free Text Database
A database specifically designed and optimised for holding and searching textual data (documents). Typically used to allow the querying of documents based on the actual content rather than on metadata, keywords and file names and paths.
Free Text Searching
Also known as Full Text Searching, this describes the ability to locate a document using the full textual content rather than just an arbitrary set of keywords and/or metadata.
Graphic Interchange Format (GIF)
A popular device independent image format originating from the CompuServe network. Best suited for computer-generated images rather than optical scans due to the limited colour depth supported. Supports transparent backgrounds. Popular for building websites and Powerpoint presentations.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
A visual metaphor that uses icons representing actual desktop objects that the user can access and manipulate with a pointing device.
Groupware
Software which supports collaborative work. It may include conferencing, shared files, or facilities to allow several people to work in one document.
HP-GL
Hewlett Packard Graphics Language: a system of storing instructions for plotters devised by Hewlett Packard for outputting technical drawings from Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software. HP-GL instructions can also be embedded in HP PCL output for laser printers. The V1 document management system allows computer output in HP-GL and HP PCL formats to be archived and rendered as images. This allows these documents to be stored very efficiently; to be rendered for viewing on a computer screen or printing on incompatible printers and yet still to be capable of being printed at the maximum resolution on the original plotter or laser printer.
Image Character Recognition / Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)
ICR is used by different vendors to refer to slightly different technologies for reading text from scanned documents. Most commonly, ICR is used to describe technologies for reading ‘handprint’, ie block capitals written by hand – typically onto purpose-designed forms with one character to a box. ICR is distinguished from OCR which is designed only for printed or typed text and handwriting recognition which normally requires special hardware rather simply analysing images.
Joint Photographers Expert Group (JPEG)
ISO 10918. JPEG, a picture compression standard algorithm developed by this group. JPEG is designed for highly effective compressing of either full-color or gray-scale continuous tone digital images. JPEG does not handle compression of black-and-white (1-bit-per-pixel) images or moving pictures (Source: The Free Online Dictionary of Computer Terms).
JPEG has become a de facto standard for storing digital photographs and full-colour scanned documents. JPEG images are often considered unsuitable and inefficient for volume laser printing. Lossless formats such as PCX and BMP with a maximum colour depth of 8 bit are preferred. JPEG images are better suited to inkjet and die-sublimation printers and on-screen viewing.
Knowledge Management
The process of capturing value, knowledge and understanding of corporate information, using IT systems, in order to maintain, re-use and re-deploy that knowledge.
Markup language
A set of formatting commands that identify the logical structure of a document as opposed to giving specific formatting instructions.
Metadata
Data about data. Information used to describe stored documents or data. Usually information such as "creation Date", "Author", "department", etc. Also called attributes, index fields or tag fields.
MICR
Magnetic Ink Character Recognition: a technology for reading printed numbers magnetically as documents pass through processing equipment. MICR is also the name of the typeface developed for this technology. MICR is primarily used on bankers cheques. While magnetic ink or toner is still required when printing cheques, most banking applications now read cheques using OCR. For organisations using significant numbers of cheques, V1 provides a high-security cheque printing solution which avoids the need for cheque books or pre-numbered cheque stationery.
Microfiche
Microfilm that contains multiple frames of information on a 3 x 5 type piece of microfilm. For example, at 42x resolution there are 208 frames of data recorded.
Microfilm
The generic term used to describe any device which uses a film process and records multiple pages of data onto the film. Film is usually 16 millimeter roll film. Scanned images can be transferred to microfilm for extreme long-term storage, eg 20 to 100 years. Manufacturers of microfilm equipment, such as Kodak, will guarantee the integrity of the format for up to 100 years, whereas manufacturers of optical drives will rarely offer guarantees beyond 10 years.
Mixed Object Document Content Architecture
An architected, device-independent data stream for interchanging documents [IBM].
Multimedia
Objects consisting of text, still computer graphics, moving computer graphics (automation), synthetic graphics, audio, still images, moving images (including video) and other types.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
A standard system of encoding files for transmission by email. This allows files to be stored and transmitted by systems originally designed purely for simple text data. V1’s document management system uses MIME types to identify documents archived in their native format and allowing them to be viewed in a standard browser with plug-ins or third-party applications.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
OCR is a technology for reading printed and typed text from scanned images and PDF documents. OCR is used in V1’s scanning and document management systems to identify and index documents and also to extract data from business documents such as purchase invoices and sales orders.
OCR-A / OCR-B
OCR-A and OCR-B are two typefaces especially designed for optimal accuracy in OCR applications. OCR-B is best known as the font used for the sort code and account number at the top right of a bankers cheque. It is also used for the encoding on bank Giro documents. The font along the bottom of a cheque is MICR.
Optical scanner
A device that creates an image of a document for electronic storage or transmission.
P2P
Shorthand for procure-to-pay or purchase-to-pay.
Page description language (PDL)
A computer language for describing how text and graphics should be placed on a page for display or printing.
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.
PDF/A
A subset of the PDF specification designed for long-term archiving of documents without the need for the originating application. PDF/A is now recognised as an an ISO standard.
PostScript
A page description language (PDL) popular in desktop publishing applications.
Procure-To-Pay
Commonly, there are four distinct phases of the procure-to-pay process, each involving different documents. The initial communication with suppliers involves purchase orders and remittance advices; data capture from supplier documents such as purchase invoices; authorisation and coding of internal documents and finally; making the payment using cheques.
Procurement Software
Procurement software helps to automate the purchasing function of organisations. Activities including raising and approving purchase orders, selecting and ordering the product or service, receiving and matching the invoice and order, and paying the bill is handled electronically, enabling the procurement department to see everything that is ordered, ensure that nothing can be ordered without correct approvals, and lets them get the best value by combining several orders for the same type of good or even getting suppliers to bid for the business.
ProjectMinder
ProjectMinder became part of the V1 products suite on the purchase of CSH by our parent company. It was rebranded V1 Project Accounting - For more information, please visit the dedicated V1 Project Accounting website.
RIA
Rich Internet Application
Rich Text Format (RTF)
An interchange format for exchange of editable documents between incompatible word processing and desktop publishing systems.
SaaS
Software as a Service
Scanner
A scanner is a device that converts documents to images for electronic storage or transmission.
SharpOwl
Sharpowl was the name of V1's professional services automation software prior to it's addition to the V1 product set. Click here for more information about V1 Professional Services Automation.
Software as a Service
Software as a Service (SaaS, typically pronounced 'sass') is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires. The on-demand function may be handled internally to share licenses within a firm or by a third-party application service provider (ASP) sharing licenses between firms.
SSD
Solid State Drive: a data storage device which uses ‘Flash’ memory to store computer data. While Flash memory is slower than the Dynamic RAM (random access memory) used in processing unit of a computer, SSDs are significantly faster than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). SSDs are used to provide faster loading and processing of data than traditional HDDs, but are regarded as being less reliable for storage. Redundant arrays of SSDs should be used where SSDs are used for storage.
Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)
A file format for bitmapped graphics such as scanned images originally developed by Aldus, Adobe and Apple. TIFF was established as a de facto standard for scanned documents long before the adoption of the more sophisticated PDF format by the ISO and remains the most common format used for black and white images.. Like PDF (and unlike JPEG), TIFF files can contain multiple images or pages. Furthermore, TIFF files support many different standards for bitmaps and data compression and encryption. For the exchange of black and white scanned documents, V1 generally recommends the use of multi-page TIFFs with bi-tonal (pure Black and White) images and CCITT Class IV encoding.
Transmission Control Protocol / Internet
A suite of protocols designed to allow communication between networks regardless of the technologies implemented in each network. TCP/IP is the technology that makes in the ‘Internet’ possible. Most of V1’s applications use TCP/IP-based protocols to operate over local and wide-area networks.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
Best known as web addresses, Uniform (or Universal) Resource Locators (URLs) can be used to describe not only the location of nearly any file or service on the Internet but also how to access it.
Virtual Document
A document consisting from subcomponents which can be documents in their own right. A virtual document defines the hierarchical structure and order of its components, but can be managed as a document with its own lifecycle, security controls and version history.
Workflow
Workflow is an IT technology which uses electronic systems to manage and monitor business processes. It allows the flow of work between individuals and/or departments to be defined and tracked. Although documents are often used as a medium for transporting information in a workflow system, it is mostly associated with Document Management where the workflow system is used to track the process of creating and reviewing and distributing documents.
XML
Stands for eXtendable Markup Language. It has its origins in SGML and is a standard for creating new definition languages. Information in a XML document is enclosed in tags, which describe the nature of each information component. Several of V1’s products use XML as a means of exchanging data with other applications. V1 also provides tools for reformatting, converting, re-purposing and archiving XML documents.