On 31st January 2014 approximately 150 participants met at the Grand Hotel Vienna for the annual Fabasoft egovday.

Digital Natives – generations born after 1980 for who tablets, smartphones, Facebook &co. come as standard – took centre stage at the event.

In his keynote “Generation Y – who we are and what we want”, Philipp Riederle presented how the youth of today see the working world of tomorrow. The 19 year old business consultant and podcaster achieved regional fame through his podcast “Mein iPhone und Ich …” (My iPhone and me…). In his entertaining keynote he described how digital natives communicate and how personal needs have changed.

Tanja Stingeder, Stefan Arnold and Stefan Berndorfer from Fabasoft followed up Philipp Riederle’s remarks by showing where these “youthful” demands are already business reality.

The Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce plays a pioneering role in the e-services sector. For a number of years they have offered online services such as the electronic application of a certificate of origin for goods export. Tanja Stingeder demonstrated how easily the certificate can be electronically requested, enabling companies to save time and money. Businesses simply have to register on the chamber of commerce’s online service portal, electronically specify the relevant goods and upload the necessary documents. The Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce currently offers 15 online services.

Gerhard Stöger from the Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce’s foreign trade department contributed with a video message: “The Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce issues around 20,000 certificates of origin per year. Previously all of these had to be processed manually. Now companies conduct this process easily and conveniently via our e-service portal, thereby saving time and money.”

Stefan Arnold, Head of Product Development for Fabasoft eGov-Suite demonstrated how variable and adaptable the Fabasoft eGov-Suite is: Accessible via all common mobile devices (Blackberry, Surface, iPad etc.) and web browsers (web client) or integrated as a network drive.

So-called Teamrooms in the Fabasoft Cloud enable easy collaboration with external partners. The Teamroom is created in Fabasoft eGov-Suite and transferred to the relevant country in Fabasoft’s secure cloud environment. Partners are then invited to the collaboration. Depending on their access rights they can read or edit the documents. Once the collaboration is complete the content of the Teamroom is transferred back to ELAK.

In this context, a particular highlight is the simultaneous editing of a document by multiple users. If multiple users are working on the same document, each user sees the changes made by the other uses in real-time via colour marking.

Stefan Berndorfer showed how you can maintain an overview over large volumes of data with Mindbreeze. Based on semantics and relevance models, Mindbreeze recognises and lists correlations for an entered search term. Using a calendar entry in Outlook Stefan Berndorfer demonstrated how the search works. By clicking on the calendar entry Mindbreeze finds all suitable entries from the connected sources (e.g. Salesforce, SAP etc.). These are displayed and can be instantly reused.

A self-driving car with a blind driver offered the perfect introduction to the next keynote. Mario Batusic, Fabasoft Accessibility Expert, gave a live demo of a selection of advanced product functionalities. Instead of screen and mouse as output and input devices, he uses Braille display and keyboard. For Fabasoft eGov-Suite accessibility is a global software characteristic that is constantly developed with the product. The Stiftung Pfennigparade (Pfennigparade Foundation) evaluated the accessibility of the Fabasoft eGov-Suite. Joachim Hellriegel from the Stiftung Pfennigparade presented the methodology of this test procedure. With 93.5 points (“easily accessible”) the Fabasoft eGov-Suite was able to achieve an outstanding result.

Dipl.-Ing. Helmut Fallmann, Member of the Fabasoft AG Managing Board provided a fitting conclusion to the Fabasoft egovday 2014 in Vienna with his appeal for a “United Clouds of Europe”. In his keynote he explained why it is time to fight for a common European economic continent. Cloud computing in particular contains enormous growth potential and is possibly Europe’s last chance to return to its previous strengths. Consistent certificates and standards are needed for this as well as massive investment in broadband infrastructure and in the education system. Our European data is as valuable as gold and must be protected accordingly – businesses loses billions of euros every year through industrial espionage and product counterfeiting.

Helmut Fallmann is campaigning for a European cloud in which customers know where their data is stored (locations) and also have the possibility to access their data. Fabasoft developed the Fabasoft Cloud for this. A business cloud application protected by two factor authentication whose entire source code lies with Fabasoft. The central element for collaboration is the Teamroom, where documents can be stored and edited. This enables Fabasoft to offer a secure business platform for the international collaboration of companies on European soil. Security always takes top priority. TÜV Rheinland i-sec GmbH awarded the Fabasoft Cloud with the “Certified Cloud Service” certificate to confirm that it fulfils the following objectives concerning cloud infrastructure and cloud application: Secure data hosting, secure data transfer, secure operation of business-critical applications, quality and availability of service provision, high service continuity, high on-demand scalability, security and quality of data access and data storage, secure login procedures and authorisation systems for controlling data access at network level and state of the art protection against attacks.

However, annotations on PDF-files can still attached and stored in the cloud or in the ECM system. It works under Windows RT in File Explorer via WebDAV. How this looks like can be seen in the following figure:

Figure: Screenshot of the file explorer on Windows Surface Tablet.

The tests were conducted under the following constellation:

Device: Surface Tablet with Windows RT

Cloud/ECM-products:
- Fabasoft Folio Cloud
- Fabasoft eGov-Suite 2012
- Fabasoft eGov-Suite 2013

Apps:
- Adobe Reader
- Windows Reader
- Foxit Mobile PDF

An overview of the test documentation

* The GUI is not the best one. Initially I haven’t found the “Save” functionality. You have to click the right button on the touchpad in order to get the possibility to save your annotations. When working only via touch screen I haven’t found to select the menu “Save”. This applies for the Windows reader as well as for the Foxit Reader app.

Conclusion:
The Adobe Reader app provides unfortunately no annotation function under Windows RT, which surprise me because this works with the Adobe app on iOS as well as on Android.

The app from Microsoft which is called “Reader” is already pre-installed on the system and has the most important functions such as making notes and highlighting a story. However, there are no other functions, for example signature, freehand drawing, etc.
The app Foxit works like the Microsoft app and the menu structure is also very similar. But it is available only in English and must be installed through the Windows store.

Finally, mobile annotations are also possible on the Windows Tablet. If the platform gets more popular in future, there will be probably several apps that extend the current possibilities.

Links:

Microsoft Surface: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/

Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/

Foxit PDF: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/

In the second part of the series “Annotations with mobile devices” annotating documents on the Samsung Galaxy tab will be analysed. For testing the annotations four apps were installed that support this function, according to the product description. They can be downloaded on the Android platform via Google Play Store. The structure of the article is similar to that of the 1st part (annotations-test on the iPad). The tests were conducted under the following constellation:

Figure: Attaching a signature to a PDF file with the app “Adobe Reader”.

Imagine, you have all your important documents ready to hand without having to print anything or always access the latest version of the relevant documents in your meetings. These are some scenarios that can work easily with an appropriate document management system and a suitable tablet. In addition, you would like to make some notes on the document, which means to annotate it.

In this article I deal with these use cases by analyzing apps that are able to annotate documents and save them into the cloud or into the ECM-system.

The blog will be published in three parts and structured as follows: In part one I outline the annotation apps on the Apple iPad,  part two is about applying annotations on the Samsung Galaxy Tab and part 3 on Windows Surface RT.

An app which is able to annotate documents should support at least following functions:

• Document download and upload: preferably support for standard interfaces like WebDAV.
• Add annotations to the pdf file
• Text-highlighting (underline, mark,…)
• Simple to use

An overview of the test documentation

* TXT-support is limited: ANSI-coded text doesn’t work, only UTF-8-files. Line breaks in the text are not saved after editing the text with the app.

Screenshot of saving the annotated pdf with the app “iAnnotate”

Conclusion:

Unfortunately the WebDAV-connection to an ECM-system only works in 3 of 6 tested apps. The app “notability” has indeed provided the function, however it has sometimes destroyed the annotated PDF files while saving. Therefore the apps iAnnotate and GoodReader are the only one which worked well.

iAnnotate is a very intuitive app. Because of the open WebDAV interface there is a connection to all cloud services and ECM systems available that support WebDAV. With Good Reader all use cases can be carried out successfully but the operation is a bit bumpy because you need for all a lot of steps to reach the goal.

As soon as you get used to the convenient PDFs, which you can annotate anytime, you don’t want to miss it anymore. That’s why the college block should be only a historical thing. Because notes on the way can be inserted directly into the documents and saved directly on the server and therefore can no longer get lost.

Links:

iAnnotate: http://www.branchfire.com/iannotate/

GoodReader: http://www.goodiware.com/goodreader.html

Notability: http://www.gingerlabs.com/cont/notability.php

pdf-notes: http://blog.pdf-notes.com/

GoodNotes: http://www.goodnotesapp.com/

Adobe Reader: http://www.adobe.com/

Name of the test device: “Surface Tablet with Windows RT, 64 GB”

Office apps: Microsoft Office

ECM/Cloud products:
- Fabasoft eGov-Suite (Testet with version 2012)
- Fabasoft Folio Cloud

Actually, the article should have the same structure as the other articles of this series: The comparison of different Office apps and a conclusion, which apps are suitable for document editing.

However, in the Windows world things work differently. In contrast to the Android and Apple platform Microsoft provides with the Windows Store a smaller AppStore. Additionally, because of the proprietary Windows platform Microsoft Office is the marketleader in terms of office apps. That’s the reason why there are no other office apps available that are competitive. E.g. OpenOffice

The installed Windows operating system provides a familiar environment for the Windows experienced user. So on the Surface RT-tablet the Office products Word, Excel and PowerPoint are pre-installed and therefore automatically available.* This means that for editing documents no separate app has to be installed. Saving files directly from the Office application into a cloud service only works with the own services from Microsoft “Office 365 SharePoint” and “SkyDrive”. Other cloud services or ECM systems, such as Fabasoft eGov-Suite cannot be added because Office does not allow the connection to open interfaces.

Alternatively, editing documents in the cloud or in the ECM system works via WebDAV. It is like editing documents on the familiar Windows Explorer. With the use of Microsoft Office products on the tablet your are enjoying the great advantages that Office delivers: Field functions, mail merge functionality, paragrah formats, different languages, etc.

An overview of the test documentation

** For opening the mail merge letter you have to disable the datasources during the opening process.

Conclusion:
Working on the Windows tablet is quick and easy to learn because in fact it works in the same way as in the familiar Windows environment on the desktop PC. The drawback is that a proprietary platform allows no open interfaces, which means that in the Office applications no other cloud service can be integrated and thus Microsoft is trying to stop the use of products of their competitors. Furthermore, the Windows Store has a smaller selection of apps in contrast to iOS and Android.

Links:

http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-us/surface-with-windows-8-pro/home

http://www.openoffice.org/product/windows.html

* This is a prerelease. Microsoft points on restrictions, which you cannot see where they are. http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/de-AT/surface-with-windows-rt/windows-rt

We are not talking about topics such as participation, Open Government, or anything similar. What I mean are the classic eGov topics, briefly summarized in the following groups:

• Administrative master data – preferably uniform and consistent administration of, for example, population, corporate and property master data
• Administrative processes – requiring streamlining and increased efficiency
• Legal basis – definition of the basis for efficient and exclusively electronic processes and data sharing– (Open Data)
• Inclusion of corporations and citizens in administrative processes without system discontinuity

Innovation is only desirable in these areas, however, once the general standards have been established, for creating these standards calls for an operative rather than an innovative approach. There are numerous projects in place covering these areas, and as they are not protected by copyright they could serve as roadmaps.

For this reason, it is more important to find successful strategies, and to adapt them speedily according to requirements for those basic areas of eGov where action is still needed.

For developing countries today, we do not recommend the reinvention of each step of eGov. It is more appropriate to abbreviate some phases, taking shortcuts through imitation, in order to focus, at a later stage, on progression and innovation.

These arguments are not intended to limit the creativity of masterminds. However, it is now time to implement those elements that are long overdue in an operative phase, while regarding the progressive elements in a conceptual phase.

To summarize: Innovation is important and necessary for the survival of Europe as a business location. But new innovations designed to meet challenges that have already been resolved will take us nowhere. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, not even for eGov.

This article outlines the possibilities how to use an enterprise search application in the own company to deal with the vast amount of information.

An enterprise search application should provide a remedy for the increasing growth of data. Furthermore it should quickly and easily access all enterprise data in the company. A study confirms the relevance of this topic: Inefficient search for documents costs about two weeks of the working hours per employee in a year.

Whether quick and easy access to corporate data in practice works as you would like, will be analysed on the basis of the search application Mindbreeze Enterprise Search. This software is able to search over distributed data sources and to integrate all company information into a uniform linked whole. The following graphic shows that Mindbreeze can index various data sources easily and users can search in a central search box for desired information.

How the search application could be used in a company with multiple data sources is shown in the following video. You are going to see the most important functions of Mindbreeze in the web client, which can be used with all popular web browsers.

* For a better screen resolution change the quality (gear-wheel) to 720p (HD).

Conclusion:
Mindbreeze Enterprise Search is the evidence that searching for documents has nothing to do with the saying “looking for the needle in the haystack”. With Mindbreeze it is easy to index various data sources – doesn’t matter if structured or unstructured content – and intuitive to find documents. As already mentioned in the video, you can save a lot of time in your company if you have an efficient search engine.

Links:
IDC-Study: http://www.ejitime.com/materials/IDC%20on%20The%20High%20Cost%20Of%20Not%20Finding%20Information.pdf

Mindbreeze Enterprise Search: http://www.mindbreeze.com/products/enterprise/enterprise-search.html

Let us have a look at a concrete scenario:

A public administration body implements office tools, mail systems and subsequently a document management system. These tools define clear structures (e.g. a filing plan) and rules (organizational manual) for saving documents. The staff adapt to these standards, and due to the enhanced efficiency and improved information access, success is soon at hand. At the same time, the increasing demands for compliance are met. But is this a realistic scenario? In a perfect world, perhaps. However, real life results are often less satisfactory. There can be any number of reasons given – starting with the popular reference to non-ergonomic software – down to a lack of organisational support.

Failure could more likely be due to the fact, however, that some people, or even entire organizations, apply different working paradigms and are no longer interested in structured document filing. In the days of a paper trail there were also specific focal points for correct and complete filing, such as a registry or secretariat. These were often discontinued in the wake of the introduction of electronic systems.

Hence, when structured order – to return to the blog title – is not an objective, or not possible, it must be substituted by efficient search methods. Although this is not a simple task, it is now achievable. A concrete alternative will be presented in a subsequent blog article.

There is no alternative to coping with the torrential growth of data.

Knowing which path to choose is crucial for success; a false estimate of one’s own order is bound to end in chaos. Efficient search functions are not free of charge, neither from an organizational nor from a financial perspective!

This blog deals with potential errors in projects focusing on the connection of two systems – i.e. the creation of interfaces. Starting with the question as to why individual systems need to be connected to each other in the first place: isolated systems only have a limited effect in enhancing administrative processes, as the cross-linking of data – within the boundaries of the law – is increasing constantly. Cross-organizational data exchange and services for the utilization of additional functions are frequent requests or requirements upon an originally isolated system.

Examples from the ECM and eGov environment are the connection to specialized processes or the interface to an ERP system.

However, the road to a functioning integrated interface is often cumbersome and anything but a walk in the park. The following passage deals with this topic and the five most serious mistakes that, from my point of view, can be made in interface projects, which, in a worst case scenario, could sabotage the project.

1. Inaccurate specification
At the beginning of the project the requirements seem clear: two systems are to communicate and exchange data with each other, each system working independently. One often forgets the importance of specifying all interface scenarios at the beginning of the project or before the implementation takes place: which use cases apply to the end users, how should the system react to system errors, etc.

2. Test environment not accessible to both parties
In many cases, access to the test system via a browser (the example shows web service call-up) is not possible for reasons of security. This can become a major stumbling block for timely implementation.

3. Focus limited to technical issues
When faced with the task of introducing an interface between two systems, there is a risk of focusing too much on the technical part while neglecting the sense and purpose of the interface and the user view. Hence, it is possible to successfully implement an interface from a technical perspective, even though successively failing due to lack of user acceptance. In such cases one should fall back on tried and tested implementations, such as SAP-Integration.

4. Individual system experts exist, but there is nobody with a complete overview
At the beginning of the project, those responsible as a rule know nothing about the respective adjacent application. In this situation, one person from the project team should be responsible for acquiring the necessary know-how concerning all systems used, including the interface technology, in order to ensure that someone in the project team has a complete overview. Ideally, this human interface within the interface project is the project leader.

5. No regular interface maintenance
As soon as an interface is up and running, everybody is happy and nobody ever looks back at it. The consequence could be that if the interface fails after years of usage, there is nobody around who knows how it works. Should this be the case, error diagnosis and subsequent repairs can become time consuming and expensive. In the Chamber of Commerce, for instance, there is an interface from the ECM-system to the heating management of all lecture rooms.  By this means the lecture rooms can be heated immediately before the start of a lecture so that the participants don’t have to freeze even when outside temperatures are low. If one loses the overview of that system it could lead to cold feet for the participants.

Summary:
The implementation of an interface should be meticulously planned, whereby focus should be placed both on the  organizational challenges and the technical solution. If possible the integration should be made using a tried and tested standardized solution.

What are your experiences in introducing interfaces? Do the problems mentioned in the above sound familiar? Do you have any tips or best practises you would like to share?

However, I will explain the need to face this challenge for the Fabasoft eGov-Suite 2012 on account of the examples below, taken from the Landwirtschaftskammer Oberösterreich (Chamber of Agriculture for Upper Austria) and the boroughs in Vorarlberg.

The Chamber of Agriculture for Upper Austria changed over to Fabasoft eGov-Suite before the summer. Users feel that the following features have improved significantly:

• The import by Drag&Drop has been improved and simplified.
• The context menu and the navigation bar have been aligned with Windows applications and are thus more user friendly.
• Admin users particularly appreciate the fact that columns can now be amended and values copied or deleted.

The boroughs in Vorarlberg also changed over to Fabasoft eGov-Suite in June 2012. In addition to the clear design and improved legibility of the user interface, the project team and borough users appreciated the following improvements:

• Improved Drag & Drop functions and the replace document query for multiple imports
• Filter functions for lists (pivot tables?) and the option to lock columns
• Progress indicator for longer processes
• Integration of the Mindbreeze search interface in the Fabasoft eGov-Suite portal
• Improved traceability of actions and possibility to undo/repeat actions in case of errors
• Multiply query function for validation in the central register of residents
• Categorized selection when creating business objects

But Fabasoft eGov-Suite 2012 has not only proven its practical usefulness; comprehensive tests in the Fabasoft Infrastructure Lab also provided positive test results throughout. In addition to further enhancing system stability, the utilization of new technologies and hardware resources were improved upon and Key Use Cases, such as compiling overviews or file processing, were optimized.  Furthermore, the document conversion in parallel leads to a significant reduction in waiting periods for end users and increases the acceptance of the page view and presentation of open workflow activities.

If you are not yet using Fabasoft eGov-Suite 2012 and would like to know more about the benefits of the new product version, there are several possibilities.

You can visit our website www.egov-suite.com and watch the videos under document management, informal collaboration, workflow and case processing (the latter are country specific).

As usual, additional detailed product information is available on the product DVD.

We are happy to answer any questions that you might have.