“Mass-produced documents” in a school district or business/organization is usually synonymous with “mass headaches.” If you want to keep copies of them for future reference or for legal reasons, that is – which most schools and businesses at least want to, if not need to, do.
Think report cards, standardized assessment test reports, and transcripts - any document that is generated by the dozens, hundreds, even thousands.
The problem has been finding a cost- and labor-effective way of bridging the gap between generating the documents and filing the documents in each appropriate student file.
Think about report cards, for example, in an average-sized school district of 4,500 students. That’s 4,500 report cards, generated 3-4 times per year – depending upon the marking period frequency. Eighteen thousand report cards per year that (in the past) needed to be printed, separated, and filed in each student’s cumulative folder. Why? Not every Student Information System (SIS) keeps copies of each report card for each student. Even if they did, school districts switch SISs from time to time – effectively losing access to documents stored in the previous SIS. Or what if you need to refer to documents when your SIS is down for maintenance or due to a problem?
IdentiFile™ to the rescue! IdentiFile™ is a new technology released by Bull Valley Software for use in conjunction with our DocumentLOK™ document management system. With IdentiFile™, the large (usually PDF) file generated by your SIS or business system is “read”, and the necessary metadata is extracted for each report card, transcript, assessment test report, etc. The gigantic PDF is then separated by student (a process called bursting). The metadata is then used to file a copy of each unique report card (or other document) into each student’s file – all without any human intervention.
Those filed report cards or other documents are now linked to the student record within your SIS – so you can access those documents again with one or two mouse clicks – and without ever leaving your SIS! Now, how slick is that?
Seriously, though, it really is. The amount of time that our users have told us they will save is insane. We’re not talking a couple hours here and there – we’re talking dozens of hours. Everyone who has seen it is excited about it. And so are we!
Comments