This is a link to new our Facebook page.

A dozen new screencasts have been created for the SAVE Paper Docs product page.

Our Scanning Enabler v6 product update has been formally released. This product has so improved we have had to change its name as it does so much more than scan.

SAVE Paper Docs^TM supports Scanning, Annotation, Viewing and Editing.

For more details see the SAVE Paper Docs product page.

For customers who have v5 of our Scanning Enabler and also v5 Software Assurance you can put the new release into production at no extra cost.

Our Scanning Enabler product now includes a yellow highlighing, redaction and crop functions.

Index documents you have already uploaded to SharePoint and update them at the same time.

Checkout, Checkin and Undo Checkout to commit or rollback updates.

Our PaperWork Enabler product now includes support for Scanning. A Two Step Scan feature has been added.

Our PaperWork Enabler product price is due to increase in January 2012.

Need to test a dark blue product? Do not have any scanning hardware to hand? You can use this Sample Data Source to get you going.

Our v5 product price list is now available. Since the start of this year we have been extending the Dark Blue Duck products. The Routing Coversheet Service has been replaced by the PaperWork Enabler v5 which is now our flagship product. Support for Indexing has been added to the Scanning Enabler and there is also support for document splitting and merging. Use the Scanning Enabler to delete pages from a paper document or to update pages in-place (using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari). Customers who purchased the v4 Software Assurance products will be happy that the v5 products are available on time (before the end of the year). Our best kept secret has been our agressive product pricing plans. Now there is no excuse for any SharePoint user to do without time saving and error reducing paperwork supporting features.

Our PaperWork as a Service offering allows you to run all of our web based products on a dedicated hosted SharePoint 2010 Foundation Server. We will take care of the software upgrades and the backups. You can use Microsoft SharePoint Designer to create custom paper workflows.

The Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler v5.x Indexing feature is now available for download and testing. This feature adds an "Index Document" button to the SharePoint Ribbon. Use this feature to set SharePoint Column values for scanned documents already uploaded to SharePoint. Ideal for multifunction device users and email enabled document libraries. Scanning Enabler v4.x Software Assurance is required to run this feature properly.

After five years of faithful service our web site is getting a Spring Clean.

Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 provided an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature that could be used to create searchable PDF documents. In Office 2010 the Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) component has been removed. For our version 4.x products it will be necessary for customers to use MODI in 2007 Office together with Office 2010. see: Alternative methods to regain the functionalities of Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI).

Customers who have purchased v4.x Software Assurance have an alternative. Our v5.x products (due for release in 2011) include a 3rd party OCR Engine that performs better than MODI did.

Creating searchable pdf files, recognising barcodes and automating workflow tasks requires some effort. Our Dark Blue Duck Document Service is a Windows Server Service that adds OCR, barcode recognition and support for batch processing to our Scanning Enabler, Workflow Enabler and Routing Coversheet products. It also allows Enterprise Architects to spread the OCR, barcode recognition and file conversion work across a number of servers.

A license for our Routing Coversheet, Workflow Enabler or Scanning Enabler product is required to use this Dark Blue Duck product.

Our Object Storage and File Storage products are now generally available. As large and small organizations move internal documents from file servers to SharePoint these products will be essential.

Our Scanning Enabler product is deployed as a Microsoft SharePoint solution. This makes it much easier for our customers to move from one version of SharePoint to another. At the moment a number of our customers are moving from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. The approach we recommend is straightforward.

1. Uninstall the v3.x Scanning Enabler solution from your SharePoint 2007 servers
2. Upgrade your SharePoint Servers to SharePoint2010
3. Install the v4.x Scanning Enabler solution onto your SharePoint 2010 servers

If you upgrade in place and have purchased and activated a v3.x software assurance license you will not need to activate your licenses again (this is by design).

If you are moving to completely new hardware you should send us an email describing what you would like to do. In the email please include details of the email address/web site account your licenses are associated with. An administration fee may apply. Of course this would be a good time to consider purchasing a v4.x sofware assurance license to extend the protection of your investment until December 2011.

Our Scanning Enabler v4.x is now generally available. Here is a Screencast that shows how to install the product.

Some v4.x licenses include Downgrade Rights. Downgrade Rights allow customers to use prior versions of our products.

The v3.x Software Assurance license offer comes to an end this month.

We are delighted to announce that our Scanning Enabler 2010 products are now available in Beta and for online trial. Login to our demonstration web site and test out our new products online.

UK local government case study now available.

We have been working on a SharePoint 2010 version of our Scanning Enabler products for a few months now. Here is a Sneak Peek.

We have added a Customer and Partner Case Study section to our web site. See what other Dark Blue Duck Customers and Partners are up to.

The Scanning Enabler now has integrated support for Editing Scanned documents. Open an existing Scanned document, modify it, update the column values and save back to SharePoint without leaving the SharePoint web page.

The Scanning Enabler now Supports Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Business Data Catalog (BDC) Columns.

The Scanning Enabler Capture Application now supports Resampling. Reduce Color Depth, Resolution and File Size of Scanned Documents as they are saved to SharePoint.

Dark Blue Duck have launched a Partner Program. Partners qualify for price discounts.

The Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler Capture application includes Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) to read the values of check boxes on scanned documents and forms. See our Optical Mark Recognition screencast to see how this new feature can be used.

Review our updated screencasts to see how we have updated the Scanning Enabler Suite to work better together.

You are uploading a scanned Affidavit to your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (recognising and then adding OCR text in the process). At the same time you are scanning in a Statement of Claim using your desktop scanner. Then someone uses the network attached Multifunction Printer to drop a third document into a Watch Folder on your desktop.

The Scanning Enabler Capture application will start loading in the third document while it keeps the first two tasks going without missing a beat. The Scanning Enabler Capture Application status bar will keep you informed of how all three tasks are progressing. See: here

Our online tryout site has been relaunched. The site is now hosted on a Windows Server 2008 (x64) machine running MOSS 2007. Use your Dark Blue Duck web site credentials to access the site. The online tryout site has the main Scanning Enabler product installed and the Routing Coversheet Service running.

With the Routing Coversheet Service on the online tryout site it is now possible to e-mail or fax documents directly to user defined document library folders (and SharePoint list items) using Dark Blue Duck barcode coversheets or barcode labels. E-mail test documents to anyone@demo.darkblueduck.com. The fax number for the online tryout site is: +1-206-600-7351.

Create a Dark Blue Duck web site login (if you don't already have one) and use the new online tryout site to test out the Dark Blue Duck products using your office fax machine or your e-mail enabled Multifunction Printer.

Dark Blue Duck are delighted to announce availability of our 3.x product licenses. Customers who have purchased 2.x Software Assurance licenses will be pleased to know that a 2.x product license plus a matching 2.x software assurance license is equivalent to a new 3.x product license.

Customers purchasing 3.x licenses and customers with existing 2.x Software Assurance can now purchase 3.x Software Assurance licenses that will protect their Scanning Enabler product investment through to the end of 2010.

Notice that we will provide customers who purchased 2.x licenses this month (December 2008) with an upgrade to the 3.x licenses at no cost.

Attach a printed barcode label to an existing document and use a Multifuction device to send the document to exactly the right part of your SharePoint Site. See how here.

Architectural Guidance is now available. We have created a Hardware and Software Recipes guide.

A Scanning Enabler^TM Software Development Kit (SDK) is available. A sample project is described here.

Specify the Optical Character Recognition Language with the Dark Blue Duck Scanning Web Page.

The Code Signing Certificate used to sign the Dark Blue Duck ActiveX Control has expired. Please download and install the latest release to address this issue.

Dark Blue Duck are exhibiting at TechEd Australia in Sydney next month. Come along and say hello. Our brochure is available here.

We congratulate IT-Dev for agreeing to distribute and support the Scanning Enabler^TM 2007 products in Poland. Please contact IT-Dev for details

Use our Scanning Enabler^TM Capture Desktop application to bulk load your paper documents to SharePoint. Select a Content Type and specify "Indexing" Site Column properties for multiple scanned documents at one time. The intuitive user interface reduces your training costs.

Use our Content Type and Site Column Value sheets to add metadata to your paper documents.

Use your shared Multifunction printer (MFP) with the Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler^TM Coversheet Routing Service.

Do you have only one desktop scanner in the office? You can now use the Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler^TM Scanner Sharing program to share it. Our Scanner Sharing program allows others to use the Scanning Enabler^TM at their desk even if they don't have a desktop scanner of their own.

We have added the Scanner Sharing program to our online tryout site and created a step by step guide.

We have added support for MOSS MySites.

We have added a number of options to the Scanning Settings page. One of these new options allows users to specify a "stamp" that will be applied to pages in all scanned documents.

View your scanned pages as thumbnails using this enhancement.

The Dark Blue Duck team have launched a small business edition and a medium business edition of the Scanning Enabler^TM.

The Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler^TM now supports batch scanning. This feature allows you to upload multiple scanned documents to SharePoint at one time. Separate scanned documents with blank pages or use a Dark Blue Duck scanning separator page. We will be adding batch scanning to our trial edition in the New Year.

SharePointHosting.com are providing the Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler^TM on their hosted SharePoint sites. They have produced a sliverlight video to introduce their customers to be benefits of the the Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler^TM.

You can now use the Dark Blue Duck Scanning Enabler^TM to attach scanned documents to SharePoint List Items. Click here to try.

At Dark Blue Duck we have added Optical Character Recognition support to our Scanning Enabler product (allowing the Scanning Enabler^TM to create SharePoint "searchable" scanned documents out-of-the-box). For a demo of the new feature click here and login to find all of the pdf files in our online demonstration site with the words 'blue duck' in them.

Dark Blue Duck are adding support for French, German and other languages to our Scanning Enabler^TM product. Click German or French.

Dark Blue Duck have created a way for you to try our Scanning Enabler^TM product from the comfort of your laptop. Click here to learn more.

Dark Blue Duck have released the Scanning Enabler^TM 2007.