OCR and SharePoint Auditing Made Easy: Watch Our Guided Videos

Explore the capabilities of Searchlight OCR through three videos that demonstrate its seamless integration and transformative capabilities for document management and OCR in SharePoint. 

In three short videos, we will show you how easy it is to:

• Download, install and activate Searchlight.

• Connect to SharePoint and run an Audit.

• OCR your first site and see the improvement in searchability first hand.

1. Download, Install and Activate Searchlight

Start at the Aquaforest Download Page, select our OCR software Searchlight, complete the form and click ‘Download’. This will send an automated email containing the trial license key and direct you to the page with the actual download link. Once the msi file is downloaded, double click it and run through the install wizard.

Depending on your local settings, the installation wizard might prompt you to install some Microsoft prerequisites – just accept these and continue. At the end of the installation, you will be prompted to enter your license key. Copy and paste it from the aforementioned email and you are good to go.

2. Connect to SharePoint and Run an Audit

Connect to SharePoint: Open Searchlight and navigate to the SharePoint section. Enter the SharePoint site URL and the necessary admin credentials to establish a connection. To audit and OCR your files, Searchlight will need admin permissions on the sites it monitors. The files can be located either in your local file system, in SharePoint on-prem/online or in Azure.

Run an Audit: Select the SharePoint site or library you want to audit. Configure the audit settings, such as selecting specific file types or date ranges. Start the audit to generate a report on the current state of the documents, including those needing OCR.

You can have as many libraries as you like on the Searchlight Dashboard and each library can point to an unlimited number of file locations. For that reason, we recommend mapping out your OCR requirements before starting to set up Searchlight jobs.

3. OCR and re-Audit the SharePoint Library

OCR the SharePoint library: Navigate to the OCR settings in Searchlight. Configure the OCR workload by specifying the number of cores to be used and optimizing settings based on your SharePoint site size and performance requirements.

Re-Audit the SharePoint library: After the OCR process is complete, re-run the audit to verify that all documents have been correctly processed and that their text content is now searchable. Review the updated audit report to ensure the OCR has been successfully applied.

After a completed audit you have clear visibility of the OCR workload. Depending on how many cores are used and the size of your sites, this process can take from a few seconds to several weeks. We recommend running some Searchlight Audits on some representative sample sites and working out the average number of documents/pages and their searchability status. This will help to define how many cores would work best for your setting and speed expectations.

Conclusion

With OCR software such as Searchlight, managing and enhancing document accessibility has never been easier. Whether you’re improving search capabilities or ensuring compliance through OCR, Searchlight simplifies complex tasks into streamlined processes. Experience firsthand how Searchlight empowers your organization to unlock the full potential of its document management system.