SYSTEM AND METHOD OF MANAGING QUEUES BY MAINTAINING METADATA FILES HAVING ATTRIBUTES CORRESPONDING TO CAPTURE OF ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT AND USING THE METADATA FILES TO SELECTIVELY LOCK THE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT

• US 6,978,297 B1
• Filed: 09/30/1999
• Issued: 12/20/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/12/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Piersol, Kurt
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Hosain
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tran, Philip B.
• Application Number:
  US09/410,364
• Time in Patent Office: 2,273 Days
• Field of Search: 709/220, 709/223, 709/314, 709/250, 709/311, 709/217, 709/232, 707/3, 707/10
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

A method and apparatus for managing electronic documents within a network. A series of processes perform electronic document capture, indexing, and searching functions within a networked environment. A graphical web-based user interface is provided to facilitate user interaction with the apparatus.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

a network interface to receive an electronic document from a first device, the electronic document captured by the first device coupled to the network, wherein the document is captured by being saved in the absence of an explicit command by a user to the first device;

a storage medium coupled with the network interface having one or more queues to store the captured documents; and

a processor coupled with the storage medium to manage the one or more queues by maintaining one or more metadata files having attributes corresponding to capture of the electronic document, wherein the processor executes one or more daemons corresponding to the one or more queues using the metadata files to selectively lock the electronic document.

2. The apparatus defined in claim 1, further comprising a graphical user interface.

3. The apparatus defined in claim 2, wherein the graphical user interface comprises common gateway interface scripting accessible through the network interface.

4. The apparatus defined in claim 2, wherein the graphical user interface is operable to generate web-based display pages.

5. The apparatus defined in claim 1, wherein the network interface communicatively couples the apparatus to one or more capture devices over a network.

6. The apparatus defined in claim 5, wherein the network interface is operable to send and receive data using a file transfer protocol (FTP).

7. The apparatus defined in claim 5, wherein the one or more capture devices are networked office appliances.

8. The apparatus defined in claim 1, wherein a first queue of the one or more queues comprises at least one document directory.

9. The apparatus defined in claim 8, wherein the at least one document directory comprises one or more content files.

10. The apparatus defined in claim 8, wherein the at least one document directory comprises a metadata file that contains at least part of the captured document.

11. The apparatus defined in claim 1, wherein the storage medium comprises one or more of a fixed disk, removable disk, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and RAM.

12. The apparatus defined in claim 1, wherein the storage medium comprises a master document list that tracks the location of all documents on the apparatus.

13. A system comprising:

a first device communicatively coupled to a network to capture an electronic document, wherein the document is captured by being saved in the absence of an explicit command by a user to the first device; and

a second device communicatively coupled to the network and having;

a network interface to receive at least partial capture data from the first device,

a storage medium coupled with the network interface having one or more queues to store the at least partial capture data,

a processor coupled with the storage medium to manage the one or more queues by maintaining one or more metadata files having attributes corresponding to capture of the electronic document, wherein the processor executes one or more daemons corresponding to the one or more queues using the metadata files to selectively lock the electronic document.

14. The system defined in claim 13, wherein the first device comprises a selected one of a printer, a copier, a facsimile machine, a scanner and a computer.

15. The system defined in claim 13, wherein the network interface receives captured data using a file transfer protocol (FTP).

16. The system defined in claim 13, wherein at least one of the first and second devices is a networked office appliance.

17. The system defined in claim 13, wherein both the first and second devices are networked office appliances.

18. The system defined in claim 13, wherein the at least partial capture data comprises document bibliographic information.

19. The system as defined in claim 13, wherein the one or more queues comprise a list of one or more document directories.

20. The system as defined in claim 13, wherein the storage medium is a magnetic fixed disk.

21. The system as defined in claim 13, wherein the user interface further comprises:

a graphical user interface having a plurality of graphical document display views including;

a list view, a calendar view, a thumbnail view, and a stream view.

22. A method comprising:

capturing an electronic document on a first device, wherein the document is captured by being saved in the absence of an explicit command by a user to the first device; and

communicating at least part of the captured data to a second device, wherein the second device;

orders the at least part of the captured data into one or more queues,

performs one or more processing operations on the one or more queues by maintaining one or more metadata files having attributes corresponding to capture of the electronic document wherein the second device executes one or more daemons corresponding to the one or more queues using the metadata files to selectively lock the electronic document,

accepts one or more queries pertaining to the captured data, and

responds to the one or more queries by displaying query results.

23. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the data is captured using a file transfer protocol (FTP).

24. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the second device orders the at least part of the captured data by creating a directory and copying the at least part of the captured data into the directory.

25. The method defined in claim 24, wherein the second device uses a capture date of the at least part of the captured data as a name for the directory.

26. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the processing operations comprise optical character recognition, indexing, compression and backup.

27. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the one or more queries are implemented using common interface gateway (CGI) scripting.

28. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the query results are displayed graphically in one or more view formats.

29. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the second device indexes the at least part of the captured data.

30. The method defined in claim 22, further comprising communicating and storing all the captured data on a third device.

31. The method defined in claim 22, wherein the query results are displayed graphically in a selectable one of a plurality of views.

32. The method defined in claim 31, wherein the plurality of views includes a list view, a calendar view, a thumbnail view, and a stream view.