OMR and Routing From MFPs / Copiers

So, if you are looking for an easy way to route documents that are being scanned from copiers or MFPs, Optical Mark Recognition can provide a very simple and efficient way to facilitate document capture and indexing.  Many advanced capture applications like PSI:Capture provide the ability to create routing sheets.  These sheets provide end users the ability to mark boxes to detrmine how the document will be routed, where it will end up, folders, file names, etc.  Using OMR is a fast efficient way to enable copiers as distributed scanning devices, especially for SharePoint Scanning and SharePoint Imaging projects.  Using OMR in conjunction with OCR Software can provide not only routing, but searchable file creation, with PDF OCR.

Here is a video showing off OMR routing:

What is Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)?

So as part of the alphabet soup of acronyms within the scanning, capture and document management industries, we have three simililar technologies:  OCR, OMR and ICR.  All provide recognition capabilities:

OCR Software - Provides the ability to take an image and recognize text.

OMR Software - Provides the ability to read marks, or check boxes from a scanned image.

ICR Software - provides the ability to read handwriting or handprinted text.

We are all familiar with the scantron form we all utilized in school to fill out our test answers, and scantron was the early provider of mark-sense, or OMR.  Today, OMR technology has gone way beyond the standard form, and can be utilized to read surveys, routing sheets, and colored in shapes on just about any type of form.  Below are links to some key OMR terms on wikipedia:

OMR Definition

Scantron and OMR