ImageNow Migration

System Overview

ImageNow, now known as Perceptive Content, is a document and process management system widely used in education, healthcare, and government. The platform organizes documents through a unique five-key indexing system: Drawer, Field 1 through Field 4, and Document Type. This key structure allows users to locate documents using business-meaningful values such as patient IDs, student numbers, invoice numbers, or case identifiers.

ImageNow is particularly prevalent in higher education, where it integrates with student information systems like Ellucian Banner and PeopleSoft to manage admissions files, financial aid documents, and student records. It is also widely deployed in healthcare for medical records management and in government for permits, licenses, and case files.

Specific Technical Challenges

ImageNow's rigid five-key architecture and page-level storage model create unique obstacles that require deep platform knowledge to overcome.

Rigid Five-Key Indexing Model

The five-key indexing model (Drawer, Folder, Tab, F5, F6) creates a rigid document classification structure that does not map naturally to most modern ECM systems' flexible metadata models. Translating five fixed keys into dynamic metadata requires careful field-by-field mapping decisions.

Proprietary Page-Level Annotations

Page-level annotations use Perceptive's proprietary annotation format with positional data relative to the rendered image, not the source file. Converting these annotations requires understanding the coordinate system and rendering context of each page.

Individual Page Storage Reassembly

Document pages are stored individually, not as multi-page files, and must be reassembled during extraction to produce complete documents. Page ordering depends entirely on database sequence records; file system order alone cannot be trusted.

iScript Workflow Logic

Workflow queues reference specific iScript logic that executes server-side. Migrating workflows means re-implementing custom business logic in the target system, not just moving queue definitions and routing rules.

ERP/SIS Integration Key Mapping

Integration links between ImageNow and ERP/SIS systems like Banner, PeopleSoft, and SAP store cross-reference keys that must be mapped to the new system's integration model. Breaking these links disrupts automated document retrieval from the ERP.

Message Center Object Loss

Message Center items including comments, routing slips, and user notes are stored as separate objects from the documents they reference. These items are easily lost during extraction if not explicitly captured through dedicated queries.

How Merkh Helps

Precision's extraction process reassembles multi-page documents from their individual page files, maps the five-key index structure to the target system's metadata model, and captures annotations at the page level with full coordinate translation. We explicitly extract Message Center items, routing slips, and comments that other migration tools miss entirely. Our team also handles the ERP/SIS integration cutover, mapping cross-reference keys to the new system so that automated document feeds continue to function. Every extraction includes reconciliation at the document and page level to verify completeness.

ImageNow Migration Experts