As I prepare to attend Lotusphere, I've been thinking about how to handle the thousands of business cards I will collect and how I will integrate these into my workflow. Since we've not reached the point where people are including a mag stripe or high-density bar codes on the back of their business cards, I'm faced with either typing in the card details myself or getting a business card scanner. Always one for a tech challenge, I've decided to go the card scanning route.
Over the years, I've worked with a few business card scanners, and while these usually include support for Outlook, Goldmine, Act!, and a number of other PIMs, Lotus Notes support is often weak, and usually limited to basic address fields in the personal address book. I did a cursory search a year ago and found that someone had written an import tool. Ideally, I'm looking for seamless integration - without having to write it myself. I'm sure I'm not alone in this quest.
If you are presently using a business card scanner with Lotus Notes, I hope you will take a few minutes to share your experience or, better yet, blog about it and send me the link so that I can refer folks to your blog.
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Discussion/Comments (19):
We are currently using CardScan, and the integration with Notes is quite nice. It will create entries in your NAB based on your address book preferences.
Rainer Fuchs (): 11/25/2008 10:25:42 AM
I am using CardScan as well. The software integrates pretty well with Lotus Notes. Also, Cardscan offers synchronization with their cardscan.net web site and they have an Outlook client. So finally I have a way to synchronize my work Notes address book with my home Outlook address by using cardscan.net as an intermediary.
CardScan's customer support is superb. My reader recently broke after a couple of years of use. They replaced it immediately with a new one, no questions asked.
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 12/9/2008 5:49:25 PM
Thanks, I plan to order one!
Edwin (): 6/7/2009 11:33:07 AM
With a little work you can use CardScan as well in your own CRM system.
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 6/7/2009 1:04:17 PM
Indeed. I ended up purchasing Cardscan and then writing an agent that will populate our CRM in Notes (Act! for Notes). It's working quite well.
Kimberley W (http://<A HREF="http://www.card-reader.com">CSSN</A>): 7/17/2009 4:38:16 AM
I am using an outstanding Card Scanner from a company called CSSN - this scanner scans business cards and provides you with both the card's image, as well as the text information arranged in appropriate text fields. The extracted text and images can be saved or exported to other applications, email, and the web. The great thing is that this business card scanner does not require an external power supply and so I can carry it around with my laptop - check it out - www.card-reader.com
mark checksfield (): 4/7/2011 5:37:48 AM
I have bought the cardscan V.9, it doesn't want to synch with lotus notes, any help would be great.
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 4/11/2011 2:35:00 PM
Make sure that the names.nsf that you are using is set to "inherit" from the standard Notes Mail template or it will not work at all. I found that in the CardScan tech note database. Worked fine for me ever since and we have sence added integration with our CRM, etc. Good luck.
mark checksfield (): 4/11/2011 11:19:00 PM
Many thanks for your prompt reply. I have a situation where a secretary is scanning a large ammount of business cards for several people. is it possible to configure the scanner so she can choose what .nsf to scan to.
Karen (http://www.btscene.eu/): 4/27/2011 9:03:34 AM
We are currently using CardScan, and the integration with Notes is quite nice. It will create entries in your NAB based on your address book preferences.
Janelle (): 9/28/2011 11:40:12 AM
Many thanks for your prompt reply. I have a situation where a secretary is scanning a large amount of business cards for several people. is it possible to configure the scanner so she can choose what .nsf to scan to.
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 9/30/2011 1:51:20 PM
We wrote our own application to handle this. I suppose you could write your own program to do this.
Jim casr (): 10/19/2011 11:30:42 PM
Many thanks for your prompt reply. I have a situation where a secretary is scanning a large ammount of business cards for several people. is it possible to configure the scanner so she can choose what .nsf to scan to.
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 10/20/2011 12:32:44 AM
That is handled by the Cardscan software...
Unknown (): 10/24/2011 7:08:40 AM
Indeed. I ended up purchasing Cardscan and then writing an agent that will populate our CRM in Notes (Act! for Notes). It's working quite well.
stephen (http://scrabbleicious.com): 11/1/2011 1:11:22 AM
i was planning to purchase a new business card... Thanks for sharing the info..
John Kundtz (): 1/21/2012 11:34:50 AM
I have been using CardScan SW for about 10 years, but I fear that the new owner will not be supporting or at least enhancing it. Has anyone found a software product that can a) read Cardscan files (.cbd) and b) syncs to Lotus Notes?
Eric Mack (www.ica.com): 1/22/2012 10:22:20 AM
John, you can always migrate the CardScan data from Cardscan into a Notes address book and then massage it from there.
We wrote an internal app that will take information that Cardscan populates into the personal address book and parses it into our CRM. Works great.