DocStar ECM Pros and Cons

That you can look at the information anywhere. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Not very user-friendly................... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It works well in a complicated workflow environment Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The customer service aspect has proven frustrating and slow to fix issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ease of deployment and ease of use for our staff. Very easy to administrate and troubleshoot if the situation calls for it. Saves time to search for these massive documents and saves the physical space that would otherwise have to be used on them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We had a data loss once, but it was recoverable. The interface seems antiquated but we may be using an older version. Some features are confusing to use, but not prohibitively so. These dislikes are honestly small gripes, since every one of them is (obviously) quickly written off by a counterpoint. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Like the whole idea of digitizing paper copies with search capabilities using meta data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Scanner associated with the solution, issues with scanning multiple batches at the same time. Also recent changes with the licensing. Earlier all users could scan view edit now there is a charge for users that can scan and edit. Some settings that needs for accuracy, slows down the scanning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We scan hundreds of pages a documents a day. The barcode reading and OCR capabilities are very helpful to us and Docstar has been a reliable and successful part of our service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I'd like to have more options as to the type of document that is output from Docstar. TIFF is the normal output and some software does not work well with that format. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Probably the thing I like best about DocStar is that I can load lots of content into 1 database. I can easily navigate the "workflows" and "retrieve" tabs. And the search bar is a great tool and helps me out immensely when I need to find something quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would have to say, my main dislike is the fact that when I do scan a large stack of papers, DocStar takes quite a while to "think" before loading the content file and allowing me to "submit". Sometimes I wait 10-15 seconds just staring at the screen, waiting for the next screen to load. I have used this system every work day for 2 years now and each update we've had recently has made the system run slower on my end for scanning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

not sure still working through the implementation Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In trying to implement, we've not yet seen the project and are constantly told it will work. I would love to see the product work as well as all of the promises of things that will work, actually work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What sold us was the large, prominent search bar that allows you to put in anything -- vendor ID, invoice, etc -- and get results. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Where to begin! First of all, put it this way: Epicor just charged us for an annual renewal and *we aren't even fully live yet.* Our experience has been a litany of promises not met by the support staff or the product itself. A few favorites:

- The security model is inflexible. In our setup we have basically branches and a main office. We need to have certain people at each branch to be able to submit/approve documents, and then others at the main office be able to approve/process. It's possible that a user might switch roles or offices (we've had promotions, etc.) This seemed completely mystifying to them. Whereas every other program I manage has a model based on roles and locations, and works fine, they said (and I'm quoting the e-mail still in my inbox): "This problem has had myself and my team spinning."

- Our $225/hr consultant, who's since left the company, told my developer that he started on the support team taking calls. I have nothing against growing internally with a company, but in this case he wasn't at the level to be to design complex workflows. Another consultant was helping us troubleshoot when suddenly performance took a huge nosedive -- turned out an index was missing on a database table. When my in-house developer (who has a masters in Com Sci) asked if there were any scripts to determine if the database was up to spec, and add any missing indexes, etc, the consultant "uhh no. That sounds like a good idea though." Multiple times my developer has had to stop Epicor employees from doing stupid things on their own product, or write views or otherwise show them better ways of doing things.

- They use "grids" to store metadata about a document, which is fine except we continually live in fear that all users have access to change all elements of a grid. We might have a payable item up and a change to metadata might then totally bork the workflow.

- There are many weird quirks about the UI. They stack navigation elements in the reverse order of what we'd expect, which makes the visual hierarchy odd. Example: the sidebar for a document says Line Items, Content Fields, History, Workflow. Workflow is what you're going to use most, so why is it at the bottom? Why are there multiple Save/Submit buttons, that seem to trigger each other? Also the sidebar has a narrow auto-hiding scroll bar that's very difficult to see. Without a clear affordance, my users don't even know the options are there.

- Multiple times support has said "oh, apply this hotfix". A hotfix being a special narrow update for a problem and not a full release. Doesn't inspire confidence in the development cycle.

- For connecting our ERP, Dynamics GP, to a Docstar lookup (i.e. "click here to load this document in Doctar") Cody provided... a single e-mail with 12 lines of code. That's it. No recommendations about how to implement it, where it goes, what other customers have done, etc. The AP functionality was billed as a key feature of Docstar.

- A lot of the capture functionality is in a systray application, and the Web app complains you need to install it. I get that can help with some scanners and such, but we use Citrix and thin clients. In my mind the product should be Web first, and helper apps should be optional add-ons. We are only using network scanners anyway, not USB. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is easy to upload documents, and sort documents into categories. I also like that the search function searches within documents as well as titles, in cases of mislabels, etc. -- it's very easy to find what I'm looking for! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The web portal looks old and outdated, not as smooth or polished as website you're used to using on other platforms. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OCR functionality and workflows. This allows greater automation of our contracts with customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The user interface looks a little dated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.