Universal Housing Terms and Definitions

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Below is a list of common terms that will be used with the introduction and integration of Universal Housing at L&Q Group. The terms are divided into four areas which gives a brief description of the named term.

General Terminology
Scanning Terminology
QA Terminology
Indexing Terminology
Process Terminology

General Terminology

Workflow 2/W2	Platform upon which your UH application is running, i.e. a software language.
EDM	Electronic document management.
Reference Type	The application a scanned document relates to (i.e. Council Tax, Housing Benefits, General Filing).
Process	An item of work that will appear in a user’s work tray. The receipt of a scanned document may initiate a process.
Group/Workgroup	A group of users to whom processes/work can be assigned.
Worktray	An electronic “In” tray that belongs to a specific user on the UH system.
Group tray	An electronic “In” tray for a group of users, from within which they can pick up work and place it in their own worktray to work on.
Process Window	A window containing various functions allowing users to update and amend a work item.
Document Viewer	The windows in which a scanned image, internally generated letter, memo or call log are viewed.
Sticky Note	An image annotation that is held against a document.
Image Manipulation	Changing the way a scanned image appears, i.e. zooming in and out of a document, attaching image annotations (or notes), rotating images.
Reassigning	The process of passing a piece of work to another user/workgroup.
Document	A scanned image, internally generated letter/memo, email or call log on the Comino system.
Process Map	A graphical representation of a business process, or workflow, which can be linked into your UH application to take a user through a work item in a step by step process .Similar to a flowchart.
Notes	Text that can be added to a document/process or filing level within a W2 application.

Scanning Terminology

Scanner	An item of hardware that takes a copy of a document and stores its image on a computer.
Auto-Feeder	A paper tray from which a scanner will automatically take pages to be scanned.
Flatbed	Similar to a photocopier, a flatbed allows you to place awkward documentation, such as booklets, passports etc, on a flat screen from which the scanner will take an image.
Scanning	The process whereby the image on a piece of paper is converted into a computerised image.
Batch	A pile of sorted post (i.e. paper). On the UH system a batch is a temporary storage area for scanned documents before they are indexed.
BatchControl Sheet	A document which is completed on scanning a batch and which should contain the batch number generated by the UH system. This is stored with the batch once the pages have been scanned and the information on the batch control sheet can be used to retrieve batches that contain documents for rescanning.
Pages	The sides of a document that have been scanned into the UH system.
Document	A series of pages which represent one scanned item of post.
Scanned Image	A graphical representation of a piece of scanned post (i.e. an on screen “picture” of an item which has been scanned in).
Page Separator	A graphical representation of where one document’s pages stop and a new document’s pages begin.
Speckling	Dark spots, or background “noise” which appears on a scanned image when it has been scanned in too dark.
De-speckling	The process of removing background “noise” from a scanned image.
Re-scanning	The process of replacing an insufficient quality image with one of better quality.

QA Terminology

Quality Assurance (QA)	The process of checking the quality of images that have been scanned into the Comino system.
Accepting Pages	The process of confirming that a scanned image is of suitable enough quality to pass on to be indexed.
Rejecting Pages	The process of flagging a scanned image as being of unsuitable quality to pass on to be indexed.

Indexing Terminology

Indexing	An electronic filing process allowing you to associate account numbers, reference numbers etc with a scanned image.
Document Type Hierarchy	Graphical representation of folders that contain document types on the UH system.
Document Types	Categories of documents that are scanned into and generated out of the UH system.
Source	The person who has sent in the document, which is being indexed.
Wildcards	These could be one of two characters, a question mark (?) or an asterisk (*), and are used as an aid to searching, in order to perform partial searches. The asterisk is used in a search field to represent any number of characters, and the question mark represents one character.
Keyword	An additional text entry field, the contents of which are held as extra indexing information against the document you are indexing. Documents can be searched upon and retrieved by the Keywords that are associated with them.

Process Mapping Terminology

Process Map	A graphical representation of a business process, or workflow, which can be linked into your UH application to take a user through a work item in a step by step process. Similar to a flowchart.
Process Type	A description for a work item, which will be displayed in a users worktray. It is also a link between a document type and a process map.
Target	A figure used to indicate the time a process should take used in conjunction with the interval type.
Interval Type	The timescale used to calculate the length of a process such as days, weeks, months etc.
Manual Start	The ability to start a process without the receipt of a document or generation of a letter, memo, email etc.
Pending Rule	The rules that are set up to decide if a process is pended (i.e. set the status to waiting) when it will be released out of pending.
Concurrency Rule	The rules that are set up to decide how multiple documents that initiate a process should be dealt with when a process is active or complete.
Process Map Override	Allows a different process map to be used if certain criteria have been met.
Process Role Type	A description that can be used to explain a role within a process map.
Process Allocation	A way of creating and deciding how work will be allocated to users on the UH application.
Map Properties	Information fields that give an overview of what the process map has been created for.
Process Map Rules	The timescales for the process map and the users associated with it.
Stage	A part of the process map that allows you to create the information that the user will see when they open up a work item within a work tray.
Check List	A list of procedures that are performed by a user outside of the UH application.
Action	A list of procedures that are performed on the UH application such as write a letter, add a process note etc.
Route	A link between two or more stages of a process map that represents how work flows within the process map.
Parallel Stage	A stage in a process map that enables multiple users to work on the same document as each other before the document moves to the next part of the process.
Modularised Process	A stage in a process map that enables you to move from one process map to another.
Class	These are reference type specific fields such as forename, surname, benefit account number to determine parameters within screens such as concurrency rules, process allocation maintenance etc.

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Universal Housing Terms and Definitions

Developed by Anthony Lamont for L&Q Group.