Problem with most document converters
Uh-oh, I was just sent this 13 page document which I need to know about for my upcoming meeting. Problem, I got to jump in my car and get to that meeting.
I wish there was a way that I could summarize all this information and then maybe convert it to audio. Wait a minute, summarize plus audio? Yeah, that's exactly what I need.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And yes, it's a fact, dealing with documents can be some of the most time-consuming components of your day, but it doesn't have to be.
Whether you want to convert or translate or merge documents together, in this video, I'm going to share with you seven different tools which can help you do that so you can spend less time with your documents and more time focused on your work.
Now, when it comes to transforming your documents, you may first come to Google and type in something like convert to word and you'll find an awful lot of options here.
Maybe I'll click this first one, convert a PDF to word file. So all I need to do is select...
No, wait a minute. This actually isn't the conversion tool here. This is an advertisement
and how much do I actually know about this service? What are they going to do with my files? I obviously have to upload them first before I convert them. And then if I want to do something else such as translate or summarize, I'm going to have to go to some other website.
Workflow Central by Xerox
Well, there really is a much simpler and more secure way and it starts right here at Workflow Central by Xerox. Here within Workflow Central, we have access to seven different tools, which are not only powerful in and of themselves, but better yet,
we have the ability to combine these tools together. So in my example, I'm going to select summarize.
I'm going to choose where that file is from. Whether it's on my local drive or if I want to connect my account directly to my other cloud services, such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. In this case, I'm going to stick with my local drive.
I just need to select browse and I'm going to go and find that very long draft document. Next up, I can choose if there's a particular page range that I would like to specify, but in this case, I'd like to summarize really the entire document.
I'm going to select next in this case and I can choose the summarization length. This is really great because I don't want just some default length, maybe I want to get about 20% of what's happening in this document.
It goes one step further by telling me do I want to specify is this a business document? Is it related to something legal? If you want to get even more granular, there is a large collection of specific domains so that it can pull out keywords depending on your use.
In this case, I'm going to select next and then we are brought to our convert to audio settings, which yes, I want it in English
and I'm going to select next. At this stage, I can give it a different name if I want to
and I can choose if I want to email it to myself, re-upload it to wherever it came from
within my cloud repository, or just download the file. This is what I'm going to select in this case and then select run.
Workflow Central will immediately start processing that job and will automatically download it to my system,there it is, as soon as it's complete. And now I've got a summary audio version of that document.
Just a little over two minutes in length, which I can listen to on my phone, in my car, or maybe right here on my computer while I'm doing other things.
How to hide sensitive information
But remember, converting to audio and summarizing your documents are just two of the seven tools available to us. Let's take a look at a few more. Here to the left, we have redact, which is probably the easiest way to block out sensitive information or specific words or phrases in just a few clicks.
Now keep in mind that Workflow Central supports some of the most popular file types, but goes way beyond just text files.
So whether it is a word document, PDF or text file, that is great, but you can also redact things such as JPEG, GIFs or PNG images as well. In this case, I am going to select a word document because there are a few names in which I want to blank out in this particular case.
Once again, I can specify a page range if I like, but I want to do the entire document here. On the next screen, we are able to choose a specific location and this can be so helpful if you want to, by default, block out credit card numbers, email addresses or things such as taxpayer identification numbers.
Since I have the United States selected here, it is bringing up some of the most common things which we would like to block out. Of course I can choose which one of these
that I would like to allow through or allow to be visible. But in this case, I'm going to leave them all here. So all person names, email addresses, and phone numbers should be blocked out. Now down below, I can also add my own custom words or phrases.
In this case, I'm going to choose the word reset, and I'm also going to choose the word Simpletivity because maybe I just want to share what I'm doing with this document, I don't want to let them know the name of the program, I don't want to know that I'm actually directly involved.
I'm going to select next and now we can run this transformation. With my job completed, I can now open up this PDF document
and all of those keywords along with specific names have been blotted out. Now I can safely send this to someone knowing that the names and keywords will not be visible because perhaps, I haven't gotten permission or I haven't confirmed these particular quotes from these particular individuals. I can safely share this knowing that they don't have access
Saving default settings for future documents
to sensitive information. Another bonus of using Workflow Central is that you can save any of your conversions. Here we are back in the redact menu and maybe this time I need something for Canada looking for specific information here, but I've also added some other specific words. When I hit next, I'll have the ability to save this
so I don't have to reselect those options or reenter those words. By saving this workflow, I can give it a custom name. I'm going to call this hide details and I can even choose my own unique icon. So maybe I'm going to pick something like, oh,
maybe like this checkboard and I'm going to choose this black icon and hit save.
Now you can see near the bottom of the screen I have my custom workflow. So the next time I need to redact a particular document and it fits those requirements,
I no longer have to choose those settings. When I hit next, it already has my specific location and those words ready for me to go so I can continue and go ahead and run this job.
Convert, translate and merge documents
Looking at the additional tools available to us, we can convert files to Microsoft Office documents, we can convert handwriting to text and we can translate into more than 40 different languages.
And what I especially like about the translate feature is that you can translate five languages at a time. So if I need to convert or transpose something, I can do it in a matter of seconds. Last but not least is the ability to merge,
which has quickly become my most used feature cause not only do I need to merge the same types of documents together, but sometimes I need to merge images with PDFs, with word files and a variety of other types and I can do so right here within just a few clicks.
If you'd like to learn more about Xerox Workflow Central and start using it for yourself, be sure to click the link in the description below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
