Colleges and universities need seamless access to student, employee, and administrative documents. To achieve this, their document management system must integrate smoothly with student information systems (SIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, and other critical applications.
When first introduced in the early 2000s, the LearnMode technology in ImageNow (now Perceptive Content) changed the game. It used “screen scraping” to populate metadata fields for document indexing. However, evolving web technology exposed LearnMode’s inherent limitations.
This article compares decades-old ImageNow LearnMode integration with modern API-driven solutions that are now industry standard.
Using Custom Scripting to Fix LearnMode
Since LearnMode relies on HTML-based mappings, even minor updates to an SIS or ERP system—such as a slight change in web page structure—break the integration. If a vendor updates their code (now a regular occurrence in cloud-based applications), the LearnMode integration destabilizes or fails altogether.
Fixing this issue frequently requires custom scripting from external services consultancies or internal IT teams to restore functionality. This drives high costs, delays, and unnecessary downtime.
Meanwhile, your team must manually enter information – often two or three times. This opens the door for data entry errors.
The Risks of Relying on Outdated HTML-Based Integration
LearnMode’s technology remains largely unchanged from 25 years ago. It is increasingly outdated, inefficient, and fragile. For example, if LearnMode pulls a student name from the sixth row of a web page, but a system update moves that data to the ninth row, the integration breaks. IT teams must then manually reconfigure the HTML mapping to restore functionality.
LearnMode vs. Softdocs APIs
Today, cloud-based systems enable colleges and universities to easily integrate document management functionality with their SIS, ERP system, and other core applications using APIs, IDP (Intelligent Document Processing, powered by AI), and several other methods.
Modern APIs work across all devices, browsers, and platforms because they are only concerned with data. APIs are an entirely different “layer” than the software’s user interface. By contrast, LearnMode relies on the presentation of data. In a world of “any device, any place, any time, all in the cloud”, confining data integration to a single, arbitrary, user-facing screen is a wholly unscalable model.
Improving Stability During Upgrades & Scaling Integration
Modern API integrations provide greater stability than LearnMode and typically aren’t impacted by upgrades to a school’s core systems. This allows IT/IS staff to focus on the upgrade itself rather than worrying about the availability of document management functionality.
APIs scale effortlessly, giving them future-proof durability and eliminating concerns about bandwidth. They are usually backward compatible too, so the latest API versions can still handle requests from older versions of a school’s applications.
Pulling and Pushing Data with Two-Way SIS Integration
Modern API integrations enable seamless two-way communication with the SIS, ERP, CRM, or other system to exchange data in both directions. Within complex processes between students, teachers, campus and district staff, government agencies, and IT teams, APIs make this exchange seamless and instant.
For example, a student can:
- Fill out an eForm on their phone
- Attach a photo of their driver’s license
- Submit the documents for routing into an electronic workflow
This triggers two automated steps:
The system extracts data and sends it to the SIS via API integration, eliminating manual entry.
The same information is posted to a database or exported as a CSV file.
With modern API integration, schools that switch from Perceptive Content to Softdocs speed up student service, improve efficiency, and reduce the burden on their IT teams.
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