When I mention that I’m scanning documents for students’ files to my advising colleagues they often assume that our office has an expensive scanner. They express great interest in paperless systems, but see the presumed expense is a definite barrier. That is until I explain that, whether they realize it or not, they already have a capable scanner in their iPhone and iPad (many advisors on our campus have iOS devices). So “How do you do this?” they ask. In response, I’ve put together my brief guide to getting started using your iOS device as a scanner.

Get a scanning app (or two)

There are dozens of scanning apps in the iOS App Store. Many are free with ads, have a free version with a basic feature set (with an accompanying paid version), or offer in-app purchases to go ad-free or access advanced features. The three I suggest to get a feel for scanning are ScanBot, Scanner Mini (a free version of Scanner Pro), or Evernote Scannable (if you’re in the Evernote ecosystem). If you only want to save scans to Microsoft’s OneDrive , you might try Office Lens. Its features are quite limited, and it seems designed mainly to save scans to OneDrive. Start by installing a few, try them out, and see which works for your needs.

Scanning tips

• Scan on a flat surface, such as a table or desk, whose color is dark enough to provide good contrast with the document. Most scanning apps will automatically detect the document’s edge and the high contrast helps this work most effectively.
• Scan where there is bright, even lighting. Scanning in daylight near a window and/or with strong room lighting tends to work the best. One challenge to scanning with an iPad can be the shadow it casts over part of the document. Good lighting will help obtain optimal results. Some apps will correct for the distortion from a device being held at an angle, rather than directly overhead. This can often overcome the iPad shadow issue. It also makes it easier to capture a readable scan without the need to have your device absolutely parallel with your document. It helps too with documents that have been folded (like a receipt from your pocket). Scanner Mini and Office Lens are two apps with this feature.
• Try different filters to optimize the readability of the scan. Good scanning apps will allow you to apply various filters to your scans. Filters make it easier to get the best results based on the document you’re capturing and what you want to do with the scan. Most common filters are full color, grayscale, and black and white. ScanBot adds a “magic color” filter that tries to optimize the scan automatically (I’ve had mixed results with this). If your document is mainly text, black and white usually provides good readability (especially if you plan to apply OCR to the document) and keeps file sizes smaller than grayscale or full color. I suggest trying each filter to see which one produces the best results. Filters are applied before you save the document, so you can see the results and change filters, if desired.
  

  Filter options in ScanBot

• Save your scans as PDF documents and apply OCR. For document scanning, Adobe’s PDF format is usually preferable to JPEG (unless, perhaps, if you’re scanning photos and want to use them in a photo app or upload them to photo site like Flickr or Google Photos). PDFs are universal across platforms, offer small file sizes, and can contain a text layer (sometimes called PDF + text). The last feature is particularly useful for a paperless system because it allows you to search the text of a document in the future. To add a text layer to a scanned document, you need to apply optical character recognition (OCR) to the scan otherwise your PDF is just a picture of your document. Some scanning apps, including Scanner Pro and ScanBot (with in-app purchase) have this feature, and it works surprisingly well. Evernote will apply OCR to scanned documents, using its cloud-based servers, and also is quite accurate. It also can extract some of this data, for example when scanning business cards, which can then be exported to a contact management system. Office Lens will also scan business cards (this is done in the cloud) and import the data into a contact card stored in OneDrive.

What you can do with your scan

There are a number of ways you can manage your scans once you have created them. Depending on the type of document you’re scanning and what information is recorded there (e.g. student ID numbers or grades), some methods may raise some student record concerns. This is particularly the case if your scan might be synced to a cloud service, such as iCloud, Dropbox, or Evernote. Disclaimer: In my commentary I note some of these concerns, but I’m not intending to give FERPA advice. Check with your Registrar or IT department if you have concerns about this.

1. Store it on your device

Storing scans on your device is one option. This approach works if you scan infrequently, have space on your device for storage, and do not have a need (or very limited need) to send the scan elsewhere. Using an app such as Readdle’s Documents or DEVONthink can provide a place to organize and store them for future reference. This solution can work effectively if you have a large amount of available space on your device or if you scan documents infrequently. This may be your only option depending on your institution’s policy regarding student records (if you’re scanning documents with FERPA protected data). Be aware that some scanning apps, such as Office Lens and Evernote Scannable, do not store scans in the app. They are essentially conduits to save the scan to their respective apps, which store your documents in their cloud services.

2. Email scans to yourself

If you plan to store scans on your desktop, laptop, or a file server attached to them, email can be used to transfer your scan from your iOS device. Using the iOS share sheet, most scanning apps can send a scan as an email attachment. Sending the message to yourself allows you to open the email and attachment on your primary computer and work with the file from there. Assuming you’re using your institution’s email account, email is an option worth considering if you’re working with scans with student information on them.

There are a few downsides to using email in this way. First, depending on what you’re scanning, like color documents or multiple pages, the files can be on the larger size. This can be a limitation since most email services restrict the size of attachments that can be sent. Furthermore, since you will end up with two copies of the file, one in your inbox and another in your sent mail, this can quickly eat up space on your email server (unless you’re diligent about deleting both copies once you’ve saved the file elsewhere, which also adds a step your scanning workflow). Your friendly IT department may restrict your abilities to send and receive mail once this capacity is reached. Second, I find managing documents being sent back and forth over email to be cumbersome. Sending email to yourself as a method of file transfer can involve many steps and may lead to scans stacking up in your inbox (most of us do not want more email). Unless you have a very low scan volume or your institution’s IT policy is severely constraining, an email-based workflow is usually not the most efficient strategy to manage your scans.

3. Sync to a cloud service

The option that provides the most flexibility with your scans is having them sync to a cloud service, such as iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, or Google Drive. A distinct advantage of this method is that your scans are available on multiple devices simultaneously. This opens up many possibilities for what you can do with a scan including printing, accessing them in meetings, saving to a file server, sharing with colleagues, or uploading to an advising record keeping system. Most scanning apps can send scans to a cloud service using the share sheet. Some apps, such as ScanBot, can be configured to do this automatically once it has scanned and processed the document. Others, such as Office Lens and Evernote Scannable, are designed mainly to send scans to their respective cloud-based services. Syncing to a cloud service is the by far the most flexible solution for managing scanned documents.

It does, however, raise the most concern for scans with student data since files reside on servers not directly in control of the institution. Some institutions have contracts with cloud service providers, such as Google or Microsoft, where the terms of the contract are such that FERPA-protected data can be stored in the service (usually through an account tied to your university credentials). Your IT department should be able to advise if your school has this sort of arrangement. If this is not available on your campus, using one of the other methods discussed above may provide a solution when working with documents with student data. You could still employ a cloud service for other kinds of scans, for example, reference information or handouts from meetings.

Sharing options in Scanner Mini (with in-app purchase to full version)

Now that you’ve learned the basics of scanning with an iOS device, download a few apps and give it a try. Before long you will be a scanning pro and your colleagues will be asking you “How did you do that?” too.