Troubleshooting
It is important to understand the relationship between the Templates, documents, and Template Libraries.
Template Libraries can contain multiple Templates as only the Template Library is specified during the FPE setup. This is because the Template is matched automatically to the scanned document based on content of the scanned documents.
The following points should be considered:
- Template documents should be unique if they are used within one scanning batch and/or Template Library.
- Even though Templates may have different Zones specified and different Static fields, the entire document is read for the purposes of matching. Therefore, if multiple templates have the same content, all Zone data may fail.
For example: Two Purchase Order documents that are identical and have unique Templates in the same Library:
- Purchase Order 1 has a static zone for the top title.
- Purchase Order 2 has a static zone for the Bill To field.
If you scan a document as Purchase Order 1 + 2 pages, plus Purchase Order 2 + 2 pages, everything on both Purchase Orders matches both Templates and failures may occur.
Recommended action: Create separate Template Libraries for the two templates and create two profiles within FPE.
No matching template
If the Forms Processing Extender cannot establish a template matching, you most likely face an issue with finding the static zones.
The possible reasons for this issue can be a wrong filter assigned to the static zone, a wrong barcode (if using static barcodes), or the zone being defined to the wrong location (the position of the defined zone does not correspond to any template).
Recommended action: Start the Template Editor, and use the Template properties window to browse to the image for which the recognition failed. You will be able to see the cause of the issue in the editor (wrong zone location, wrong filter, and so forth).
No connection to Kofax Forms Processor
In case you cannot connect to the Kofax Forms Processor, a client-side error message is displayed:
This issue may be caused by one of the following reasons:
- The Kofax Forms Processor service is not running on the machine denoted by the given IP address or DNS name.
- The machine in question is unavailable.
- The listed port is not open.
- The service is watching on another port.
To solve the issue, check the above list, and perform any corrections necessary accordingly.
Evaluating recognition results
The validation screen on the client side provides detailed information on the recognition errors. The possible errors are as follows:
- Low confidence: The recognition surety of the zone text is below the Confidence attribute set for the particular zone. If the Treat low confidence pages as exceptions option is set, pages with such errors are automatically moved to the Exception folder.
- Filter failed: The text of the zone was recognized successfully, but the text does not meet the Filter criteria set for the zone.
- Recognition error: The zone was not recognized successfully; for example, a Barcode type zone does not contain a barcode.
- Unknown error: An unknown error, with no detailed information available.
Best Practices
Determining the quality of an input document
Sometimes it is not easy to establish the boundary between Forms Processing Extender recognition issues as opposed to poor input paper quality.
To determine whether the selected image is acceptable, start the Template Editor, and define zones for the parts to be used for recognition. Then you should check if the current settings result in any errors for the zone, and if the text displayed under the Value property of the zone matches the actual text in the image.
If this is not the case, then the image quality is not optimal.
If a Low confidence message is displayed under the Error section of the zone, a decrease of the Confidence value may result in an improved recognition - but be aware that this can result in the process recognizing genuinely wrong text as correct.