Zone Operations Section

In Smart Forms Extender, we can attach custom operations to zones and templates to handle more complex form processing scenarios. Using zone/template operations we can express every form processing scenario also possible with the Form Processing Extender and much more.

For example, Split on Matched Templates, Remove Matched Templates, Treat Unmatched Pages as Exceptions and Treat Low Confidence Pages as Exceptions can be configured using operations as well.

An operation describes what should happen (action) and when it should happen (condition). For example the configuration of Split on Matched Templates feature using operations would look like this:

if template matched then start new document from this page. The possibilities are limited only by the available conditions and actions (listed below).

Adding a new operation is possible by pressing the Add button or selecting some condition and action from the combo boxes.

Operations work the following way: they evaluate the selected condition and if the condition is fulfilled, they perform the selected action. The number of operations is not limited per zone or template. If more than one operation is defined then Smart Forms Extender processes them in their order (from top to bottom). To control the order of execution, you can Move up or Move down the selected operation in the list. It is also possible to remove the selected operation or remove all of them.

Currently, the following conditions are available:

• if page contains low confidence zone: this condition is met when the matched page contains at least one zone that was marked with Low Confidence error.

• if RegExp matches zone value: this condition is met if the zone value matches the specified regular expression. This condition can be defined for zone operations only. In case of template operations this condition is not interpreted since it is not defined which zone value should match the regular expression.
• if SQL query contains zone value: this condition is met if the result of an SQL query contains the zone value. When the SQL query returns more than one column then Smart Forms Extender looks for the zone value in the first column. The search for the zone value in the result uses case insensitive string compare.
  This condition can be defined for zone operations only. In case of template operations this condition is not interpreted since it is not defined which zone value should be included in the result of SQL query.

• if template matched: this condition is met when the template matched on a page

The list of available actions is the following:

• accept zone value: this action accepts the zone value when the related condition is met. When the condition is not met the zone is marked with Filter failed error. Later, this error is displayed at the validation screen (if defined) to inform the user that the value of the zone maybe wrong and needs to be reviewed.
• export page to exception folder: this action copies the currently processed page to the defined exception folder and removes this page from the output document.
• finish current document at this page: this action starts a new document from the next page. The currently processed page is the last page of the previous document. This is a new feature as splitting previously could start new document only from the matched page.
• reject zone value: this action is contradictory to the accept zone value action. If the related condition is met, the zone is marked with Filter failed error otherwise no error is indicated.
• remove this page: this action removes the currently processed page from the output document.
• replace substring in zone value: this action replaces a substring in the zone value where the specified regular expression matches the zone value. The replacement happens at every matching substring.
• search for substring in zone value: this action selects the first occurrence of a substring from the recognized zone value. The substring is selected where the specified regular expression matches the zone value (This action can be used to achieve similar functionality as in case of Search Zones in the FPE).
• skip subsequent pages: this action skips some of the following pages from form processing to increase processing performance. For example, if we know that every 10^th page matches a template then it is completely unnecessary to perform the template selection process for every page since only every tenth matches the template. All we need to do in this case is add this action and specify the number of pages to skip (9 in this case).
• start new document from this page: this action starts a new document (aka. batch) from the currently processed page. The first page of the new document is the currently processed page. The finish current document at this page action is quite similar. The only difference between them is the first page of the new document.

Some of the previously mentioned conditions and actions have additional parameters that can be changed by pressing the Edit button in the same line where the condition and action were selected in the operations list.