Technical FAQs
Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms is a powerful SDK that allows you to integrate character recognition, form identification, document cleanup, and data capture capabilities into your software applications. You can set up unique form templates based on your processing needs and then design customized output architecture to extract data for delivery to a database or other downstream applications, helping you get to production faster or bring a new level of functionality to your legacy systems.
Setting all of that functionality up, however, can be a daunting task, especially if you’re working with a wide variety of form types. That’s why our FormSuite enablement services team is available to help you implement the features you need to ensure lasting results. Whether you’re facing bandwidth constraints or lack the resources to build expertise quickly, our FormSuite experts bridge the gap to make your project a success. Our enablement services team takes a five step approach to every engagement.
The Accusoft Approach to Enablement Services
Step 1: Thorough Architecture Review
We start by conducting a top to bottom analysis of your production or operational environment. Our review not only evaluates your system architecture and data workflow, but also breaks down the details of your potential use cases and existing work samples.
Step 2: Identifying the Right Fit
Next, we determine the best FormSuite options based on your unique requirements and build you a custom enablement plan that will equip you with the instruction and assistance you need for a successful implementation.
Step 3: Training Your Team
Armed with information about your application’s specific requirements, we develop a customized training program to give your team a solid foundation for future development and ongoing maintenance. From guidance on form template creation and image enhancement to working with the forms API, we provide you with targeted guidance designed to help you solve potential challenges unique to your application environment.
Step 4: Implementation Support
Once the training is complete, you’ll have the foundational knowledge required to build the forms processing workflows your application requires. Our FormSuite experts remain on call to answer your questions so you can achieve your integration faster and ensure that you’re processing forms accurately.
Step 5: Preparing for Long-Term Success
Our enablement services prepare you to manage your implementation over the long term. We not only show you how to maintain the current environment, but also identify potential opportunities to deploy new features as your application scales in the future.
Keep the Partnership Going
Following your integration, we also provide ongoing support options to our customers whether or not they’ve utilized our enablement services. You get free Upgrade Support for 90 days after initial purchase, which includes email support and product upgrades. After that period, you can extend Upgrade Support, or elect to transition to our Standard Support or Priority Support annual plans.
To learn more about FormSuite for Structured Forms enablement services, talk to one of our solutions engineers. We’re ready to help you get your integration started!
Streamline Forms with Automation
Forms are part of everyday business activities. Whether you work in insurance or healthcare, retail or staffing, forms are necessary to get the job done. One of the biggest struggles of forms is their manual nature. Software tries to streamline the collection of data, but often you’re still left scanning information and manually storing files on a drive for later use.
However, digital forms aren’t exclusively available for the companies making the big bucks. Forms automation software shouldn’t be expensive. Docubee helps small companies and big businesses alike streamline their workflow processes with an economical, eco-friendly, and efficient solution.
The Economical Advantage
Digital forms processing helps users save money by enabling them to create smarter forms, use less paper, and minimize the time it takes to collect data. After creating a form, use it as a template. Save time and money by eliminating the manual recreation of forms.
Docubee helps users stay on top of tasks and track their progress. Eliminate hours spent sifting through spreadsheets and automate progress tracking to prevent bottlenecks in your business process. As a no-code workflow tool, Docubee can map, replicate, and update business processes in minutes, proving to be highly economical.
Companies using Docubee find the transition to form automation an economical one that leads the company to success. Employees focus on innovative processes instead. Chad Otar Forbes Councils Member states in his article, How Automation Can Help Your Small Business: “The approach to automation, constantly looking for ways to incrementally improve and automate your business, is the slow and steady path to success. It also allows you to track and optimize each new effort without feeling like you have to overhaul your business from head to toe each time.”
The Efficiency Gains
When you create a standard form and map out your business process workflow, you’re creating a more productive work environment for your team. Docubee’s Fast Form Creator helps users create reusable forms, route them to the appropriate party, track progress, and reduce manual paper-based data entry.
Docubee populates documents from data in web forms and other system databases making the outcome efficient and timely. Docubee’s dynamic web forms enable companies to automate their processes with the use of mobile-friendly web forms. This process creates a faster turnaround time and higher form completion rates.
According to TechFunnel, Human Resource Departments “… often fail to engage new candidates and potential employees well enough, while automated software can help not only use data to find better-qualified candidates, but also support collaboration between management and HR. IT also helps better monitor and track all recruitment and onboarding activities.”
Digital vs. Physical
Saving the planet from unduly waste of paper is a major concern for most companies. Docubee helps eliminate paper waste by storing all data in a digital format. Forms processing is expedited by the use of Docubee’s digital signature feature. Using this tool, users can track the progress and approval of forms. Digitally sign documents anytime, anywhere, on any device, and stop using fax machines or scanners to process your signature.
According to Business Guide to Paper Reduction: “There does not need to be a distinction between paper reduction efforts that are good for the environment and good for the bottom line. The two even amplify each other – while cost-savings will be the most tangible benefit, a reputation for being environmentally conscious can also be good for business.” Point blank, Docubee eliminates this waste as it helps companies succeed as an environmentally conscious partner.
Economical, efficient, and environmentally friendly, Docubee is a business process automation tool that every growing company can use to build and process forms easily. With its adaptability and ease-of-use, Docubee provides an economical and efficient way for companies big and small to automate their processes.
Today’s high-speed forms processing workflows depend on accurate character recognition to capture data from document images. Rather than manually reviewing forms and entering data by hand, optical character recognition (OCR) and intelligent character recognition (ICR) allow developers to automate the data capture process while also cutting down on human error. Thanks to OCR segmentation, these tools are able to read a wide range of character types to keep forms workflows moving efficiently.
Recognizing Fonts
Deploying OCR to capture data is a complex undertaking due to the immense diversity of fonts in use. Modern character recognition software focuses on identifying the pixel patterns associated with specific characters rather than matching characters to existing libraries. This gives them the flexibility needed to discern multiple font types, but problems can still arise due to spacing issues that make it difficult to tell where one character ends and another begins.
Fonts generally come in one of two forms that impact how much space each character occupies. “Fixed” or “monospaced” fonts are uniformly spaced so that every character takes up the exact same amount of space on the page. While not quite as popular now in the era of word processing software and digital printing, fixed fonts were once the standard form of typeface due to the technical limitations of printing presses and typewriters. On a traditional typewriter, for example, characters were evenly spaced because each typebar (or striker) was a standardized size.
From an OCR standpoint, fixed fonts are easier to read because they can be neatly segmented. Each segmented character is the same size, no matter what letters, numbers, or symbols are used. In the example below, the amount of space occupied by the characters is determined by the number of characters used, not the shape of the characters themselves. This makes it easy to break the text down into a segmented grid for accurate recognition.
“Proportional” fonts, however, are not uniformly spaced. The amount of space taken up by each character is determined by the shape of the character itself. So while a w takes up the same space as an i in a fixed font, it takes up much more space in a proportional font.
The inherent characteristics of proportional fonts makes them more difficult to segment cleanly. Since each character occupies a variable amount of space, each segmentation box needs to be a different shape. In the example below, applying a standardized segmentation grid to the text would fail to cleanly separate individual characters, even though both lines feature the exact same character count.
Yet another font challenge comes from “kerning,” which reduces the space between certain characters to allow them to overlap. Frequently used in printing, kerning makes for an aesthetically pleasing font, but it can create serious headaches for OCR data capture because many characters don’t separate cleanly. In the example below, small portions of the W and the A overlap, which could create confusion for an OCR engine as it analyzes pixel data. While the overlap is very slight in this example, many fonts feature far more extreme kerning.
In order to get a clean reading of printed text for more accurate recognition results, OCR engines like the one built into Accusoft’s SmartZone SDK utilize segmentation to take an image and split it into several smaller images before applying recognition. This allows the engine to isolate characters from one another to get a clean reading without any stray pixels that could impact recognition results.
Much of this process is handled automatically by the software. SmartZone, for instance, has OCR segmentation settings and properties that are handled internally based on the image at hand. In some cases, however, those controls may need to be adjusted manually to ensure the highest level of accuracy. If a specific font routinely returns failed or low confidence recognition results, it may be necessary to use the OCR segmentation properties to adjust for font characteristics like spaces, overlaps (kerning), and blob size (which distinguishes which pixels are classified as noise).
Applying ICR Segmentation
All of the challenges associated with cleanly segmenting printed text are magnified when it comes to hand printed text. Characters are rarely spaced or even shaped consistently, especially when they’re drawn without the guidance of comb lines that provide clear separation for the person completing a form.
Since ICR engines read characters as individual glyphs, they can become confused if overlapping characters are interpreted as a single glyph. In the example below, there is a slight overlap between the A and the c, while the cross elements of the f and t are merged to form the impression of a single character.
SmartZone’s ICR segmentation properties can be used to pull apart overlapping characters and split merged characters for more accurate recognition results. This is also important for maintaining a consistent character count. If the ICR engine isn’t accounting for overlapped and merged characters, it could return fewer character results than are actually present in the image.
Enhance Your Data Forms Capture with SmartZone
Accusoft’s SmartZone SDK supports both zonal and full page OCR/ICR for forms processing workflows to quickly and accurately capture information from document images. When incorporated into a forms workflow and integrated with identification and alignment tools like the ones found in FormSuite, users can streamline data capture and processing by extracting text and routing it to the appropriate databases or application tools. SmartZone’s OCR supports 77 distinct languages from around the world, including a variety of Asian and Cyrillic characters. For a hands-on look at how SmartZone can enhance your data capture workflow, download a free trial today.