Capturing Header Fields in a Document

• 19/04/2024
• 13 minutes to read

This article describes the overall process of capturing fields at header level. For line recognition, see Capturing Line Fields in a Document (Line Recognition).

When capturing fields, Document Capture uses captions and values to search for and identify textual information in your imported documents. Both captions and values are identifiable text strings that are visible as textual elements in the imported documents, but they differ in function: You can think of a field caption as a sort of label that helps Document Capture to identify the correct value for a template field. Each caption is associated with a corresponding value, which is then the actual text that you want to capture and use when registering a document. An example of a caption could be Invoice no., and the associated value could then be the number 1647. In the document viewer on the right side of the document journal, field captions are highlighted using orange boxes, whereas field values are highlighted using blue boxes.

Once a purchase document is linked to a vendor in Business Central, Document Capture will automatically check if there’s a template associated with that vendor. If so, this template will be applied to the document, and all fields will be captured according to the rules and configuration of that template. All document fields must be captured and have valid values in order for you to be able to register the document.

If it’s the first time you receive a document from a vendor, there will be no templates associated with that vendor. To assign a template to the vendor, you’ll have to activate field recognition in the document journal (see step 5 below). This will automatically create a new template, link it to the vendor, and capture all fields for that document.

To capture fields

To capture the fields of a document, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Document Categories, and then choose the related link.
2. Select the code of the relevant document category – in this case PURCHASE – to open the document journal.
3. If Document Capture has automatically identified a vendor for the document whose fields you want to capture, the number of the identified vendor is displayed in the Vendor field of the document list. If no vendor has been identified, assign a vendor manually as described under Changing a document’s associated vendor.

If this is the first document you receive and import from the assigned vendor, there's no associated template, but Document Capture creates and assigns one automatically. Field captions and values will then be captured and highlighted using orange and blue boxes in the document viewer on the right.

You can always change the identified field values and captions. To learn more, see Training Document Capture to locate values below.

Understanding field captions and values

As mentioned above, Document Capture searches for and identifies textual information in imported documents using field captions and corresponding values. For example, consider the following texts which could be found in any invoice:

As is evident in the above, captions and values always work in pairs. Usually, captions don’t change from document to document when the documents have been sent by the same vendor, unless the vendor changes invoice layout. Values, on the other hand, will change from document to document. For example, the invoice number will typically increase incrementally for each invoice, and the same usually goes for the invoice date.

Captions are defined for each template field, and the values are captured and stored in the document itself. It’s important to note that in order for captions and values to be captured correctly, the distance between them should remain the same in all documents from the same vendor. For instance, in the examples above, the caption immediately precedes its corresponding value at a certain distance, and if the two elements have the same position and distance between them in all subsequent documents, they will all be processed correctly. Captions and values can also be split into separate lines, for example if an Invoice number caption is placed on one line and its corresponding value then follows immediately below it on the next line (a common invoice format). This is also perfectly fine, as long as the distance between the caption and the value is the same for all documents from the same vendor. Even captions that are placed far away from their related values are completely acceptable, provided that the distance between the two remains the same in all documents.

When Document Capture identifies the values of fields in a document, it searches for captions that are defined for each template field and then attempts to capture their associated values. For example, if Document Capture searches for the text string “Invoice number” in an invoice and manages to find this, it can then locate the actual invoice number as well based on the template configuration.

Training Document Capture to locate values

Document Capture sometimes fails to capture the value of a field in a document, or it may identify an incorrect element as the field’s associated value. If this happens, you can easily train Document Capture by changing the caption and/or showing it where exactly to locate the correct value in the document. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Document Categories, and then choose the related link.
2. Select the code of the relevant document category – in this case PURCHASE – to open the document journal.
3. In the document fields section (under Document Header), select the template field that you want to correct – for example, Posting Description.
4. On a computer, you can use your mouse to select exactly what text in the document should be captured for the chosen template field: To set the caption, right-click and hold the button to draw an orange box around the relevant text in the document viewer.
5. Similarly, to set the corresponding value for the chosen template field, left-click and hold the button to draw a blue box around the relevant text in the document viewer.
6. The selected text is added to the template field in the document fields section. Verify that it has been captured correctly.
7. To confirm that the text is consistently captured correctly, go to the action bar and select Home and then Recognize Fields. If the text somehow isn't captured correctly this second time, carry out steps 4-7 again until you get the desired result.

To add template fields

You can easily capture more information than what’s captured by the default templates. To do so, either add one of the additional fields that are included in the standard configuration, or create your own custom field.

To add an additional field from the standard configuration, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Document Categories, and then choose the related link.
2. Select the code of the relevant document category – in this case PURCHASE – to open the document journal.
3. In the action bar, select Template and then Add Template Field to open the Template Field List.
4. In the list, under Field Name, select the field that you want to add to the template.

The Template Field List is closed, and the selected field is added to the list of template fields in the document fields section (under Document Header).

If you need other fields than the ones included in the standard configuration, you can create a custom field. To learn more, see Setting up New Template Fields.

To remove template fields

Just as you can add new fields, you can easily remove fields from a template. To remove a field from a template, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Document Categories, and then choose the related link.
2. Select the code of the relevant document category – in this case PURCHASE – to open the document journal.
3. In the action bar, select Template and then Remove Template Field to open the Template Field List.
4. In the list, under Field Name, select the field that you want to remove from the template.
5. A dialog box appears, asking you if you want to remove the chosen field from the template. Select Yes.

The dialog box is closed, and the selected field is removed from the list of template fields in the document fields section (under Document Header).

See also

Working with Paper and PDF Documents