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Planning and Designing in

Quick Fields
Training Reference Guide
April 2018

© 2018 Laserfiche
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About this Training Reference Guide

Purpose This Training Reference Guide is intended to be used as a reference when taking the
Planning and Designing in Quick Fields online course.

This guide provides an outline of key points and is intended to complement the
online course and to aid in note taking. In addition, links to helpful resources are
provided for learners who would like more information about a particular topic.

In this This document contains the following topics.


Document
Topic See Page
1. Introduction 3
2. Planning a Complex Session 4
3. Designing Sessions I 7
4. Designing Sessions II 9
5. Quick Fields Administration Console 11
6. Quick Fields Agent 13

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1. Introduction

Course This course is designed for intermediate, advanced, or administrative Quick Fields
Description users. Users will configure and administer an optimized Quick Fields session, take
advantage of Quick Fields add-ons (i.e., Document Classification, Quick Fields
Agent, etc.), troubleshoot common errors, and manage sessions and document
classes in the Quick Fields Administration Console.

Overview By the end of this course, learners will be able to:


• Plan and build a session with multiple document classes.
• Manage Quick Fields users and security in the Quick Fields Administration
Console.
• Schedule unattended processing with Quick Fields Agent.

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2. Planning a Complex Session

Introduction This lesson reviews how to plan a complex Quick Fields implementation, with
different document types being scanned and processed together.

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:

• Assess image quality and determine which processes will improve it the
most.
• Determine when multiple document classes would provide an advantage
over using a single document class.
• Analyze a sample batch of documents to determine the best method for
identification and capture.
• Identify additional considerations when deciding when to run OCR
processing and choosing between different end-user capture methods.

Planning A Quick Fields session contains one or more document classes. Sessions are used to
Document define all the processing rules that will run on an entire batch of documents.
Classes Document classes define a set of documents that you want to process the same way.

The following are advantages and disadvantages of two different organization


methods.

Method 1: Creating a Single Document Class

The first method is to create a single document class to process all information as
one document type. Processes would be configured to run on relevant pages. For
example, in a packet containing a W-9 (4 pages), business license (1 page), and
proof of insurance (1 page), a pattern matching process could be configured to run
on the business license page to extract the business license number.

Since all documents are being scanned together, Quick Fields will create a single 6-
page document in Laserfiche for each scanned packet. Any template and fields
would be applied to the packet as a whole, since these are configured at the
document class level.

Advantages
• Less configuration is necessary compared to other methods, because only
one document class is configured with one set of metadata.
• If there is a mistake in processing, such as a misread OCRed character,
documents for the same vendor will likely still stay together.
• Fewer document classes results in faster processing speeds, because fewer
identification steps are necessary.

Disadvantages
• Documents have to be pre-organized into packets with a consistent page
ordering before scanning.
• All pages in the packet have to be stored to the same folder in Laserfiche
with the same metadata applied to everything in the packet.
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• Different document types cannot be stored separately, since they are all part
of one packet.
• If documents arrive at different times, you must wait until they all arrive so
you can scan the packet in its entirety.

Method 2: Creating Multiple Document Classes

The second method is to create separate document classes for each document type.

Advantages

• You have the added flexibility of being able to scan one or more of these
documents for any vendor, in any order you want, because as separate
document classes, each would be identified and processed separately.
• You can store the different document types as separate documents in
Laserfiche, each with their own metadata, and stored to potentially different
folders.

Disadvantages
• Documents are processed separately, so if an error such as misread OCRed
character occurs, it may lead to data on one document that doesn’t match
the others.
• This method is slightly more work to configure, because identification rules
and metadata need to be configured for multiple document classes instead
of just one.
• Using this method may make it more difficult to use information from one
document type to fill out metadata of another document.

For more information on sessions and document classes, see the Quick Fields help
files – Sessions and Document Classes.

Planning Identification conditions define how Quick Fields assigns a document class to each
Identification document, and if you have multi-page documents, these conditions are also used to
determine which pages should be grouped together as a single document.

Identification is powerful and flexible, but it can be complicated, especially when


designing larger sessions. Therefore, it’s useful to have an identification strategy
before you get further into the details of building the session.

Processes can be applied to identify the first and/or last page of a document. If your
documents are a fixed number of pages, it’s a best practice to configure the
document length setting to identify your documents.

If multiple pages are grouped and scanned together as a document, you can use the
Keep each file as a separate document option to ensure the pages are saved as a
single document.

For more information on identification, see the Quick Fields help files –
Identification.

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Planning OCR OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, is the process of reading text from an
image. Pages must have associated text before Quick Fields processes that use text
can succeed. However, OCR can take a lot of computer resources, and as one of the
most computationally intensive processes, it can be slow. Therefore, it’s important
to ensure that when running OCR, it’s running at an appropriate time and when
necessary.

General OCR Guidelines

• When the situation permits, aim to run OCR when users are not actively
using Quick Fields.

• Avoid duplicating OCR processing.

For more information on OCR, see the Quick Fields help files – OmniPage OCR.

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3. Designing Sessions I

Introduction This lesson describes how to build a session based on best practices.

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:

• Configure the OCR process for our session.


• Configure processes necessary for identification.
• Discuss how to test identification and implement strategies for robust
identification in a multi-document class session.

Configuring When possible, OCR should be configured and run in the Pre-classification
OCR Processing stage, before any identification or page processing, to minimize the
frequency of running OCR per document class. Text extracted in the Pre-
classification Processing stage can be used in text extraction processes to identify
and process documents more efficiently.

When configuring OCR, you can set how you want it optimized:

• Speed: Reduces the amount of time it takes to OCR, but generated text may
be less accurate
• Balanced: Neither optimum speed nor optimum accuracy, but between the
two
• Accuracy: Increases OCR quality, but processing time may be increased

To know which optimization to use, it’s best to scan the sample pages for each
document class and test each option for OCR accuracy.

Once identification and processing has been configured using the extracted text,
scan a batch of documents to see if they are correctly identified and processed.

For more information on OCR, see the Quick Fields help files – OmniPage OCR.

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Identification When Configuring OCR in the Pre-Classification Processing stage, it’s most
Processes efficient to use a Text Identification process in First Page Identification to identify
documents.

The Text Identification process can use existing text generated from the OCR
process in the Pre-Classification stage to find unique patterns – using regular
expressions – on a certain page, identifying it as the first page of a document class.

For more information on identification and the Text Identification process, see the
Quick Fields help files – Identification and Text Identification.

Testing Quick Fields processes incoming documents one page at a time. For each page in the
Identification sample batch being scanned, Quick Fields checks the First Page Identification
conditions until it finds a match. When a match is found, it will create a new document
of that document class.

It’s important to test identification processes using sample pages from the batch of
documents being scanned to ensure the documents are identified correctly.

For more information on testing processes, see the Quick Fields help files – Testing
Processes.

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4. Designing Sessions II

Introduction This lesson describes how to configure a session using advanced processes and
capture format information.

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:

• Use pattern matching to extract information regardless of its location.


• Configure a lookup to provide additional metadata.
• Use the token editor to reformat captured data.

Pattern Pattern matching is a powerful tool that looks for a specified pattern within captured
Matching text. You can use it to identify documents based on whether or not a certain pattern
was found, extract specific information, and assist in formatting text.

For example, you can use pattern matching to recognize social security numbers,
telephone numbers, ZIP codes, or any other information that follows a specific
pattern. It is also useful for looking for information that follows leading text: for
example, looking for "Name:" and then extracting the text that comes after it.

Pattern matching works by searching text generated by OmniPage OCR to match


patterns that are defined using Pattern Matching Expressions, also known as regular
expressions.

Once regular expressions have been written, you should test them using the exact
text retrieved from your sample documents to ensure the correct information is
extracted.

For more information on pattern matching, see the Quick Fields help files – Pattern
Matching.

Lookup Lookups can be used to extract information from an external database. You can use
one piece of information from a document, such as an invoice number, to look up
additional information about the document in the external database. You can then
use this information to fill in the document’s metadata.

For more information on lookups, see the Quick Fields help files – Lookup.

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Token Editor A token is a bit of text that is automatically replaced with actual values during
processing. For example, if you configure a Pattern Matching process to retrieve a
date from a document page to insert into a Date field, Quick Fields doesn’t know
the actual value to insert until after processing. Therefore a date placeholder, or
token, is inserted into the Date field that will be replaced with the date retrieved
from the document after processing.

The Token Editor lets you modify token values. For example, the date retrieved
from the document is in this format: 01/01/2018. You only need the month and year
placed in the Date field. You can use the formatting option in the Token Editor to
edit how the retrieved date value will be entered when the token is replaced.

When editing tokens, the changes are only applied to the specific token being
edited, not all instances of that token.

For more information on the Token Editor, see the Quick Fields help files – Token
Editor.

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5. Quick Fields Administration Console

Introduction This lesson describes how to use the Quick Fields Administration Console to view
and manage published sessions and documents classes.

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:

• View key information about sessions and document classes that have been
published to the Quick Fields Server.
• Explore document class linking, which lets you move document classes
between sessions and link the same document class to multiple sessions.
• Configure privileges and access rights for the sessions and document
classes on the Quick Felds Server.

Overview A session build in Quick Fields can be published to the Quick Fields Server, where
it can be managed centrally and accessed by users using Quick Fields or Quick
Fields Scanning. The Quick Fields Administration Console lets you manage
sessions, document classes, and security via a web-based interface. You can view
all available sessions and document classes, share or move document classes
between sessions, view and restore sessions and document classes from version
history and manage security.

For more information on the Quick Fields Administration Console, see the Quick
Fields help files – Quick Fields Administration Console.

Working with Document classes can be linked to multiple sessions or moved between sessions.
Document For example, W-9s may need to be scanned with the rest of a Vendor Onboarding
Classes packet, or they may need to be scanned with other Tax Documents. You could link
the W-9 document class to the Vendor Onboarding and Tax Documents sessions.

Linking the same document class to multiple sessions can make it easier to manage
changes to document class processes or settings. If you open either session in Quick
Fields and publish changes to the W-9 document class, those changes will affect the
document class in all sessions it’s linked to.

For more information on working with document classes, see the Quick Fields help
files – Document Classes.

Security The Quick Fields Administration Console lets you configure privileges and access
rights for the sessions and document classes on the Quick Fields Server.

For example, you can configure security so certain users cannot modify or delete
sessions or document classes. Alternatively, you can ensure scanner operators only
have the ability to run sessions and documents classes relevant to them.

You need to add Windows domain users and groups to the Quick Fields
Administration Console to configure relevant privileges and access rights for each.

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The Everyone group is automatically granted the Administrator privilege and
Viewer rights to all sessions. Once the first user or group is added as an
administrator, that user or group should modify the rights of the Everyone group.

For more information on Quick Fields security, see the Quick Fields help files –
Quick Fields Server Security.

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6. Quick Fields Agent

Introduction This lesson describes how to use Quick Fields Agent to schedule a Quick Fields
session to run unattended.

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:

• Prepare sessions for unattended processing.


• Configure Quick Fields Agent to run a session on a schedule.
• View the history of previously run sessions.
• Set up email notifications for scheduled sessions.
• Discuss considerations for running sessions in parallel.

Overview Quick Fields Agent lets you schedule Quick Fields sessions to run unattended. With
Quick Fields Agent, you can centralize and automate the administration of data
capture, retrieving information from different locations at any time.

By scheduling when document processing occurs, your organization can use


network resources at non-peak hours. This also prevents administrators from having
to manually trigger items, allowing Quick Fields sessions to run as part of an
automated process. Quick Fields Agent also keeps track of all scheduled sessions
and reports on the results of schedules that have run.

For more information on Quick Fields Agent, see the Quick Fields Agent help files
– Quick Fields Agent.

Configure a Creating schedules in Quick Fields Agent lets you indicate which sessions should
Schedule run unattended and at which times. You can view a list of all the schedules
configured, per connection, as well as information about them. You must be logged
in as a System Manager to create schedules.

For more information on Quick Fields Agent schedules, see the Quick Fields Agent
help files – Schedules.

View the The History section provides data that helps you understand how well your Quick
History of Fields Agent processing is working, and how many documents you are processing.
Previously Run It can also be an important tool for troubleshooting. It lets you view a list of
Schedules instances of each time a Quick Fields session has been run according to a schedule.
This is helpful to see how many times the session has run and each session’s
progress. You can view information about each instance and choose to analyze the
sessions.

You can modify the columns to display information important to you, view errors,
general information, diagnostic information, and a test record of documents stored
for each instance of a session.

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For more information on Quick Fields Agent session history, see the Quick Fields
Agent help files – Instance History.

Email You can configure Quick Fields Agent to send notification emails containing
Notifications information about sessions that were run. The emails can contain the documents
processed, how long it took for the documents to be retrieved, and any errors and
warnings that were encountered.

Email notifications are configured for all sessions. They cannot be configured per
session.

For more information on Quick Fields Agent email notifications, see the Quick
Fields Agent help files – Email Notifications.

Running While Quick Fields Agent can be configured to run multiple sessions
Scheduled simultaneously, session performances will vary depending on the resources
Sessions in available on the machine where Quick Fields Agent is installed, the kinds of
Parallel processes involved in the session, and when documents will be captured into the
session.

For example, if you have one session that conducts lots of OCR processing all day
and another session that sorts a few documents at a time as they are added to an
incoming folder, that combination may perform effectively for concurrent
processing.

If, on the other hand, you have one session conducting lots of OCR processing all
day and another session that also performs resource-intensive processes on lots of
documents at once, attempting to run them concurrently may reduce the
performance of both.

For each installation of Quick Fields, a maximum of two sessions can run per CPU
on the machine running the Quick Fields Agent Service.

The processing settings options for parallel processing are under Settings.

For more information on running scheduled sessions in parallel, see the Quick
Fields Agent help files – Processing Settings.

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