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Creating a Document Definition is the most critical part of configuring a project, and it determines the quality of the data obtained after processing. A Document Definition describes the location of document elements and indicates the fields used in data extraction.

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Create a Document Definition

1

Open Document Definitions

In the Project Setup Station main window, select Project → Document Definitions….
2

Add a Document Definition

In the Document Definitions dialog box, click New….
3

Follow the wizard

Follow the instructions of the Document Definition Wizard.
The main stages of Document Definition creation depend on the type of documents being processed.

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Fixed forms

1

Create a new Document Definition

Use the Document Definition Wizard. With the wizard running, open the document page image used for Document Definition marking.
2

Mark static elements

Mark anchors and identifiers and configure their properties. Static elements are used for Document Definition matching and identification. They are normally detected automatically and assigned default properties.
3

Mark fields

Mark the fields on the image. Fields are used for data extraction.
4

Configure field properties

Field properties affect recognition quality and determine whether field values are exported and submitted for verification. They specify the data types and the range of values of a field.
5

Add pages for multipage documents

Add pages and repeat the previous stages for each page.
6

Configure data export

Set up how recognized data is exported.
7

Configure display and rules (optional)

Configure how data is displayed in the document window, how it is checked against rules, and so on.
8

Test the Document Definition

Test the Document Definition using images of several documents.
If you created machine-readable forms with ABBYY FormDesigner, instead of the first three stages you only need to import a file with the *.xfd extension. A page image with ready marking opens (or images of several pages if you used ABBYY FormDesigner to create a multipage form). For more information, see Importing a Document Definition for forms created with ABBYY FormDesigner.

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Semi-structured documents

1

Create a FlexiLayout

Create a FlexiLayout (a file with the *.afl extension) in ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio.
2

Create a new Document Definition

Use the Document Definition Wizard. With the wizard running, open an image of a document page and attach the FlexiLayout (the *.afl file you created). After the wizard finishes, the field marking is present on the image.
3

Configure field properties

Follow the procedure for configuring Document Definition properties for a fixed form.
4

Configure data export

Set up how recognized data is exported.
5

Configure display and rules (optional)

Configure how data is displayed in the document window, how it is checked against rules, and so on.
6

Test the Document Definition

Test the Document Definition using images of several documents.

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Mixed-type documents

For mixed-type documents that contain pages with fixed forms and semi-structured sections, attach a FlexiLayout as one of the Document Definition sections. Start creating a Document Definition from any section (flexible or fixed), and then add a new section of a different type. Documents of various types can be processed in a single flow: within one project, you can create Document Definitions for fixed forms, semi-structured documents, and mixed-type documents. The program selects the appropriate Document Definition automatically. To process documents with annexes, create a Document Definition and enable Enable annex pages in the Document Definition properties. See Creating Document Definitions for documents with annexes. To process a document set (a set of related documents intended for the same purpose, such as personal loan applications or insurance reports), create a Document Definition for the document set. For more information, see Document sets.