Guide

ABBYY Vantage provides content IQ skills that allow you to turn unstructured content into structured, actionable information by means of classification and extraction, as well as processing specific document types like invoices, orders, W2 forms, and more. ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath allows you to incorporate ABBYY Vantage skills into your UiPath workflow.

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System requirements

You will need an account with ABBYY Vantage both to configure and to run your process. ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath can run on the following operating systems:

• Windows 10
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019

The connector for UiPath can be used with:

• ABBYY Vantage 2.3.2 or later
• UiPath Enterprise Edition 2023.8.0
• Community Edition 2023.4.4 or later

The following external components must be installed:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8.1
• Microsoft .NET 8

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Installing the Connector

ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath is a set of activities running on the UiPath side within the user-defined workflow. The activities are delivered as a NuGet package. To install the package:

1. Run ABBYYVantageConnectorForUiPath.<version>.exe and follow the instructions of the Installation Wizard. During the installation, specify the connector installation folder. By default, it is set to C:\Program Files\ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath.
2. In UiPath Studio, open an existing project or create a new one.
3. On the ribbon, click Manage Packages on the Design tab:
4. Make sure the nuget.org package source is enabled. This package source is required in order to install some dependencies for the connector package.
   If you already have a configured package source and want to use it, skip step 5.
5. Go to the Settings tab of the Manage Packages window and create a new package source: a. Enter a name for the new package source. b. Specify the path to the folder where you intend to place the connector NuGet packages. c. Click Add to confirm the settings. The new package source is displayed in the User defined package sources area and in the left pane of the Manage Packages window.
6. Copy all the NuGet packages of the ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath from the installation folder to your package source folder. The NuGet packages are located in the UiPath Activities subfolder of the installation folder that was created in step 1 (the default location is C:\Program Files\ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath\UiPath Activities). After the NuGet connector packages are added to the available package source, you can install the connector package to the project dependencies.
7. In the Manage Packages window, navigate to the All Packages section and do the following: a. Click the newly created package source category. b. Select Abbyy.UiPath.Vantage.Activities from the list of available packages and click Install. The License Acceptance window will display licensing terms for each third-party package you install. c. Click on View License to read the license terms. d. Click I Accept to agree with the license terms and install the packages. Finally, click Save.
8. Once installed, the Vantage activities will appear in the ABBYY Vantage section of the list of activities available for your project: For detailed instructions on installing packages, please refer to the UiPath Studio Guide.

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Converting Windows-legacy projects to Windows

We recommend that you convert Windows-legacy projects to Windows. The default compatibility for new projects is now Windows compatibility. To convert Windows-legacy projects to Windows compatibility, you should perform the following procedure for each Windows-legacy compatibility project:

1. In UiPath Studio, open the Windows-legacy project.
2. Click the Convert to Windows link in the message that appears under the ribbon.

The Convert to Windows dialog box will open.

3. Specify how the Windows-legacy project will be converted to Windows:
   • To create a copy of the current project using Windows compatibility and keep the original Windows-legacy project, select Create a new project. Enter the name of the project, its desired location, and optionally a description for the new project.
   • To update the existing project and convert it to Windows compatibility, deselect the Create a new project option. If you deselect this option, it will not be possible to undo the changes that will be made to the project.
4. Click Convert. For more information about converting Windows-legacy projects to Windows compatibility, refer to UiPath Studio Guide.

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Using ABBYY Vantage activities in UiPath workflow

The ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath lets your workflow send document images to ABBYY Vantage and process it using an available skill. To view the available skills, create your own skills, or modify existing skills, use the ABBYY Vantage Skill Catalog or ABBYY Vantage Skill Designer. Refer to ABBYY Vantage Skill Designer Guide for more information on setting up skills. The ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath delivers the following activities for working with ABBYY Vantage:

• Vantage Scope
• Use Skill
• Get Results
• Map Fields

To add an activity to the UiPath process, drag the activity from the UiPath Studio Activities panel to the Designer panel. After the activity has been added to the process, you will need to fill in the fields in the Properties panel. You can fill in some of the properties in the Designer panel as well. For more details about the properties of the activities, see the sections below. The ABBYY Vantage Connector for UiPath is shipped with a sample process that demonstrates how you can use ABBYY Vantage activities in your workflow. For more information, see the Sample process for ABBYY Vantage activities.

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Vantage Scope Activity

The Vantage Scope activity passes ABBYY Vantage connection settings to other Vantage activities. It is also a container for other Vantage activities. All other ABBYY Vantage activities must be placed inside the Vantage Scope activity.

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Activity properties

Vantage user password, proxy password and Client Secret in the client settings can be set in the Scope Activity either in a string parameter or in the corresponding parameter with the SecureString type. A password of type String is stored as plain text in the XAML project file and it is not safe. A String password is recommended for use only when configuring the Use Skill and Map Fields activities for obtaining a list of skills, or for debugging your UiPath process. Once the process is fully configured:

• If you use Resource Owner Password Credentials Flow, remove the Password property from the Vantage Scope activity and set up the Secure Password property.
• If you use Client Credentials Flow, remove the Client Secret property from the Vantage Scope activity and set up the Secure Client Secret property.

We recommend using UiPath Orchestrator assets to securely store your credentials. In this case, the password can be obtained from Orchestrator by means of the Get Credential activity and passed to the Vantage Scope activity via a variable. For more details about the Get Credential activity, please refer to the official UiPath guides. When you create a client in ABBYY Vantage, configure the following in the OAuth 2.0 Flows Settings section of the client settings, depending on the grant type you use:

• Resource Owner Password Credentials Flow:
  • Enable the Allow Resource Owner Password Credentials Flow option.
• Client Credentials Flow:
  • Enable the Allow issuing refresh tokens to refresh access tokens option.
  • Enable the Allow client credentials flow option.
  • Select the required roles with which the application will log in to Vantage by clicking the Manage Roles setting.
  If you need to select from the list one or more roles associated with skills, also select the allowed skills for these roles.

Fields to be filled for the Resource Owner Password Credentials Flow: Fields to be filled for the Client Credentials Flow:

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Proxy Settings

You can configure connector requests at runtime to go through a proxy server. The following proxy authentication types are supported: Basic, NTLM, IP authentication, and transparent proxy. To use a proxy, select the Vantage Scope activity. In the Proxy Settings (optional) properties group, set the value of the Enable Proxy property to "true" and then specify the address of your proxy server in the Server URL property. If you are using Basic authentication, in the Username and Password / Secure Password properties, specify the proxy connection credentials. If you are using NTLM authentication, the Username and Password fields are optional. If the Username and Password fields are empty, the credentials of the user under which the UiPath process is running will be used.

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Use Skill Activity

The Use Skill activity creates a transaction for processing a document by means of an ABBYY Vantage skill. A unique identifier of the transaction is then returned as the Transaction Id output property.

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Activity properties

InputFile class properties: When setting up the Use Skill activity, do the following depending on the authentication flow you use:

• Resource Owner Password Credentials Flow — Specify the Password property of the Vantage Scope activity to obtain a list of available skills. Once you have configured your UiPath workflow, consider changing the Password property to Secure Password.
• Client Credentials Flow — Specify the Client Secret property of the Vantage Scope activity to obtain a list of available skills. Once you have configured your UiPath workflow, consider changing the Client Secret property to Secure Client Secret.

For more details, see the Vantage Scope Activity section. Click the button to the right of the drop-down list under Skill Name to get a list of skills. Then expand the Skill Name drop-down list and select the skill that you intend to use for document processing.

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Get Results Activity

The Get Results activity is used to retrieve the processing results from ABBYY Vantage.

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Activity properties

When using a Classification skill, Document skill, and OCR skill, all transaction input files will be assembled into one document. When using a Process skill, multiple result documents can be obtained. By default, in the Process skill, a separate document is created in ABBYY Vantage for each input file added to the transaction. Documents can be of different classes, but they will all be processed within one transaction. You can also set your own document assembly settings using the Assemble Activity in the Process skill. Thus, each transaction document will have its own processing results. The Document Results output parameter of the Get Results activity receives the results of processing all the documents of the transaction as a collection of instances of the DocumentResult class. DocumentResult class properties: ClassificationConfidence class properties: If transaction processing is completed successfully (i.e. Transaction Status = "Processed"), the results will be saved in the output properties. If the transaction is still being processed (i.e. Transaction Status = "New" / "Processing"), wait a few seconds and call the Get Results activity again. A special case, where Transaction Status = "Review", is described below. The results that the Get Results activity may obtain will vary depending on the skill applied to the document:

• Classification skill (e.g. Vantage Classifier):
  • Transaction Status
  • Document Results (for each DocumentResult): DocumentId, ClassificationConfidences, ClassName, IsClassificationConfident, ResultFiles (JSON file containing classification results data)
• Document skill (e.g. Invoice US):
  • Transaction Status
  • Document Results (for each DocumentResult): DocumentId, ExtractedData, ResultFiles (the results will be contained in two JSON files — the first contains all document data, the second contains the values of the extracted fields and rule errors, ending with _fields.json)
• OCR skill:
  • Transaction Status
  • Document Results (for each DocumentResult): DocumentId, ResultFiles (those files will be received the export to which is configured in the OCR skill), DocumentFullText (if export to TXT is enabled in the skill)
• Process skill: If a Process skill comprises a Classify activity and an Extract activity, the above results will be obtained for both a Classification skill and a Document skill. If a Process skill comprises multiple Classify or Extract activities, the results will be obtained for the last activities of a particular type. If the PDF option is enabled in the Exported Data Settings dialog of an Output activity of a Process skill, the results will contain the JSON file with the extraction results and the document image exported to a PDF file together with a text layer. For each transaction document, the DocumentFullText parameter will be received if export to TXT is enabled in the skill. A Process skill can also contain a Review activity. When using such a skill for document processing, processing can be suspended if the document requires manual review. In this case, the Get Results activity will obtain the following results:
  • Transaction Status = "Review"
  • Review Link
  Once the manual review and transaction processing are completed, you can obtain the above results by calling the Get Results activity again.

Transaction processing may fail for a number of reasons (for example, an input file may be corrupted or an input file format may not be supported by ABBYY Vantage). If this is the case, the Get Results activity will throw an exception.

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Map Fields Activity

The Map Fields activity is used to save extracted field values to UiPath variables. You can map ABBYY Vantage fields to UiPath variables in the Designer panel.

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Activity properties

When setting up the Map Fields activity, do the following depending on the authentication flow you use:

• Resource Owner Password Credentials Flow — Specify the Password property of the Vantage Scope activity to obtain a list of available skills. Once you have configured your UiPath workflow, consider changing the Password property to Secure Password.
• Client Credentials Flow — Specify the Client Secret property of the Vantage Scope activity to obtain a list of available skills. Once you have configured your UiPath workflow, consider changing the Client Secret property to Secure Client Secret.

For more details, see the Vantage Scope Activity section. To map ABBYY Vantage fields to UiPath variables, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Map Fields activity in the Designer panel and click the button to the right of drop-down list under Skill Name to get a list of available skills.
2. Expand the Skill Name drop-down list and select the Document skill whose extracted field values must be saved to UiPath variables.
   You can only choose a Document skill.
3. Click the Refresh button. A field tree will be displayed in the Vantage Extracted Field column.
4. Expand the tree and click the Plus button next to a field that you want to map. In the UiPath Variable column, a UiPath variable name and type will appear. By default, the name of the variable will be the same as the name of the Vantage field, but you can change this name if required.
   Ensure that the UiPath variable names specified in the Map Fields activity match the Variables Naming Convention configured in your UiPath process. If variable names do not follow the naming rules, they will be displayed with a warning symbol in the UiPath variable list. For more about Variables Naming Convention, see the UiPath documentation.
   
5. Repeat the previous step for all other fields that you need to map. When setting up mapping, you can specify already existing UiPath variables. In this case, make sure that the type of your variables matches the one recommended in the table below.
6. After you have mapped your document fields to UiPath variables, click Apply to save the changes. Now when the Map Fields activity is called at runtime, variable values will be filled in with extracted data.

In the Skill Name parameter of the Map Fields activity, you can use a UiPath variable with String type to store the name of the skill. When selecting a skill via the drop-down list of the activity on the design panel, the newly selected skill will be written to the specified variable. You can store the name of the skill directly in the variable. Expressions or references to other variables in the value of the variable are currently not supported. The table below shows what type of UiPath variable corresponds to each ABBYY Vantage field type: GroupItem class properties: GroupItem is a structure containing one instance of some repeating object (field or group of fields). FieldList class properties: FieldList is a structure that corresponds to a field or group of fields (repeating fields or repeating groups with the same name) and contains the values (multiple instances possible) of the fields or groups.

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Next Steps

Check out the sample process included in the UiPath connector or view the release notes.