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When processing documents, you may need to check data extracted from a document against records from data catalogs. This process can be automated by means of Data Catalog Lookup rules, which can be used to do the following:
  • Compare invoices and orders against vendor and consignee databases,
  • Fill in missing document field values using corresponding records from the data catalog, such as:
    • Order numbers and amounts
    • Company details
    • Names and descriptions of goods and services
For more information on data catalogs for Document skills, see Using data catalogs. To set up a data catalog lookup rule, follow these steps:
  1. Click New Rule in the field properties.
  2. In the dialog box that will open, select the Data Catalog Lookup rule type.
  3. From the Data Catalog for Lookup drop-down list, select a data catalog that will be used to check the document field values. Note: To compare document field values to records from several data catalogs at the same time, you will need to create a separate rule for each such catalog.
  4. Once you have selected a data catalog, the following table appears: Data Catalog Lookup Configuration The Catalog Column column contains the names of the columns of the selected data catalog.
  5. In the Skill Field column, use the drop-down lists to specify the extracted document fields that correspond to the catalog fields. If you do not need to look for a particular field, or if a field is not present in your document, leave the corresponding field in the table blank.
    Note: One rule can contain fields from only one repeating group. If you need to search for values from several repeating groups from your document, create a separate rule for each such group.
  6. In the Action column, specify the actions that need to be performed using the field pairs:
    • Select Exact Comparison to match unique values like tax ID’s and goods identifiers.
    • Select Fuzzy Comparison to match values that may have slight differences, like street names and organization addresses.
    • Select Get Value from Data Catalog to copy a value from a catalog record to the corresponding document field. This can only be done when either Exact Comparison or Fuzzy Comparison is specified for at least one field pair during rule setup.
  7. If required, edit the name of your rule using the Rule Name text field and click Save.
Once a rule is created, the link to the skill appears in the list of catalogs in the Data Catalogs section. The newly created rule will run for all document fields specified during its setup. Existing data catalog lookup rules will only be executed during field extraction. When document field values are edited manually, automatic catalog lookup is not executed for new values. To run data catalog lookup rules for fields a second time, you can either upload a new file to the skill document set or send the document to manual review. Data catalog lookup rules work correctly only if both exact and fuzzy comparisons yield at most one matching catalog record. Otherwise, one of two errors may occur:
  • No records found means that the specified comparison type found no match in the catalog for the document field.
  • Too many records found means that the specified comparison type found more than one match in the catalog for the document field.
To avoid these errors, during rule setup, specify at least one field that either has a unique value or cannot be matched to more than one catalog record.

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Looking for field values in data catalogs manually

If required, you can look for field values in a data catalog manually. To do so, click the Search button located to the right of a box containing a field value for which a rule has been set up and use the text bar that will appear to type in the value you are looking for (full or partial, but no less than 3 characters). The search will be carried out across all data catalog fields. Select the appropriate value from the search results list by left-clicking it. Doing so will copy this data catalog value to all document fields paired with that data catalog column during rule setup.
Note: After filling in a document value using a record from the catalog, you will not be able to manually edit them. If an error occurs, you can carry out the lookup manually and then select the appropriate record. Document field values will be changed to the selected values from the catalog, and the rule will be executed a second time.
If the required value could not be found in the data catalog, click Clear Document Fields or press Ctrl+Del. This will fill in the fields specified during rule setup using values from the document without using the values from the corresponding data catalog records.

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See also