ABBYY FlexiCapture Video – Setting Up Export Destinations

Watch our video to learn some of the multiple ways to set up export destinations within ABBYY FlexiCapture.

Hello. Today I would like to show you how we set up Export Destinations within ABBYY FlexiCapture. It’s actually a fairly simple process and there are multiple ways we can export, so let me jump in and show this to you.

The first thing that is important to note is that exports are done on what we call a Document Definition, or sometimes we call it a template level. As the software recognizes the type of document, then based on that type, we can export and control different information from that specific type of document. So, what I’m going to do is hit the Edit button from our Document Definitions Window. This will bring up our Document Definition Editor, and from here I will go to the Document Definition Menu and select the Export settings. Now, I’m already within a project that has Export Destinations set up in it, but it’s a good view because it shows you a couple different things that we can do. One is, we have no limit on the number of Export Destinations you can have, so you can Export Data multiple places for reporting, for analytical reasons. You can also have what we call Critical Paths, so every document will go down it, and you can have what we call Enabled Paths, or you can disable or enable them. A lot of different control here.

In this case, I have three different Export Destinations, and they all do just something different. One exports the data, one exports the images, etc. So, in order to add a new Export Destination, however, you just simply add the Export Destination, and you can select the type. You tell the software whether you want to Export data to files, images to files. We support any ODBC compatible database, and SharePoint is supported right out of the box, as well. It’s also very common in some of our more advanced customers that people would use a Custom Export Script. So, this gives you the ability to expand the solution and do literally anything you want to do when we provide the document and the data to you.

The reason why you would use a Script is if you want to do something more advanced or call your own assembly or DLL, or call something like a web service or some other system that ABBYY doesn’t support out of the box. Now, of course, there are a million different software systems, and of course, no way that ABBYY could support all of them out of the box, and this Custom Export Script gives you the ability to control your own destiny, frankly, and it’s used by a lot of our clients and a very popular option when we export data.

I’m just going to simply Export the data to files here. I’ll select this one. I’ll tell it it’s critical. And you can see we have what we call Field Conditions. What this does it gives us the ability to tell the software when to export data based on conditions of the document, whether or not there are errors, or whether or not there are field values that match a certain reason. So, maybe if we want to export data for logical reasons, whether if it’s greater than $1000, we may want to export that to an expensive location, and it’s less than $1000, for example, we want to export that to another location. That’d be a very basic example, but you can see we control export conditions and literally, any field that we capture on the document can be used when we export, and we can use those for logical condition and reasons when we export the document.

From here I’m going to hit Next. It’s pretty basic from here on out. You tell the software how you want to export the data. Do you want it in one file? Do you want it in separate files? Where do you want it to go and how do you want it to name the file? Just like before on the conditions, we can literally name the document with any data that we extract off the document and more. We can do date and times, we can do all kinds of, you know, by user, a lot of different details here, we can use to name the documents. Every one of our clients does it differently, and you are not stuck to a standard. You define the standard and the software will then cooperate with you.

From here, you just determine the file type. Very commonly we would use any flat file formats, Excel, CSV, XML. It’s also very common that we would do something like Json as well here. But, you select the file formats. You also have control over how the documents are mapped, so you can say what order documents go. In this case we’re exporting to Excel, so I can name the column something a certain way. I can tell the software how to order them when it exports those to Excel. We call that our Field Mapping here.

From here on out, we tell the software what to do with the image, so not only do we give you the data every field that we captured, but we also can provide you a copy of the actual document itself from here. And it’s really up to you. This is one of those optional things. You don’t have to have the image exported, but a lot of our clients do, and the reason why you would do that is you can have it create a searchable document on the output. So, even if it wasn’t searchable coming into the software, it can now be searchable when it’s exported after the software’s analyzed it.

But you can also redact certain sensitive data here. We have other videos that explain a little bit more about that feature. You tell the software then if you are going to export the image file format, what format. Like I said, it’s very common that we would do PDF or PDFA and make those searchable, but you are not controlled. You select which format you would prefer.

Hit next and you give it a logical name, and you hit Finish. The one last thing I’d like to show you is our Custom Export Scripts. If for some reason, the out of the box exports just won’t work for you, like I said, these Custom Export Scripts give you the ability to control your own destiny. And so, we’re going to actually just dive into what the Script Editor looks like quickly. You can see here it’s just a scripting window. You control the different languages that the software supports inherently out of the box, and from here you can also call your own DLL. So there’s what we call a Document Object for the programmers out in the world, there’s a document object and then you can use that document object to access any of these fields here that we’re extracting off the document. It’s a very popular choice for people that want to take the software to the next level.

And then from there, you can just finish it. You would give it a name and you can also have a Custom Export Script as well. So, that’s an example of using the software to kind of take it beyond what it can do out of the box. Now, Export Settings are a great way to control where the software puts the data when it’s done. Now, don’t forget, not only do you have the data, but you can actually tell the software to store a copy of the actual document as well. So, that would be a very common thing we can do and you saw the different formats that we support there.

Once we’re done, we would hit OK and we would save our changes. Once we publish the document definition, then the software will put these export settings live, and then once they’re live, of course, the document will follow the new paths that we’ve told it through our export settings here in the Document Definition Window.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any questions on exporting documents, the data or the images, please reach out to us. We would love to be of assistance to you. Have a nice day.

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