How to markup a new document in ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio

Ready to kick off your new project? James walks you through a demonstration of creating the markup for your new document in ABBYY FlexiCapture.

Import the Document

• After importing the new document, find it in the batch menu and double click to view it in the document view window.
• The first thing we need to do is make sure ABBYY can identify the document as our Expense report. This is done with the header and footer Search Elements. We need to find something unique that will help identify this document.
• At the top of the page the words Expense report will be a good place to start.
• This text will always be in the top right hand corner and will always look the same, it is considered static text.

Create an Element – Option A

One way to create an element is to:

• Select create element from the ribbon.
• Click on the icon then rubber band the words Expense Report.
• Select the static text option from the popup box and click ok. The properties for this element will then popup. Renaming the element is a good idea.
• I like to add “st_” at the beginning for static text. That helps to quickly identify what the elements are in the FlexiLayout.
• This element needs to be marked as *required.
• Make sure the element appears under the header.

Add an additional static text element to help identify the document

There is one more static text element we will use to help identify the document. In the other corner we can use the text “For office use only”.

Create an Element – Option B

The other way to create an element is to:

• Right click on the search elements in the FlexiLayout window and select add element in the dropdown menu.
• Because we need this element as part of the header
  • Right click on header and select add element static text.
  • Type in a name, change to required element, then click the static text tab.
  • Add For office use only in the first box as search text. Click ok to continue.

Test and Make Sure Everything is Working Correctly

• Right click on the document and select match. If the program found both elements you are all set.
• If you have more than one document in the batch, a better way to test is by:
  • Selecting the documents you want to test then right click and select match.

  Repeat for the footer

  • Find some text or other unique items at the bottom of the page and create some elements to describe them.
  • Test the new items by matching the document like we did earlier.
  • So far we have defined the document, now we need to start getting the useful data from the document. Start by using static text to find the headings of the data. Statement Number and Name are the two examples of items we want to find on the document in the video.

Add Character String Elements

After getting the static elements located we will need to find the real data employees will type in. This is done by adding character string elements. You do this by:

• Select character string from the search elements menu.
• Select the character string tab.
• Click the add button next to Alphabets.
• Select all the characters that could be used in the statement number.
• Next go to the relations tab.
• Click the add button.
• Select a reference element by clicking on the ellipses button on the right of the text box.
• After clicking on the ok button, the search area will become green.
• Select a reference boundary then set the offset. This is the right boundary of the area that needs to be searched.
• Click add relation button to continue. Do this three more times to finish defining the search area.
• By selecting all of the boundaries at once, you can see the search area that was created.The area will be colored in green.
• Finally click apply and okay.

Create a Block

There is one more item we need to setup; the block.

To create a block:

• Right click on blocks
• Add block
• Add text.
• Rename the block and select a source element to link it. The source element will be the character string we just created.
• Click apply and finish to complete this step.
• Repeat the previous steps for name.

Watch the next video step: Finish the markup process by adding a table. 

Still need help? Reach out to our support team. We will be happy to assist!

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