How to: Use OCR to Turn PDF and Image Files into Electronic Documents
From PDF or image files that you receive from your trading partners, you can have an external OCR service (Optical Character Recognition) generate electronic documents that can be converted to document records in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. For example, when you receive an invoice in PDF format from your vendor, you can send it to the OCR service from the Incoming Documents window. This is described in the first procedure.
As an alternative to sending the file from the Incoming Documents window, you can send the file to the OCR service by e-mail. Then, when you receive the electronic document back, a related incoming document record is created automatically. This is described in the second procedure.
After some seconds, you receive the file back from the OCR service as an electronic invoice that can be converted to a purchase invoice for the vendor. This is described in the third procedure.
You can either send incoming document files to the OCR service manually, as described in this procedure, or you can enable a workflow to send them automatically when an incoming document with a PDF or image attachment is created. The generic version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV includes a workflow template, Incoming Document OCR Workflow, which is ready to create a workflow from. For more information, see Workflow.
Because OCR is based on optical recognition, it is likely that the OCR service will interpret characters in your PDF or image files wrongly when it first processes a certain vendor’s documents, for example. It may not interpret the company logo as the vendor’s name or it may misinterpret the total amount on a receipt because of its layout. To avoid these errors going forward, you can correct the errors in a separate version of the Incoming Document window. Then you send the corrections back to the OCR service to train it to interpret the specific characters correctly next time it processes a PDF or image document for the same vendor. For more information, see How to: Train the OCR Service to Avoid Errors.
The electronic document generated from OCR is processed by the Data Exchange Framework like for electronic PEPPOL documents. For more information, How to: Receive and Convert Electronic Documents.
Note
The traffic of files to and from the OCR service is processed by a dedicated job queue entry, which are created automatically when you enable the related service connection. For more information, see How to: Set Up an OCR Service.
To send a PDF or image file to the OCR service from the Incoming Documents window
In the Search box, enter Incoming Documents, and then choose the related link.
Create a new incoming document record and attach the file. For more information, see How to: Create Incoming Document Records.
In the Incoming Documents window, select one or more lines, and then, on the Actions tab, in the OCR group, choose Send to Job Queue.
The value in the OCR Status field changes to Ready. The attached PDF or image file is sent to the OCR service by the job queue according to the schedule, provided that no errors exist. For more information, see Use Job Queues to Schedule Tasks.
Alternatively, in the Incoming Documents window, select one or more lines, and then, on the Actions tab, in the OCR group, choose Send to OCR Service.
The value in the OCR Status field changes to Sent, provided that no errors exist.
To send a PDF or image file to the OCR service by e-mail
From your e-mail application, send an e-mail to the OCR service provider with the PDF or image file attached. For information about the e-mail address to send to, see the service provider’s web site.
Because no incoming document record exists for the file, a new record will be created automatically in the Incoming Documents window when you receive the resulting electronic document from the OCR service. For more information, see How to: Create Incoming Document Records.
Note
If you work on a tablet or phone, you can send the file to the OCR service as soon as you have taken a photo of the document, or you can create an incoming document directly. For more information, see How to: Create Incoming Document Records by Taking a Photo.
To receive an electronic document from the OCR service
In the Search box, enter Incoming Documents, and then choose the related link.
To actively pull electronic document from the OCR service, on the Actions tab, in the OCR group, choose Receive from OCR Service.
Alternatively, wait until a new electronic document is coming in from the OCR service through the job queue.
When the electronic document arrives, various fields in the Incoming Document window will be filled with information from the source document file. For more information, see How to: Receive and Convert Electronic Documents.
Now you can proceed to create document records in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, manually or automatically. You can also connect the new incoming document record to existing posted or non-posted document so that the source file is easy to access from Microsoft Dynamics NAV. For more information, see Use Incoming Documents.
Note
When you create, for example, a purchase invoice from an electronic document that was created with OCR, the invoice will contain one line of type G/L Account with an empty Description field, and the value in the Amount field will equal the total amount excluding VAT. To make sure that the Description field is filled, you can open the Text-to-Account Mapping window from the Incoming Documents window to define that a certain invoice text is always mapped to a certain debit account. Going forward, the Description field on document lines created from an electronic document for that vendor will then be filled with the text in question, so that the invoice is ready to post. For more information, see How to: Receive and Convert Electronic Documents.
See Also
Tasks
How to: Train the OCR Service to Avoid Errors
How to: Set Up the Incoming Documents Feature
How to: Receive and Convert Electronic Documents
How to: Create Incoming Document Records
How to: View Incoming Document Records from Documents and Entries
Concepts
Incoming Documents
Data Exchange
Data Exchange
Workflow