Workflows, jobs, and tasks

A workflow consists of a series of tasks, defines a way to process documents, and is associated with only one DCO.

Although Datacap applications can include multiple workflows, this tutorial focuses on single workflow applications. The standard workflow generated by the Application Wizard includes three job types:

  • Main Job: This is the standard workflow for processing documents that takes a batch of documents through each of the processing steps that are previously identified, such as input documents, identify pages, and so on.
  • Fixup Job: This job is used only when there are document integrity problems and displays the batch to an operator for corrective action. For more information, see the Document integrity problem management topic.
  • Web Job: This job is like the Main Job, but it defines the workflow for jobs that are initiated exclusively from the Datacap Web Client. It supports remote scanning and allows users to upload new batches to the server.

A job consists of one or more tasks. To process a batch of documents, you must run the batch through each task in the selected job. Some tasks (for example, Export) run without operator intervention, whereas others (for example, Verify) require an operator.

The tasks in the workflow are determined by the job type you select. You can see the tasks associated with each job type by looking in the Workflow pane on the Datacap Studio Test tab. The workflow for Main Job includes five tasks: VScan, PageID, Profiler, Verify, and Export. Each task is linked to a task profile.

Descriptions of each task are provided.

Table 1. Main Job task descriptions
Task Profile Description
VScan A virtual scanning profile that inserts pages into your application by copying images files from a specified location.
Upload Used with remote scanning and virtual scanning through the Datacap Web Client interface, the Upload task is required for uploading images from remote scanning stations to the batch folder on the Datacap server.
PageID Identifies the incoming pages by comparing them to known page types using fingerprint matching. Depending on the identification method used, this profile may perform full page OCR. It may also perform image cleanup.
Profiler Organizes pages into documents, locates the fields defined for that page type, and performs OCR to recognize the field data (or obtains the data from the full page OCR results). Also runs validation rules to ensure that the data is valid.
Verify Runs during the verification stage, when pages are displayed to an operator to ensure that recognition was accurate and to handle any validation errors.
Export Exports the structured document data to an output file, a document management system, a database, or an external business process (can also include the original image).

In addition to the task profiles that run as part of the Main Job workflow, there are two other important task profiles the Application Wizard generates: FingerprintAdd and ImageFix.

Table 2. Additional task profiles
Task Profile Description
FingerprintAdd Generates the fingerprint files when you add new page types to the application from the Datacap Studio Zones tab.
ImageFix Runs when you enhance a fingerprint image using the Image Processing window from the Zones tab.