Understanding Identification Templates

  • 08/10/2021
  • 7 minutes to read

For illustrative purposes, the following explanation of identification templates will focus on purchase documents and vendors, although the processes described below may as well involve other types of business documents and document sources.

Identification templates are used for identifying the source of imported documents, in this case the vendor. When an identification template identifies a VAT registration number for an incoming purchase document, Continia Document Capture searches through the vendor table for a vendor with a corresponding VAT registration number and, if successful, then applies the identified vendor and its associated default template to the document. For a more detailed account of how this works, along with information on how to customize certain parts of the identification template, see the sections below.

Note

The use of identification templates is one of three steps when identifying the source of a document. To learn more, see Finding the Document Source and Template.

The underlying logic

Each document category in Document Capture has one identification template. Whenever you import a document into Document Capture, the identification template attempts to link a matching record in the source table to this document. For the PURCHASE document category, it does so by capturing the document's VAT number and searching through the vendor table for a vendor with a matching VAT number.

The identification template consists of a single field, VAT Registration No., which uses multiple different captions and rules to identify the correct VAT registration number of each incoming document. The captions and the rules can both be customized, as described below under To modify search captions and To modify search rules, and together they form the basis of the identification process: When the identification template, based on your selection of captions, recognizes a caption in an imported document, it searches for a corresponding value to capture to the right of or below that caption. If it finds one, it then validates that value against the selected rules to ensure that the value's format is correct – in other words, it confirms that the captured value is indeed a VAT number.

Once a VAT number has been captured, Document Capture runs the codeunit CDC Purch Doc. - Identificat. to identify a vendor with a matching VAT number in the vendor table. You can view the codeunit on the identification template card, on the Codeunits FastTab, under After Capture.

To modify search captions

It's possible to determine exactly what captions Document Capture should search for in order to identify VAT registration numbers in incoming documents. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Choose the Search icon, enter Document Categories, and then choose the related link.
  2. Open the relevant document category. For example, to open the purchase document category, select the PURCHASE line (not the PURCHASE code itself), and then select Edit in the action bar.
  3. On the Templates FastTab, in the list of templates, locate the PURCHASE-ID template. Select the Vertical-dots icon and then Edit to open the template card.
  4. On the Fields FastTab, in the Field Name column, select VAT Registration No. to open the template field card.
  5. In the action bar, select Captions to open the Edit page.
  6. Edit the list of captions as needed, for example using the New and Delete buttons in the action bar.
  7. Select Close when you're done.

Document Capture will then search every single incoming document for the captions included in this list in order to identify each document's VAT registration number, which can be used to identify the document source.

To modify search rules

You can also determine the exact rules to be used by Document Capture when identifying VAT registration numbers in incoming documents. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Choose the Search icon, enter Document Categories, and then choose the related link.
  2. Open the relevant document category. For example, to open the purchase document category, select the PURCHASE line (not the PURCHASE code itself), and then select Edit in the action bar.
  3. On the Templates FastTab, in the list of templates, locate the PURCHASE-ID template. Select the Vertical-dots icon and then Edit to open the template card.
  4. On the Fields FastTab, in the Field Name column, select VAT Registration No. to open the template field card.
  5. In the action bar, select Rules to open the Edit page.
  6. Edit the list of rules as needed, for example using the New and Delete buttons in the action bar.
  7. Select Close when you're done.

Document Capture will then search every single incoming document using the rules included in this list in order to identify each document's VAT registration number. Whenever at least one rule matches the format of a captured value, that value is accepted as a valid VAT number. As mentioned above, this VAT number can then be used by Document Capture to identify the document source.

See also

Finding the Document Source and Template