OCR and Data Capture Blog

It may become necessary to move installed licenses of ABBYY Recognition Server (v. 2.x, 3.x) or ABBYY FlexiCapture (v. 9.x, 10.x) to a different computer.  Be it a hardware upgrade, business or procedural move, some planning ahead will make license transfers very quick and easy.

License Type

At the time of purchase, you license may be delivered in a form of USB Key (USB drive, picture) or a Software Key (serial number, no hardware).

USB Key contains the serial number license inside of it, usually with a tag attached to it, so moving the USB key is the same as moving the license from machine to machine.  This license type is the easiest to move as it is completely self-encapsulated and hardware independent.  This is the preferred choice of licensing for environments where the license needs to be moved frequently between machines, where license may need to be portable for primary/secondary setup, sharing or disaster recovery, or where there is no Internet connection to bring in and activate software-based licenses.  USB key is THE LICENSE, so caution should be applied not to lose or damage it.

Software Key license, also referred to as serial number license, is a string of vendor-supplied alpha-numeric characters that is entered at the time of installation.  This license is typically provided via e-mail, and thus carries convenience of fast deliveries (no shipping required).  This is also the preferred choice of licensing for remote desktop computers, data centers, VM-based machines, and environments where physical access or dependence on extra hardware components is limited or undesired.  Serial number requires online activation at the time of installation via Internet or e-mail, so the computer where the license resides requires proximity to an Internet connection.  This license, once activated, becomes hardware-specific, meaning it is tied to physical characteristics of the computer where it was installed.  For this reason, major OS and hardware changes on the host computer may invalidate this license in some rare situations.

Importance of License over Software Package

It is important to reiterate that the license holds the value of your purchase, not the software CD on which the installation package arrived.  For this reason the license should be preserved and archived with higher importance than the software package.  Software will be available for your download at any time and at no cost from WiseTREND as part of Support/Maintenance (SMUA) subscription, but you must have your license in order to install and use this software.

Transferring Licenses from One Machine to Another

USB Key licenses are easily transferred by moving the USB dongle.  No online deactivation/activation is required.  It is suggested to install latest drivers for Safe-NET iKey 1000 security tokens with every new installation and before plugging in the USB dongle.  Drivers are available from here: link.

Software Key license transfer process varies depending two following conditions:

–> Have access to currently installed license, want to uninstall and move to new machine

The key aspect of this transfer is having access to existing “old” installation before attempting the new installation.  You can release the license from the old installation in order to be available for the new installation.  This process is referred as “deactivate” the license.

TIP: We suggest to a) take a screenshot of your activated license with the entire serial number and computer clock visible, and b) take s screenshot of deactivation confirmation with computer clock visible, for your records.

To Deactivate the license, do the following:

ABBYY Recognition Server — right-click on the license in the Administration Microsoft Management Console (Admin MMC) which resides under Programs/ABBYY Recognition Server folder on your server.  Follow the wizard to complete the online deactivation.  Once completed, the license will become available for a new installation on a different machine.

ABBYY FlexiCapture – open License Manager which resides under Programs/ABBYY FlexiCapture/Tools folder.  If you are using Distributed Edition, then License Manager is located on your backend server.  From within the License Manager, go to Tools -> Deactivate.  Follow the wizard to complete the online deactivation.  Once completed, the license will become available for a new installation on a different machine.

NOTE: In case of frequent deactivation of the license, it is possible to reach a limit of deactivations.  If this happens, please contact WiseTREND for further assistance.

–> Do NOT have access to installed license, need to install on new machine

This process will take a few steps, so we suggest to try Deactivation described above if at all possible.  This situation is quite rare, but it may happen.  Examples of this situation are: permanent and unrecoverable failure of OS or hardware on computer where the license was installed, permanent loss of laptop where the license was installed, accidentally or unknowingly deleting the software without releasing the license, etc.

In such situation where the license is still locked on the old machine, and if it cannot be deactivated, please contact WiseTREND for further assistance and instructions.  WiseTREND will invoke internal ABBYY processes to help release the license and make it available for a new installation.

We are here to assist if you have any further questions or require any other assistance.

Your WiseTREND Team

Any form can be classified as “fixed” (aka structured) or “unstructured” (aka semi-structured).

Fixed form – form that contains same type of data in exactly same placement on each page.  This document can be a single-page form or a multi-page form, but the number of pages is constant and exactly the same in every document.  Example: DMV form, survey, questionnaire, new account application, registration card.  Typically, but not always, this form will have boxes or special registration fields and marking for better data placement.

Semi-structured form – form that contains similar data but position of that data my shift or change from document to document.  This document may contain multiple pages, and frequently number of pages varies from document to document depending on content length.  Data may be located in in different areas form document to document, and may occupy different space.  Some data may be missing.  Some data may appear one or more times, such as the number of line items on an invoice.  Examples: invoice, utility bill, bill of lading, bank statement.

Two different setup procedures are used depending on which kind of form will be processed in production.  Unstructured form procedures CAN be used for either fixed or unstructured form, because even a fixed form can be considers as semi-structured form with little to no variation.  However, fixed form procedures CANNOT be used on unstructured forms, because those procedures require data placement to be in same relevant positions.

Some external factors besides the form design itself may make the form more applicable to semi-structured processes than to fixed form processing, even though the form was originally designed as fixed form.  For example, assume a company has a PDF form on the website for clients to print, fill out and return back to the company.  Several factors have to be considered before classifying this form as good candidate for fixed form processing:

• PDF scaling – different users may have their PDF printing software scale the PDF differently before printing, resulting in forms having slightly different size.
• Printing variations – different users will have different printing hardware, which may use different printing margins, stretching due to worn out paper feeding rollers, and color intensity and sharpness (thick vs thin characters).
• Fax vs scan vs original – different users may return the form via different channels.  Faxed form will be compressed by the fax machine to add fax header line to the top of the page.  Various fax machines cause stretching and compression due to various conditions with paper feeding mechanisms.  Scanned forms may have different scanning resolution, skew, and rotation.  Paper forms received by the company may be scanned at Xerox and multi-function devices, introducing other variations into scan qualities.

A combination of such external factors may make it easier and mare rewarding to process these forms using unstructured methods due to artificially ‘introduced’ variations.

ABBYY FlexiCapture (9.0 and 10.0) is a powerful form processing and data capture software (OCR, ICR, OMR, Barcode).  FlexiCApture technology comes in two installation types depending on project needs and preferred use scenarios: Standalone and Distributed.

Standalone installation is a single-user software (like MS Word) where entire software package is installed on a single workstation.

Ideally suited for 1 to 2 users running the entire process on their workstations.
Simple installation and deployment
Simple fully automated workflow

Distributed installation uses a server-client environment to separate tasks and roles between multiple machines and multiple users.

Ideal for larger enterprise and government projects, or logically and physically distributed tasks
More than one operator/computer involved in processing, each performing different tasks
Distributed installation with the set of dedicated servers and stations
Highly scalable Processing Server with automatic load balancing and task management
Advanced automated workflow
Windows security and advanced user-rights management
Remote and Web-based operations
Advanced monitoring, statistics and reports

For more information about FlexiCapture please see: http://www.wisetrend.com/abbyy_flexicapture.shtml

ABBYY FlexiCapture can be installed in several different ways, depending on preferred use scenarios.  Slightly different installation method is used for each scenario, so please decide prior to purchasing your license or performing the actual installation.

1. Standalone installation, single user.  This setup is the simplest and allows only one computer to use the software.  The ’software key’ license for the FlexiCapture software is residing on this computer only.  For additional computers, separate licenses need to be purchased.  This installation is equivalent to dedicated per-seat licensing.
2. Standalone installation, multiple users.  Think of it as part-time or movable installation.  We can provide you with a USB key (like this: http://www.safenet-inc.com/uploadedImages/sentinel_ultrapro.jpg).  You can install the software on as many computers as you would like, but the software will work only when this special USB key plugged into one computer.  That computer can use the license, which will reside inside of the key.  In other words, this is a floating license – whoever has the key plugged in has the license.  This is a good option if there are consecutive shifts or part-time personnel that need to share the license.  USB key is moved around physically form machine to machine.  This is the same software use as in #1, but allows the license to be moved around between computers.
3. Distributed installation, single and multiple users.  This is a highly scaleable enterprise-level package for FlexiCapture technology.  FlexiCapture is installed on Server and Workstations.  In this installation, Server stores the license and performs specific project and workflow management roles, as well as performing automated tasks such as image import, recognition and export.  Workstations (separate UI clients) can perform different roles from separate workstation computers connected via LAN or WAN to the server.  Workstations perform such tasks as scanning, verification, project setup, etc.  Multiple workstations can share workload concurrently.  For example, multiple operators can share Verification work if your Distributed license supports multiple Verification station instances.

Deciding which installation is right for you depends on number of users in your process, their roles and desired workflow.  We can assist in studying your desired needs and preferences and selecting the best environment for your specific project.

Overall, let’s say your original PDF was a multi-page digital document with text and graphics and had a very small size of a few KB.  The text looked very sharp no matter how much you zoomed in.  When processing through OCR, and comparing to the original PDF, you find that a) the overall file size increased substantially and b) the quality of digital pages has decreased when viewed on the screen.

The result is expected if you are processing and saving to PDF Text Under Image.  In this mode, by your specification, the software rasterizes (creates image of) every page in order to produce the output where page image is visible and text is stored under it.  This is the reason for decrease in quality, because the image visible in the document will be more pixelated than digital text, which is hidden under the image.  Also, because in the result PDF now there is a newly create picture of every entire page + the OCR text result, whereas before it was only digital text, the file size can increase substantially.  It takes more storage to store newly created images per page in the result PDF.

I tested a digitally-generated PDF file containing 10 pages and some color graphics.  I think this testing scenario will reproduce this common situation well.  No compression or down-sampling has been specified in export settings for this test, which if used in PDF export settings can help decrease file size further.

• Original digital 10-page PDF
  Contains digital text and some digital color graphics.
  30.5 KB
• Processed PDF, Text Only
  Digital test is visible, along with some OCR mistakes.  Formatting around graphics has been altered slightly.
  15.4 KB
• Processed PDF, Text Under Image
  Rasterized pixelated picture of each page is visible.  Perfect preservation of original look and formatting.  Text is stored under page pictures for selection and searching.
  763 KB
• Processed PDF, Text Over Image
  Rasterized pixelated picture of each page is visible in some graphics, with good preservation of original formatting, but the text is sharp due to being placed on top of page picture.  OCR inaccuracies are also visible.
  67.8 KB

Notice that this test applies only to ‘digitally-created’ PDFs where text already exists in vector form.  As a result, when saving to Text Under Picture, a whole new picture layer is created, which increases the storage size.  If you were to process ‘image-based’ PDF such as a scan, it would have contained the image of the page before processing.  OCR would add a text layer only, which is small in size, and the size difference would not be noticeable.

Selecting one of three available PDF export types will affect the look and size of the output PDF.  PDF Text Under Image is the most commonly used format for archiving, indexing, and preservation, but in some cases it comes at a cost of size increase if original PDF did not contain an image layer.  Available quality and compression algorithms included in the software can help decrease the output size.

When starting ABBYY FlexiCapture, a user is presented with a list of last opened projects.  Frequently, once folders have been moved or projects deleted, paths in that list will no longer be valid.  It may be desireable to clear that list.

The only known method how to clear that list is through Registry.

Navigate to \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ABBYY\FlexiCapture\9.0\Shell\MRU_List and remove unwanted items from the “List” node.

NOTE: Registry editing is dangerous if performed incorrectly.  Please do it at your own risk.  If unsure, copying original entries into Notepad so they could be restored if something happens during testing.

In some cases, ABBYY Recognition Server installer may produce during an install/uninstall/upgrade on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008.

This issue is due to a potential bug in an installer, and it is easy to resolve. To resolve the issue, it is nessesary to create string EnableMSILog and set its value to “false” in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ABBYY\Debug branch of the Registry.  After the modificaiotn, the Registry screen should look like this:

Restarting the installation process should complete smoothly after this modification.

Frequently, a System Administrator may want to save a snapshot of the entire project in ABBYY FlexiCapture.  The process is the same for version 9.0 or 10.0, and for Standalone or Distributed Edition.  The purpose of this snapshot copy maby be any of the following:

• to save a backup copy of the project in its current state for backup purposes
• to make a copy of the project before applying new changes, where a copy can be used as a recovery if needed
• to send or transfer project settings to a different installation , such as between development and production

The snapshot created includes global project settings, all templates and document definitions (and naturally their content), and optionally batches with documents.  If you intend to include batches with documents in your exported copy, select those batches when performing the export.  If you do not wan to have any batches included, make sure to not have any batches selected.

Open your Administration Station (in Standalone Edition) or Project Setup Station (in Distributed Edition) and do the following:

1. Go to Project menu, and select Export Project.
2. Browse to a desired destination, give it a meaningful name (we recommend to include date and time) and click Create.
3. A copy of the project will be saved in your destination.  It looks like a folder with sub-folders, but the entire folder is the entire project, so it should remain intact when moving or sending it.

Table is a powerful compound element to capture two-dimensional data structured.  When writing rules for a Table element, ABBYY FlexiCapture 9.0 or 10.0 will have two different major behaviors depending on where the actual Script rule is placed.  Currently Table object provides access to Columns collection only, and not Rows collection.  This means that Table.Items returns the number of Columns.  In order to access Rows in a Table, a single columns needs to be selected so that me.Field(“Column1”).Items could be used to return Rows collection.  Note that the Column is called by the column name.

Here are the two different behaviors of the .Items depending on the placement of the script rule:

1. The Script rule is stored in the Table or Column object (to which most developers are used to).  In this case the Column object has NO .Items collection.  Columns can be accessed individually by name as a regular field, but script acts on all cells at once.  The advantage of this script is simplicity since row iteration becomes unnecessary.  The disadvantage is that the Cells count is unknown, and we cannot work with individual cells.
2. The Script rule is stored elsewhere, but NOT in the Table of Column object.  In this case the Column object has .Items or .Items.Item(i) which returns a collection of Cells.  We can iterate through each cell or access individual cells.

The above is targeting working with Columns and collections of Cells within columns.  So in order to process Rows, we need to access an appropriate .Items.Item(i) of each Column where (i) represented the actual Row number.  Also, we must use approach # 2, which is to store our Script rule outside of Table or Column elements.  The most logical place to store such scripts is right in the Document Section page element (called “Page” in your Definition).

For example, let’s use some imaginary Table with multiple rows and columns and generate some rules.

a)      If Charges cell is populated and any other cells are empty in a row, then require Verification on those other fields

b)      If Charges cell is empty, then skip Verification on other fields.  (I even suggest to improve this logic by maybe clearing other fields from misc. data if Charges cell is empty)

Here is the VBScript code:

'======================================
' This Rule checks certain conditions in each row of GridLines
'======================================
dim i

'check that columns exist
'large all-inclusive IF-THEN with AND operator
if me.Field("FromDOS").IsMatched and _
    me.Field("ToTOS").IsMatched and _
    me.Field("POS").IsMatched and _
    me.Field("Units").IsMatched and _
    me.Field("CPT").IsMatched and _
    me.Field("DC").IsMatched and _
    me.Field("Charges").IsMatched Then

    'iterate through all rows, the below action within For loop happens per row
    For i = 0 to me.Field("Charges").Items.Count-1
        'check if CHARGES cell has at least one character
        'and other cellsFROM, TO, POS, CPT, DC, UNITS are empty
        If Len(me.Field("Charges").Items.Item(i).Text) > 0 and _
        Len(me.Field("FromDOS").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 and _
        Len(me.Field("ToTOS").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 and _
        Len(me.Field("POS").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 and _
        Len(me.Field("CPT").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 and _
        Len(me.Field("DC").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 and _
        Len(me.Field("Units").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 Then
            'make all fields as NeedVerification
            me.Field("FromDOS").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = true
            me.Field("ToTOS").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = true
            me.Field("POS").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = true
            me.Field("CPT").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = true
            me.Field("DC").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = true
            me.Field("Units").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = true
        End If

        'check if CHARGES has no characters
        'and irrelevant if other cells FROM, TO, POS, CPT, DC, UNITS contain data
        If Len(me.Field("Charges").Items.Item(i).Text) = 0 Then
            'make all fields as NOT NeedVerification
            '(Perhaps a better option here is to clear out all other fields)
            me.Field("FromDOS").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = false
            me.Field("ToTOS").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = false
            me.Field("POS").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = false
            me.Field("CPT").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = false
            me.Field("DC").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = false
            me.Field("Units").Items.Item(i).NeedVerification = false
        End If        

    Next

End If


This code can be modified to perform any other logic while iterating through any number of Rows and calling on specific Columns by name to perform some actions.