Creating a metafile during scanning

User-defined fields can be inserted for devices and users (for users, the contents of these fields can also be imported). The data from these fields are stored in variables named the same as the field name. With the field name Additional Field, the variable call would be %Additional Field% (variable names must be unique).

• Create User-Defined Fields For Devices
• Create Custom Fields For Users

If a user interview is made in a workflow, i.e. the user enters or selects data on the device, these are stored in freely definable variables and these are defined in the following modules:

• Interview Selection Module
• Interview input module

For use, the names of the variables must be enclosed with % characters, e.g. %variable name%.

Variables for zone OCR (see also Zone OCR, Barcode, QRCode module) are dependent on the name of the zone. The corresponding destinations are as follows:

• Text variable %OCRZONE.<zone_name>% (e.g. %OCRZONE.zone 1%) for the content of text or barcode zones and
• Table variables %OCRTABLE.<zone_name>.COL<colum_no.>% (e.g. %OCRTABLE.zone 1.COL2%) for the contents of table zones. This variable is automatically repeated in a metafile as many times as rows are detected in the table.

A variety of variables can be created in a document review, see Document review.

When using the document input Folder, you can pass an XML file to a document workflow in addition to an image file, which can be used to pass variables to the workflow. The variables can then be used in the workflow like the variables of a user interview (see also Document processing).

The name of the variable must not contain special characters. Allowed are small and capital letters (no umlauts or similar), numbers and the dot ".".
If the variable name is used in several places, all places can influence the variable value.

The XML file must have the same name as the associated image file (test.tif > test.xml).

<DocumentOptions>

<UserLogin>administrator</UserLogin>

<Variables>

<variable name="Name1" value="value1" type="string"/>

<variable name="Name2" value="222" type="int"/>

</Variables>

</DocumentOptions>

• The main area <DocumentOptions> must be present.
• The <Variables> area contains variable definitions.
• <variable name="Name1" value="value1" type="string"/> defines a variable by the name of Name1 with the content value1 of the type string. A numerical value can also be defined as an int (integer).
  The type is of importance for formatting the variable (if it is missing, string is assumed), see also Variables.

Variables that originate from interview modules or from zone OCR can be translated into a different value. This is useful, for example, if a read barcode only contains a number, but a metafile to be generated needs to contain the descriptive text.

The allocation tables for this can be maintained in IQ4docs. It is also possible to query any database via ODBC. Together with the decision module, this can also be used to check variable values for plausibility, for example.

The variable values can be overwritten by the new value or a new variable can be created.

• Replace Variable module
• Replace Variable ODBC module

For use, the names of the new variables must be enclosed with % characters, as are all variables, e.g. %variable name%.

The value of a variable can be formatted. This can be useful if, for example, the output of the number of scanned pages in a metafile must always consist of 5 digits (25 > 00025).

The formatting specification is inserted into the % characters enclosing the variable name.

All variables are considered string data types by default. If the converted value is to be reused as a string, no data type specification is required. But if you know that the string variable contains a number, you can make a conversion to int and use formatting for numbers.

Further descriptions of the formatting of types or user-defined number format strings can be found in the Microsoft documentation.

Incorrect formatting of the variables can lead to a processing error.

To open the web administration, enter http://<hostname>/webadmin in the web browser (where hostname corresponds to the server on which IQ4docs WebAdmin was installed). In a client environment, enter the URL that you received from the client administrator (for example, http://server/webadmin/#/cf992178-4bd6-431c-b815-b9d734d0ded3). If you are not already logged in, log in with a user that has administrator rights (login and password) or as the IQ4docs system administrator (administrator with password admin by default).

To use an existing workflow, click on Workflows in the Web Administration menu (the list of existing workflows opens). Click on the desired line. The workflow editor opens. To create a new workflow, click Create Workflow and select an SMB or FTP scanning workflow and give the workflow a name of your choice.

You can create a metafile in the SMB or FTP module. To do so, click Metafile in the setting.

Metafile

A text-based metafile can be created for the actual destination file. This file is then transferred to the destination location in addition to the destination file (e.g. is stored in the same folder).

Encoding: Set which encoding method should be used to create the text file. The following encoding methods are available (please contact your IQ4docs contact if you require an encoding method that is not currently offered):

• UTF-8
• UTF-8 with BOM
• UTF-16 big endian
• UTF-16 little endian
• UTF-32 big endian
• UTF-32 little endian
• ASCII
• ISO 8859-15
• Windows-1252

Note that not all (special) characters can be displayed correctly with every encoding method. Characters that cannot be displayed may be replaced by other characters.

Metafile name: Specify the name of the metafile with file extension. If no variables are used in the name (e.g. metafile.xml), the file will always be overwritten during transfer via FTP if it already exists. For SMB, an additional number is inserted in the name (e.g. metafile (1).xml). All variables can be used in the name, see Variables.

Metafile content: Use this field to define the content of the metafile. All Variables can be used in the content of the metafile. In connection with this, please also note the possibilities of Zone OCR, see Zone OCR, Barcode, QRCode module.