Variables

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.