Substitution

Note: This process requires the purchase of a Quick Fields add-on.

The Substitution process allows you to find and replace words in tokens or page text using regular expressions as in Pattern Matching. It is useful for correcting errors or changes made during OCR.

Example: Pennybags Financial Advisors wants to be able to perform text searches on their old financial statements in Laserfiche. It is particularly important to them to be able to search for the term "interest accrued," but because of the font used and the poor photocopy quality of the old statements, this phrase is frequently OCRed incorrectly, with the wrong letters used and extra spaces sometimes inserted. They configure a text substitution process that looks for the phrase with any character substituted for the frequently misread letters, or with extra spaces, and replaces it with the correct phrase.

To use Substitution

1. In the Session Configuration Pane, select the stage of processing where you want to use Substitution.
2. In the Tasks Pane, select Substitution. Under More Options, you can select Wizard to display more information about each property or Skip Wizard to display the properties all at once without additional information.
3. Page Range: When configuring a process in Page Processing or Storage Processing, you will be prompted to specify a page range. In other stages, default settings will be automatically applied.
4. Substitution Patterns: To configure a pattern, click Add Substitution.... The New Substitution Pattern dialog box will open.
5. Specify the name for the substitution. The best practice is to choose a name that will help you remember the function of the process when reviewing the session later.
6. Choose whether to look for the pattern in an existing token value or the page text. If using a token value, you can use the token button to select tokens generated from the system or other processes in Quick Fields. If using page text, you can choose whether to run the pattern match on the entire page or specify a custom page range.
7. Specify a pattern to match. For a list of common expressions, click the pattern button. For more information, see the Regular Expression Reference.
8. To test the pattern, click the Test... button. Specify a value that you expect to fit the pattern. Click OK to see if the expected value is returned. If not, adjust the pattern and test again.
9. Specify the data that will replace the information that matches the pattern. If you have used a match group in the pattern, you can click the button to select it.
10. To make the pattern match case sensitive, select Match Case. To make it case insensitive, clear it.

11. If Replace the input token's value with the result is selected, the token will be modified to match the input value.

12. Optional: To preview how this enhancement will affect scanned images and OCRed or extracted text, test processes. For the best results, add a custom sample image before testing. Adjust and test until you are satisfied with the results.