Optical character recognition scanning in the Pega Sales Automation SAPlus sample application
You can demonstrate optical character recognition (OCR) scanning by using the Pega Sales Automation SAPlus sample application.
Pega Sales Automation includes a sample application package that you can use to demonstrate the application's features. If you are using the Pega Sales Automation mobile app, you can use OCR technology to scan a business card and create a contact in the Pega Sales Automation application. You use your mobile device's camera to take a picture of a business card and send it to a third-party OCR software vendor, where it is parsed into a standard output, such as XML or JSON. The result is then mapped back to Pega Sales Automation to create a new contact record.
Creating account for third-party OCR software
To demonstrate the OCR functionality, the sample package uses the software company Abbyy as the third-party OCR software vendor.
After you create an account and an application, Abbyy sends an email to the email address that you used to register the account. The email contains the application ID and password that you need to use when defining parameters for the getCardData Java API method. The Abbyy OCR functionality is available in the sample application when the Abbyy application configuration is complete.
- Access the Abbyy website at http://cloud.ocrsdk.com.
- Click Register.
Pega Sales Automation extension points for OCR
Pega Sales Automation uses the GetCardData activity and the BusinessCardParseData data transform extension points to manage OCR scanning functionality.
In the sample application, the GetCardData activity calls the getCardData Java API method, which accepts the following arguments:
- File content
- Abbyy project name
- Abbyy project password
The file content is passed into the GetCardData activity from the ScanBusinessCard activity, which contains the image of the scanned business card.
The Java API method getCardData comes from a custom Java JAR file
called PegaCRMAbbyy.zip, which is a Java wrapper application that
calls the Abbyy software. It is included in the SAPlus sample application RAP.
The BusinessCardParseData data transform maps the data that is returned from the third-party software vendor to the contact work object in the Pega Sales Automation application. Abbyy returns an XML structure after processing the file image that is received from the app. In the sample application, the data in the XML structure is placed in the data structure PegaCRM-Int-BusinessCard-Abbyy- by using the following subclasses:
- DocumentType
- BusinessCardType
- FieldType
- CharactersType
- CharType
- FieldComponentsType
- FieldComponentType
The BusinessCardParseData data transform then maps the data from the XML data model to the contact data structure and makes it available in the application.
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