An overview of our visual cropping tool.
Introduction
Our new visual cropping tool was built to make rule creation and editing less confusing. For most use cases, we expect this to be true; however, advanced parsers may find our existing editor better suited.
Compatibility
The Visual Cropping/Rule Tool and our Legacy Rules Tool are fully backward- and forward-compatible. This means you can create in one and edit in another and go back and forth as needed. There is no harm in experimenting with it. Just use the tool that works best for you.
Enable Visual Cropping Tool
You can enable this now within your settings area — go to Settings > Parsing Rules User Interface and select the option for Visual Cropping Tool and Rules Editor.
Change Working Document
To change the document displayed within the visual rules editor use the Change Sample Document button.
Once clicked you get a list of your documents and just pick the one you wish to view within the editor.
Parsing Rules
Your parsing rules are shown on the right. They are shown in the order in which they were created. You can drag and drop rules to reorder them.
Rule Numbers
Note that rules related to the visual cropping areas will correspond to the number shown on the edge of the crop box. For example, rule #3 PO Number here below:
Clicking within the crop box or selecting the rule on the right will highlight both areas to make this relationship clearer.
Note: Text-based rules do not show in the document on the left as they do not have an associated crop box.
Rule Colors
Green rules are producing data and likely are good to go. Red rules need more work as the current result is empty. To fix click on the edit button to work on that rule to get the expected output.
Renaming Rules
Simply click on the name and type out your new name.
And then click on Save All Parsing Rules Button
Editing Rules
Click on the edit button to the right of the rule name to edit your rule.
Duplicating Rules
Click on the duplicate button and then name your new rule.
\Note: You can also copy this rule to another parser if you wish by picking a different parser than the current one (selected by default).
Deleting Rules
Click on the delete button to delete your rule.
Navigate Through Pages
You can easily navigate to other pages to set up rules by using the page menu on the bottom right.
Create New Rule
Use the Create New Rule to create a new rule.
After clicking you are presented with a variety of rules to choose from along with some tools on the top to refine your choices.
Filter by Category
Pick a category to only see rules for that type of parser.
Search by Keywords
You can also search by a keyword to see all of the rules that match.
Combining Both
You can also combine these together to see rules in category that match your search term.
Adding Filters
To further refine your output, you can add filters to your rules. We have filters for fields (Text Filter) and tabled data (Table Filter). When you click on a filter button it will pull up a menu of choices with embedded subsections to pick from.
Text Filter
Table Filter
Saving Rules
To save any new rules or changes to existing rules (including a new name of a rule) just click on the Save All Parsing Rules button.
When you save a rule, you are presented with the following choice:
Add New Rule
This will take you to the Add New Rule screen.
Prepare for Export
This will take you out of the rules editor and reparse the documents automatically for you.
Note: Anytime you change your parser rules (or filters) you will need to reparse your documents to apply your new parser logic to the data output.
Continue Editing
This puts you back to where you were in the rules editor in case you forgot to do something.