First Fields Customization Steps

Each document is associated with a set of data fields. The most typical cases are fields captured from the document, such as date due, order id, or total amount. These fields are pre-captured by the AI engine, shown in the sidebar, and part of the export file. This list of fields is controlled by the schema.

Simple tweaks of captured fields

The easiest way to customize your fields is the Fields to capture screen that is part of the Settings section of the web app. You can enter it using the gear icon near the top left corner. In this screen, you can enable or disable fields. Follow this visual guide.

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If you use a fresh trial account, you will soon see that your schema contains all the AI fields, not just these visible in your sidebar – the rest is marked as hidden and non-exported. This is to give you a good starting point when customizing your schema. The user interface for configuring fields to capture will show only the fields that are actually listed in the schema.

Therefore, the checkbox approach above does not remove or add fields to the schema. It merely disables and enables them (by flipping their hidden and can_export flags).

Customizing field attributes in-depth

You may take a much finer-grained control of your fields by editing the schema at a lower level.

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Fields in your schema may come in more shapes and forms than whatever you see in the sidebar. A sidebar field can be bound to multiple AI fields in a fallback manner. It can also carry a default value, the type may vary, and you may set up even advanced types like dropdown select boxes or multivalue fields.

Another feature (relevant when writing your extension) is the ability to pre-fill the value during document upload, not just based on the AI. Perhaps you already know during upload what PO an invoice ought to be associated with, or who it came from.

Just what is a finer-grained control? You may control types, constraints, and defaults on fields. Or decide on the options available in the dropdown enum fields or which AI field (or multiple fields) to use as a data source. And even their labels in the sidebar.

The easiest way to work with the schema in a JSON format (a code-like text file) is by using Rossum's in-app schema editor. Follow the visual guide to understand the editor and the basics of the schema structure.

Sometimes, it is helpful to manage the schema via API using the Rossum tool. This tool allows scripting schema updates and editing as a specially formatted XLSX spreadsheet. We have prepared a detailed tutorial on XLSX schema configuration for you. The most powerful capability of the XLSX format is editing long dropdown lists easily.