ABBYY Recognition Server

Server Manager - the central service component, which controls the document processing queue and orchestrates the work of Processing Stations and Verification Stations.

Scan Station - a client application for high-speed production and batch scanning

Processing Station - a service that performs recognition and document conversion.

Verification Station - a client station which provides an interface for proofreading the recognised data.

Remote Administration Console - a client console used for configuring and monitoring Recognition Server.

Recognition Server Workflow

The document conversion process in Recognition Server can be divided in four logical parts:

1. Uploading or Scanning documents

The user (or a client software program such as Scan Station) uploads the images to one of the following network resources:

* network folder (which is convenient in case of centralized processing of many image files);
* FTP folder (e.g. if images should be uploaded from remote locations);
* email folder (e.g. if users send their images for conversion by e-mail).

The Server Manger component of Recognition Server imports the images from the Input source and arranges them in a queue for processing.

2. Processing

The processing of the images and PDF files is done on a Processing Station.

It is possible to connect several computers to the Server Manager as Processing Stations, and the Server Manager will balance the workload among these stations evenly. This will result in much faster processing of the documents.

There are a few essential steps in the document conversion process. Recognition Server does them all automatically without any user assistance.

First there is an image pre-processing step, which performs some preliminary actions on each page:

* skew correction
* automatic detection of page orientation;
* splitting of facing pages in the case of book scans
* noise and garbage removal.

Next comes the recognition part of the process. The OCR and barcode recognition technologies used in Recognition Server deliver unprecedented accuracy and support processing of various types of text and the most popular 1D and 2D barcodes. The OCR process is supported with extensive language databases including over 191 languages.

For images scanned in a batch, Recognition Server offers several document separation options. For example, the batch can be split into individual documents using blank separator sheets, barcode sheets, or barcodes stuck or printed on the first page of each document. Recognition Server performs document separation based on the separation rules you create and the data that is recognized in your documents. Each document will then be exported to a separate output file.

3. Quality Control

Sometimes there is a need to process important documents which have to be recognized with exceptional accuracy. Meanwhile, the quality of scanned images may not be perfect, suffering from low resolution and unwanted noise. In this case it is very important to have a reliable quality checking mechanism. Recognition Server provides options for automatic quality control and a visual verification.

* Automatic quality control allows the administrator to set a threshold for recognition accuracy. When this option is on, documents with poor-quality text will not be converted. They will be stored in a separate folder for special treatment by an operator.

* If the Verification option is enabled, the pages will be routed to available Verification Stations. Verification Stations allow operators to check the accuracy of the layout and the recognized text, perform any necessary corrections and run spell checking. Verification can be enabled either for all recognized pages or only for those pages which are recognized with an accuracy below the certain threshold.

4. Getting converted documents

Recognition Server saves the documents in your chosen format and delivers them to your output destination:

* a network folder
* a SharePoint document library
* an e-mail address

The program offers lots of flexibility for naming your image files and routing them to specific folders. For instance, the current time, date or barcode value can be used to name the image file or folder in the most convenient manner.

Recognition Server can convert images into various kinds of searchable or editable formats: PDF, PDF/A, RTF, TXT, DOC(X), XLS(X), XML, as well as into popular image formats: TIFF, multi-page TIFF and JPEG.

Within PDF creation functionality Recognition Server offers an extended set of options:

* document security
* file compression
* web-optimization
* optimization for hand-held devices
* adding headers, footers and Bates stamps into documents
* creation of PDF files compliant with PDF/A standard

Administration

The administration of Recognition Server is performed via a convenient administration interface based on the Microsoft Management Console. It allows the administrator to configure the system and monitor its activity, to set processing parameters, to manage licenses, stations, and user permissions, to manage the processing queue and to view the log files.

The priority management and advanced scheduling features allow the administrator to control the order in which the documents are processed and use your processing stations (hardware resources) efficiently by scheduling OCR overnight or at weekends.

Integration

ABBYY Recognition Server provides an application programming interface (API) for integration with other applications. The API can be used to pass image files and processing parameters to Recognition Server, get notifications about job completion and obtain converted files.

Please contact us to discuss your document conversion project.