Form Recognizer is a powerful AI-powered service, provided in the Microsoft Azure suite, that extracts text and data from documents. This service intelligently understands the structure of the document, making it easy to create applications that can handle an array of documents such as forms, receipts, invoices, and more. Here, we will acquire an understanding of Form Recognizer’s capabilities and potential applications.
Form Recognizer consists of three main models: the prebuilt model, the custom model, and the layout model.
1. Prebuilt Models
Prebuilt models are the built-in AI models that recognize and extract key-value pairs and tables from forms, receipts, and business cards. Examples of these structures include total amounts, transaction details, merchant names on receipts, and names and job titles on business cards.
For example, when analyzing the receipt, the Form Recognizer prebuilt receipt model will automatically identify and extract important information like the merchant’s name, transaction date/time, items bought, subtotal, tax, and total amount.
2. Custom Models
Custom models allow you to train Form Recognizer models on your unique documents for better recognition and extraction performance. You may want to use a custom model if you handle specific type of forms with unique fields that prebuild models can’t identify.
For instance, an insurance company can train a custom Form Recognizer model to specifically understand and extract data from its various claim forms containing fields unique to the company. Subsequently, whenever a claim form is scanned or uploaded, the model can easily identify and extract the required information with precision.
3. Layout Models
Layout models are primed to extract text, tables, selection marks, and structure of a document. It lays out the recognized elements such as pages, paragraphs, lines, and words along with the bounding box coordinates and text, making it easy to understand the structure of the document.
For instance, if you use layout models while uploading a class syllabus, it will extract and segregate the data into different headings such as course name, course description, learning outcomes, assessment methods, and more.
Key Features of Form Recognizer
Let’s focus on the key features and capabilities that Form Recognizer brings to the table:
- Text and Data Extraction: Form Recognizer allows you to extract printed and handwritten text from forms and documents, facilitating the automation of data entry tasks.
- Multilanguage Support: Form recognizer supports multiple languages such as English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and Chinese.
- Support for Different Formats: It supports extraction of data from formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF and PDF.
- High Accuracy and Efficiency: It can accurately and efficiently extract data from many different documents and forms.
- Secure and Compliant: Built on Azure infrastructure, Form Recognizer ensures the highest level of security and compliance.
By integrating Form Recognizer in your applications, you can greatly reduce manual data entry errors and enhance process automation and efficiency. Remember to consider the type of documents you deal with to determine whether to employ prebuilt models, custom models or layout models. Irrespective of the choice, you can be assured of high precision extraction provided by Microsoft Azure Form Recognizer service.
Practice Test
True or False: The Form Recognizer service from Azure can extract key-value pairs and tables from documents.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Form Recognizer uses machine learning technology to identify and extract key-value pairs and table data from forms.
Can the Form Recognizer service identify hand-written text?
- a) Yes
- b) No
Answer: a) Yes
Explanation: Form Recognizer can identify both printed and hand-written text in documents.
True or False: The Form Recognizer service is unable to recognize content from receipts.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Form Recognizer has a prebuilt model for recognizing and extracting information from receipts.
Which languages are supported by Form Recognizer?
- a) English
- b) Spanish
- c) French
- d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above
Explanation: Form Recognizer can recognize and extract text in several languages, including English, Spanish, French, and more.
True or False: Integration of Form Recognizer requires extensive coding skills.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Form Recognizer provides REST API endpoints that developers can call to easily integrate form recognition capabilities.
Which information can be extracted from invoices using Form Recognizer?
- a) Invoice ID
- b) Product name
- c) Quantity
- d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above
Explanation: Form Recognizer can extract key information from invoices such as Invoice ID, Product name, Quantity, etc.
True or False: The Form Recognizer API supports multi-page documents.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Form Recognizer is capable of processing multi-page documents and forms with multiple pages.
Can Azure Form Recognizer automatically detect the layout of the form?
- a) Yes
- b) No
Answer: a) Yes
Explanation: Form Recognizer uses unsupervised learning to understand the layout and relationships between field names and values in your forms.
True or False: Custom models created by the Form Recognizer service can be used for layout understanding.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Form Recognizer allows you to train a custom model on your specific data, which can also be used for understanding the layout of unseen forms.
Does Form Recognizer service support real-time processing of the documents?
- a) Yes
- b) No
Answer: b) No
Explanation: As of now, Form Recognizer does not support real-time processing. It requires the documents to be stored before processing.
True or False: Azure’s Form Recognizer can extract data from PDF, TIFF, and JPEG format.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Form recognizer supports multiple formats including JPEG, PNG, PDF, and TIFF documents.
Form Recognizer can only extract values from tables.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: Form Recognizer is not only limited to table data. It can also extract key-value pairs and text from a document.
True or False: Form Recognizer service uses OCR technology.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Form Recognizer is an AI powered document extraction service built from ground up on OCR technology.
Only structured forms can be recognized by the Form Recognizer Service.
- a) True
- b) False
Answer: b) False
Explanation: Form Recognizer works both with structured and semi-structured documents.
True or False: Form Recognizer service does not allow to train custom models.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Form Recognizer service allows to train custom models on your specific data.
Interview Questions
What is the primary function of the Form Recognizer service in Microsoft Azure?
The Form Recognizer service extracts text, key-value pairs, and tables from documents and forms, applying machine learning technology to understand and categorize data accurately.
What kind of documents can Form Recognizer process?
Form Recognizer can process a variety of forms or documents like receipts, business cards, invoices, and custom forms in different formats including JPG, PNG, PDF, and TIFF.
Is it necessary to manually label data for Form Recognizer to identify fields?
No, Form Recognizer uses unsupervised learning to understand the layout and relationships between fields and entries in your data which does not require any manual labelling.
Can Form Recognizer extract handwritten text from documents?
Yes, the Form Recognizer preview includes support for English handwritten text extraction in the layout API.
What are key-value pairs in the context of Form Recognizer?
Key-value pairs are relationships identified by Form Recognizer service in a document, where “key” is the field name and “value” is the associated information.
Can the Form Recognizer service work with documents in languages other than English?
Yes, Form Recognizer supports text extraction for several languages, not only English.
Does Form Recognizer retain the information it extracts from my documents?
No, Microsoft ensures that data sent to Form Recognizer is not retained and is only used to process the requests.
How can I train the Form Recognizer model to understand my forms better?
You can train the Form Recognizer model using your own data. You can provide five or more form documents of the same type to create a custom model.
Is it possible to use Form Recognizer to extract data from a scanned receipt?
Yes, Form Recognizer includes a pre-built model specifically for extracting data from sales receipts from US-based retailers.
Can Form Recognizer handle rotated or tilted images?
Yes, Form Recognizer does support rotated or skewed text up to an angle of 40 degrees.
Can Form Recognizer work on forms with checkboxes or other form elements?
Yes, Form Recognizer can recognize and extract information from checkboxes and selection marks.
Can the Form Recognizer be used for real-time form processing?
No, as of the current release, Form Recognizer is an asynchronous service and does not support real-time form processing.
Can Form Recognizer process multi-paged documents?
Yes, Form Recognizer can handle documents up to 2000 pages, depending on the complexity and format of the document.
What are the output formats provided by Form Recognizer?
Form Recognizer provides its output in JSON format that contains detailed information for text, tables, and key-value pairs.
How does Form Recognizer handle privacy and compliance?
Microsoft maintains rigorous practices to ensure privacy and compliance. This includes not storing any of the data sent via the Form Recognizer service.
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