User Guide

Automated Forms Processing
Remote scanning and processing faxed forms
Images to be processed may be received from sources other
than the scanner. If, for some reason, you cannot deploy
FormReader directly at the location where the forms are completed
and gathered, you can use remote scanning or gather forms by fax.
Imagine a situation where a survey is being conducted in sev
eral cities. The central site is located in the regional administrative
centre, and you wish to avoid shipping forms to the central pro
cessing site. ABBYY FormReader can easily solve the problem.
Forms will be scanned locally, saved as image files (e.g. in black
andwhite TIFF format each file will be from 10 to 100 KB in size)
and sent by email to the central site. In the processing centre, the
images will be passed on to the Scanning Station where they will be
automatically grouped into batches.
Alternatively, forms may be sent in by fax. Even though faxing
may introduce linear distortions such as stretching or compression,
FormReader will correct the images and process them. The only
requirement is that faxed forms have reference points in the form
of black squares placed in the corners. The program will use these
black squares to match the forms with their template. If the posi
tion of black squares shifts slightly during faxing, FormReader will
adjust the template accordingly, so as to find all the data fields on
the slightly distorted forms.
Verification does not require much skill on the part of the opera
tor. All that is needed is a PC (its processing power is not crucial)
and attention to detail. Very often homeworkers are hired as veri
fiers. In this case the only requirement is that the verifier has an
internet connection.
If this approach is used, ABBYY recommends using terminal
access. A terminal server (TS) is installed in the processing centre,
and the homeworker's PC is used as a terminal client (TC). The
TS runs a program that manages the flow of data to be verified.
The verification operator can see everything that happens in the
screen of the client as if he were sitting in front of the server con
sole. The TC application intercepts the operator's actions and
reports them to the TS. In its turn, the serverside program per
forms the operator's commands. The results are then displayed on
the TC.
ABBYY FormReader 6.0 products have been tested under
Microsoft Terminal Services.
Distributed verification