Matching documents to a list

asked on July 25, 2017

Hi all,

My client currently receives a package of construction plans in PDF format that are labelled with a unique identifier. They all receive a register in Excel format that lists the plan number (which the drawings are named), type, name and revision number. There can be upwards of 60+ plans, that they presently need to go through manually and check off the register to ensure all have been received.

My client would like to be able skip this manual checking and automate it, and ideally have any missing documents highlighted (or otherwise made note of in some way). If a new revision of a current document arrives, it would then be placed in another folder in the repository.

Although I've been able to work on the second half of this process (old revision to different folder), I'm struggling on the first step.

Part of the problem is that the plan numbers can be quite similar (AWD001, AWD101, AWD501, CI_C-000, CI_C-100, &c.) so I'm struggling to come up with an easy pattern matching method.

I would appreciate any pointers on how to approach this.

Thanks!

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replied on July 26, 2017

What are you trying to pattern match? And in what program? Are you trying to just OCR the plan number?

Let me see if I am reading this right. Your client sends their customer an excel spreadsheet with list of all the plan numbers that they should provide. Your client's customer then sends back 1 big PDF file that may or may not have all the plans listed on the spreadsheet. You are trying to use Laserfiche to break the PDF up into a file for each plan. You are trying to "read" what the plan number is on the document. Once you know the number you are trying to match the plans numbers to see if anything is missing. Right?

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replied on July 26, 2017

Hi Jennifer,

1. An external construction company sends my client a folder, which contains upwards of 60 or so drawings in PDF, each which are titled with a code and revision number, and an Excel spreadsheet which lists each drawing.

2. My client then needs to cross-check they have received the correct drawings (both in number and revision) with the spreadsheet. This is both time-consuming and wrought with human error, as they may receive ten of these packages a day.

3. My client then contacts the external construction company with any documents that are missing or incorrect.

I would like to be able to create a way to scan the spreadsheet and match the document names to the PDFs. The PDFs also have their names in the drawing, but not necessarily the revision number.

I've been experimenting with Workflow (v. 10.2). Unfortunately my client does not have a license for Quick Fields.

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replied on July 27, 2017

Ok. So each drawing is a separate PDF. Not all drawings in 1 PDF. And you are trying to pattern match the name of the PDF? But I am guessing naming is not standard?

Have you looked at using the spreadsheets as a data source instead of scanning it?

If the PDFs do not have any metadata applied to them, maybe you could start with doing a data query on the spreadsheet pulling all the plan and revision numbers. Then do a for each row loop and in the loop do a search for document that have the plan/revision number in the title of it.

A lot would depend on how the spreadsheet is. Are plan number and revision number separate columns?

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