Question

Smart Fields - Knowing when its done

Laserfiche Cloud Workflow

Updated one day ago

asked on July 25 • Show version history

Looking at Smart Fields more and setting up a POC.

1. Invoice document comes in which triggers the workflow.

2. Workflow assigns my Smart Fields template.

3. If I wait a bit the fields get populated. Take 30ish seconds for the Smart Fields to kick in and populate the fields.

4. I then want to retrieve the field data and invoke a business process.

This seems to work but how can we tell when Smart Fields are complete? Right now I just have a minute delay in there. This seems to work but wondering how you can tell the system to wait until the Smart Fields are completed before moving on. The minute delay has a chance of not being long enough or wasting time if it completes quickly.

Thanks,

Chris

1 0

Answer

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on July 25

The recommended solution is to use the wait for entry change activity. In the wait condition you can configure it to wait for a field that you expect to be updated by the Smart Fields service. In the below example I am waiting for the PO Number.

In some cases you may not be able to guarantee a value will be extracted from the document. You can either provide instructions in the description when configuring the field to insert a value if nothing can be found. Or you can configure a separate field in the template that would indicate the status of the extraction. For example, create a new field in the template and call it something like Extraction Status with a description of "Set to COMPLETE".

This will ensure you have a value that the wait condition can detect on.

2 0

replied on July 28

Thanks Shawn,

I'll see about using that. So it sounds like the extract option for AI is all one "activity". I didnt know if waiting for the change in a field (even a status one as you suggested) would trigger before the entire extraction was finished.

It would be neat to get a separate workflow activity for "extract AI values". That way we could 1) assign a template without triggering the extract and 2) specifically pick when we extract and know when its finished.

Chris

1 0

replied one day ago

The updating of the tokens is all performed in one transaction after the extraction is complete. So it is safe to wait for any one of the fields to be updated to sequence your workflow (again this assumes the content is going to be updated by the extraction).

Product team is aware of the request for a dedicated activity to resolve some of the sequencing noted above.

0 0

Replies

replied on July 25

You should be able to use the wait for entry change activity instead with a condition that a required field is not empty. When the template is assigned that will trigger a change, and when the fields are populated that will trigger another change. But where are you finding an option to extract values using smart fields in the Assign Field Values activity, I do not see this anywhere.

1 0

replied on July 25

There isn't per se. If the template is setup as Smart Fields, simply assigning the template seems to trigger the extraction. So the first activity simply assigns the template. Then Smart Fields trigger automatically. Someone can correct me if I am wrong but there doesn't seem to be a trigger to kick off the AI extraction. It just does it when the template is assigned.

The data shows up in the template and then I retrieve it and its there. Since there seems to be no mechanism to trigger it via workflow I have to wait an unknown time to make sure it finishes.

0 0

replied on July 25

I came to the same conclusion you did and built the exact same workflow for our invoices (with a delay) yesterday. It seems to work for most cases, but I feel that there should be a better way to do this.

0 0

replied on July 25

I am not having any luck with this. Maybe my template is configured wrong. The template itself is not a smart fields template, it just contains smart fields and has the option to Extract Values. However when I create a workflow just to assign the template, it does not extract any values automatically.

Values being added to a field should always be considered an entry change though, you should not need to guess the timeframe with a delay.

0 0

You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Question

Question

Smart Fields - Knowing when its done

Answer

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.