Description best practices

The description is used to find a piece of data on a document. When creating a field, make sure you provide a proper field description so that the description finds the information you want.

Use the following guidelines to ensure the best results:

Use simple words and sentences to describe the required data; do not give instructions or ask questions.
Be as specific as possible.
Avoid ambiguous statements that could match multiple items.
If there is a list of expected values, include them as part of the description.
If you want to format the result, include that as part of the description. This includes what to do when no result is found.
Avoid extracting data that is not related to the document.

For a field called FirstName:

Do explain what you want in a simple way such as The first name of the person who submitted the form or The first name of the sender.

Do not be ambiguous and say something like The first name on the form. Since descriptions are interpreted literally, this might return the first name found on the document, rather than a specific person's first name. This is especially true if more than one person is mentioned in a document.

Good field description examples

Name	Description
SSN	The Social Security Number of the person submitting the form.
UtilityBillType	The type of utility that is invoiced. This can be Gas, Power, or Water.
Shipping Address	The address where the goods are shipped.
Total	The total amount invoiced.
Payment Recipient	The name of the person receiving the payment.
Due Date	The due date of the bill in the format of YYYY/MM/DD.

Bad field description examples

Name	Bad Description	Why the description is bad
Approve	Yes or No, whether this invoice should be approved.	This information cannot be inferred from the text in a document. The Large language Model (LLM) cannot know your internal approval processes.
PreviousBalance	The pervious balance of the bank account.	This may not work if there are multiple bank accounts in this statement. Be more specific and add of the first bank account mentioned to the description.
LargestAmount	The largest dollar amount that occurs on the document.	LLMs may not do mathematics. There is no guarantee that calculations can be performed.
IsAdult	Yes, if the person submitting the form is an adult based on their date of birth, else, No.	LLMs may not do mathematics, nor do they know the current date. Both are needed to derive the age.
Name	Who submitted the form? What's the name of the person who submitted the form? Return the name of the person who submitted the form.	This is a question, rather than a description of the required data. This is also a question, rather than a description of the required data. This is an instruction, rather than a description of the required data.

Some level of experimentation and testing may be required to achieve successful results. As necessary, adjust the wording of your description to see if the results improve.