The Cloud OCR plugin is included with the standard Transact license. Additionally, to use this plugin you need a service account with either Google for Google Cloud Vision or Microsoft for Azure Computer Vision. Google Cloud Vision and Microsoft Azure Computer Vision require a separate charge from Transact. Google Cloud Vision may be requested at no cost for Transact Cloud customers. See Prerequisites for more information.

To configure and use the Cloud OCR plugin, the following must be in place:

• Before installing or upgrading the Cloud OCR plugin, Transact must have been successfully installed, licensed, and started.

• MariaDB, MS SQL Server, or Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS) with administrative credentials having GRANTS to create a database and a user.

• Depending on whether you are using Google Cloud Vision or Azure Computer Vision, you need the following:

  • A license from Google for Google Cloud Vision, or Microsoft for Azure Computer Vision.

  • For Google Cloud Vision, a service endpoint and API key is required to configure the ADVANCED_HOCR plugin. To set up a Google Cloud Vision instance, see Quickstart: Setup the Vision API.

  • For Azure Computer Vision, check with your Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) or System Integrator (SI), to integrate Azure solutions with your environment.

• See Ephesoft Transact Technical Specifications for supported operating systems and databases.

Functional limitations of the Cloud OCR plugin are listed below:

• Per Google Cloud Vision, image files uploaded for processing have these limits:

  • 20 MB per file

  • 75M pixels (length x width) image size

• For Azure, images must meet the requirements of Computer Vision 3.2:

  • The file size of the image must be less than 50 MB (4 MB for free tier).

  • The dimensions of the image must be greater than 50 x 50 pixels and less than 10,000 x 10,000 pixels.

  File uploads to Transact are not restricted according to the limitations of the OCR providers. These restrictions occur after pages are rasterized to PNG and submitted to the OCR provider for processing. If the rasterized image is greater than the limitations of the OCR provider, the OCR provider fails to process the file.

• Handwritten dates may not extract well due to limitations of the OCR engine.

• The E13B font often used in checks may not extract well due to limitations of the OCR engine.

• Only the following web services are supported:

  • uploadBatch

  • advancedUploadBatch

  • copyBatchClass

  • exportBatchClass

  • importBatchClass

• The following services and features are not supported:

  • EText extraction

  • Batch class encryption

  • Vertical text extraction

  • Autorotation and de-skewing

  Web services that directly communicate with the OCR process (such as OcrClassify, OcrClassifyExtract, v2/ocrClassifyExtract, and v2/ocrClassifyExtractBase64) cannot interact with a batch class that has been configured to use ADVANCED_HOCR. For additional information about Transact web services, see Transact Web Services API.

• Limitations of the underlying OCR engine can produce unexpected results:

  • HOCR coordinate precision for words may be inaccurate.

  • Certain input images can produce empty HOCR results.

  For additional OCR limitations with Azure Computer Vision, see the Microsoft website.

The Cloud OCR plugin installer installs a plugin called the ADVANCED_HOCR plugin as well as a separate Cloud OCR Web App.

For an on-premise configuration with Azure Computer Vision, the Cloud OCR plugin has an Azure Cognitive Read adapter that creates the HOCR XML file used in downstream workflow processes.

This plugin operates with an accompanying web app, so it operates differently from other Transact plugins. The differences are as follows:

• Since the installer package includes the ADVANCED_HOCR plugin, there is no need to import the plugin through the Transact user interface.

• When the Transact service starts, it also starts the Cloud OCR Web App.

• The ADVANCED_HOCR plugin UI depends on two API services located at:

  • /dcma/tcp-ocr-ui (default)

  • /dcma/advancedHocr (default)

• The API requires a database to store plugin and web app configuration information. This can be the same database as Transact, or it can be a separate database.

The plugin uses the PNG files generated by the CREATE_OCR_INPUT plugin. (Linux also requires the CREATE_DISPLAY_IMAGE plugin.)

The Cloud OCR Plugin has options that provide language hinting for all Supported languages. The AUTO option will return all languages that the OCR service provider supports that may go beyond Transact-certified languages. For more information on language support by these OCR service providers, see Google Cloud Vision or Azure Computer Vision.

Because Auto can hint towards all supported languages, you may want to select specific languages to improve recognition. You can select the language that hinting should favor when configuring the plugin.

To install the Cloud OCR Plugin:

This topic provides the information on how to configure the ADVANCED_HOCR plugin. This plugin only needs to be configured once per batch class.

The Cloud OCR plugin will generate whole-page HOCR content for cursive, handprint, and machine print automatically for any extraction methods to use. Because of this, select the standard machine print options when configuring extraction rules.

When importing or exporting a batch class between environments with the Cloud OCR plugin, the target system that will be importing the batch class requires the Cloud OCR plugin and the accompanying web app to be installed as a prerequisite.

The following table contains error messages that the administrator may receive if there is an issue with OCR operations.

Note the following about errors:

• Errors with Cloud OCR installation appear in this folder:

  <Installer Execution Path>\logs\advanced-hocr-installer.log

• Errors with the Cloud OCR plugin appear in the logs. The Cloud OCR plugin log files are found in these location:

  • Windows:

    • <Transact Installation Path>\JavaAppServer\webapps\dcma#advancedHocr\logs\advanced-hocr-api.log

    • <Transact Installation Path>\Application\dcma-all.log

  • Linux:

    • <Transact Installation Path>/JavaAppServer/webapps/dcma#advancedHocr/logs/advanced-hocr-api.log

    • <Transact Installation Path>/Application/dcma-all.log

• Errors during batch processing appear on the Batch Instance Management screen in the Batch Execution Details panel.

• Workflow deploy may fail if the ADVANCED_HOCR plugin is not configured as a dependency for the plugins it is meant to replace (such as OMNIPAGE_HOCR or RECOSTAR_HOCR). Add ADVANCED_HOCR as a dependency in Workflow Management.

Release versions	Release date	Notes
1.0.31	9/12/2023	Compatibility release for Transact 2023.1.00.
1.0.26	11/29/2022	Microsoft Computer Vision, Oracle and cluster support added. Some bug fixes. Certified with Transact 2022.1.01.
1.0.3	5/3/2022	Certified with Transact 2022.1.00.