document-understanding
2024.10
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Document Understanding Modern Projects User Guide
Automation CloudAutomation Cloud Public SectorAutomation SuiteStandalone
Last updated Nov 20, 2024

Key concepts

Familiarize yourself with the core concepts around UiPath® Document UnderstandingTM.

Active learning

Active learning is our modern approach to creating models for Document UnderstandingTM.

Active learning provides an interactive experience where the learning algorithm can query the user to label data with the desired outputs. This process helps to reduce the time and data required to train a machine-learning model by up to 80%. AI is used to guide the process, which includes automatic annotation, typically the most time-consuming task. The model also provides expert recommendations to enhance accuracy using the most informative datasets.

Figure 1. How does Active Learning work

Using active learning, you can also monitor your automations through analytical capabilities.

Document types

A document type refers to the classification or categorization of a document based on its content, format, purpose, or other distinguishing factors. Some examples can include invoices, receipts, contracts, reports, medical records, legal documents, and others.

Some document types have highly structured content, while others mainly consist of free text. Based on this, documents are classified into three main formats:
  • Structured: documents designed to collect information in a specific format. For example, surveys, tax forms, passports, or licenses are all structured documents.
  • Semi-structured: documents that do not follow a strict format and are not bound to specified data fields. Semi-structured documents include invoices, receipts, uility bills, bank statements, and others.
  • Unstructured: documents that do not follow a specific or organized model. For example, contracts, leases, or news articles are all unstructured documents.

To learn more about document types, check the Document types section.

ML models

ML models are like virtual assistants that have been trained to learn from data and make predictions or decisions. These models are essentially algorithms that learn to recognize patterns based on historical data. The more data they are exposed to, the better they can improve their predictions or decisions over time.

You can find several out of the box ML models in Document UnderstandingTM. These models help you classify and extract any commonly occurring data points from semi-structured or unstructured documents, with no setup required.

Check the Out-of-the-box models page for the full list of pre-trained models and their fields.

ML models can be trained on a majority of languages, as long as the OCR recognizes the document and text with high confidence.

Optical character recognition

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a special technology used to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files, or images taken by a digital camera, into editable and searchable data.

The accuracy of an OCR engine most oftenly depends on the quality of the original document. Clear, well-formatted text in a readable font typically produces the best output.

For more information on the languages supported by the OCR engines options provided by UiPath®, check the OCR Supported Languages page.

  • Active learning
  • Document types
  • ML models
  • Optical character recognition

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