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opencitylabs
Participant
February 11, 2019
Question

How to auto fill fields across unstandardized forms?

  • February 11, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 599 views

We have a large set of PDF forms that lack a common data standard for fields that mean the same thing. Our goal is to integrate these forms with our database so when a user enters their name in the field that says "Full Name" the data would autopopulate across all forms with fields that mean the same thing. The problems that we have found are that:

Data within PDFs are not always configured in the same way "FullName" vs. "Full_Name"
Data is different because of different wording, or due to the use of or absence of the subject "Full Name", vs. "Applicant Full Name" vs."Legal Name."

We are working on AI and Natural Language Processing Approaches, but for now each form must be individually configured to align values so that forms auto populate.

How have you been tackling this problem?
Has anyone used the Adobe AI product to tackle autofilling of forms?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Thom Parker
Community Expert
Thom ParkerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2019

do you have a finite set of forms? If so, then your best approach is to redo the ones you can and for the others create tables of equivalent field names. AI is a bit overkill and you'll need to spend a huge amount of time and money. It would also require using the text on the page as well as field names.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often
O
opencitylabsAuthor
Participant
February 12, 2019

Right now we have about 80, but as we scale to more customers and states that number will go significantly. Each form may range from 15 to 2000 fields. What do you mean by "redo the ones you can and for the others create tables of equivalent field names." It sounds like you are suggesting a manual approach, of modifying each form. My real question is: are there tools within Adobe, AI or others that excel at solving this problem of auto filling unstandardized forms?

Thom Parker
Community Expert
Thom ParkerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2019

No, there are not. And even if someone had an AI tool for matching equivalent field names, you would need to train it to your set of fields names. Which means you'd need to collect and organize all the existing field names. So you need to create a table of equivalent field names anyway.  You're best solution is to create a tool for collecting all the names off of your forms and organizing them. This process can be mostly automated with Acrobat JavaScript. The tool could make guesses at matching the field names based on common words in the names, then a human would go over the names manually to see if they really match.

I was suggesting that if there were any forms under your control that you could create a standard and modify the fields to that standard. Anyone who creates a form has to do this kind of work. It's difficult and tedious, but it's what you have to do to get the job done.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often
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