The PST Parsing Plug-In can be used to parse a field in EZ-Scan that contains multiple field values. For instance you could use an OCR reader to fill the MICROCR field of the EZ-Scan database. This field can contain multiple fields that need to be parsed and stored in separate fields.
The options screen is used to set up the plug-in.
This is the field that will be parsed into separate fields.
You can choose to include any or all document types to parse. For instance you may want to parse the MICROCR field for coupons but not for checks. Choose multiple lines by Ctl + clicking.
When checked this will update the data parsed in all non parsed documents. This could update the CustAccount field on checks for instance when the CustAccount field is parsed from data on a coupon.
Once you have selected a field to parse from the list of available fields you can click the ellipsis button next to this text box to retrieve the value contained in this field from the current item in the grid or the last item that was scanned if there are no items in the grid. You can optionally type a sample data line here.
Click the ellipsis button next to this text box to fill it with the length of the line in the Data to Parse text box. This will enforce the length of the data before parsing. A value of 0 means the length will not be enforced. If the length of the field to be parsed does not match the length specified then the parsing plug-in will not parse the data. If for instance the length of the field to be parsed should be 20 characters and it missing 1 character, all the parsed fields would be incorrect because the parsing plug-in works on fixed character positions and lengths.
To define how the Field to be parsed is parsed, you use the grid and text boxes in the bottom section of the screen. Select the first field to be parsed from the dropdown list. Then enter the position of the first character of this field and the length of this field. You can also highlight the field in the Data To Parse text box and the field position and length will be filled in for you. Click the 'Add' button and the field will be added to the grid. Repeat this for all the fields to be parsed. DO NOT INCLUDE DELIMITERS IN YOUR FIELD POSITIONS.
Some fields such as amounts or dates need to be formatted. Amounts are usually printed in OCR lines without decimals, so the field will need to be divided by 100 before being added to the database. Choose Div/100 in this case for the format. If the field is a date field you will need to choose the format that the date data appears in the Field to Parse from the dropdown so that it can be properly converted to a date value before being stored in the database. ex. mmddyyyy would be chosen for a value of 03012006 in the Field to be parsed and would be stored in the database as 03/01/2006
Once you have defined all of your fields, you can test the parsing plug-in to make sure all of the data is parsed properly. Click the test button and you will be presented with the data parsed into the separate fields. Adjust any settings as necessary and test again until all fields are parsed properly.
The PST Parsing Plug-In would typically be run from the 'Just after an item has been saved' Insert point.