We have released our new Machine Validation Engine to give customers an even greater ability to achieve automation for their documents. Within the Affinda platform, rules can be configured to validate automatically if the data extracted by our AI models meets certain business logic, and therefore does not need any user intervention or review. Ultimately, this means that straight-through processing of documents can be acheived to remove the 'human in the loop' from the process. The rules can also be used to flag exceptions where the data does not meet expected values, ensuring accurate data for downstream processing.

Types of operations

Some of the standard operations that the Machine Validation Engine supports are:

• Regex - does the data extracted meet a defined regex pattern (e.g. IBAN number = [a-zA-Z]{2}[0-9]{2}[a-zA-Z0-9]{4}[0-9]{7}([a-zA-Z0-9]?){0,16})
• Equality Operation - does one field equal another field or value (e.g. does invoice total = invoice due or is there some other element like a partial payment)
• Greater Than / Less Than - check if one field is >/< another or value (e.g. due date > invoice date, invoice date < today)
• Sum - check if the sum of multiple fields / values equals another field / value (e.g. line item totals = document total, subtotal + tax = total)
• Length - check that number of characters in field is within specified range (e.g. is PO number 8 digits?)
• ABN Validation - confirms that ABN is valid

If you have other rules you would like to setup, please speak to the Affinda team.

How to enable validation rules?

The Machine Validation Engine is a paid add-on. If you would like to configure validation rules, please speak to the Affinda team who can discuss the options available in more detail and what would work best for your use case.

We're pleased to launch two new additional Extractors to complement our existing AI models within our Accounts Payable suite. Customers can now take advantage of Affinda's AI technology to extract data from Purchase Orders and Account Statements.

These sit alongside our existing AP data extraction models for invoices, credit notes, and receipts to allow Accounts Payable teams to extract more data from high-volume documents and spend less time on labor-intensive data entry tasks.

As with our core invoices model, self-learning can be enabled for these document types to ensure that accuracy starts out strong and continues to improve over time as it learns your commonly found formats.

We've recently rolled out a brand-new feature – our Status Page – designed to keep you in the loop about the performance of our API and app across all of our server locations.

To access the Status Page and explore its features, visit https://status.affinda.com/.

What is the Status Page?

Our Status Page serves as a real-time dashboard, offering a transparent view of the uptime for our services. This means you can easily track the performance of our platform at any given moment.

Key Features:

1. Subscription Alerts: You can now subscribe to receive email notifications whenever we make updates or changes. This ensures you stay informed about any developments in our system that may impact your experience.
2. Insightful Visibility: The Status Page allows you to gauge the overall health of our services. By providing detailed information about uptime and potential issues, you can determine whether any challenges you're facing are part of a broader system concern or specific to your account.

We're excited to introduce a significant enhancement to our app that will simplify and streamline field configuration for both technical and non-technical users. With this latest update, managing your custom fields and data matching has never been easier.

What's New

1. Automatic Matching for 'Text' Fields

For 'text' fields, we've introduced an ability to set up automatic data matching capabilities (e.g. matching supplier name in the document to a master supplier list) through our app. Previously, this feature needed to be completed via our API, so this update enables you to control data matching easily through our intuitive interface. The automatic matching employs fuzzy string matching to ensure flexibility and accuracy.

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Advanced customization options available via our API

Advanced data matching can be configured via the API to add synonyms, labels, and more, providing granular control over your how data from your document is matched to a pre-defined list. See here for more information about advanced options

2. Dropdown / Enum Field Creation with Frontend Options

Users can now create dropdown fields effortlessly with options specified directly through the front end. These 'dropdown' fields will be intelligently predicted by our model, ensuring you can get more value from our models.

3. Clearer Distinction Between Editable and Locked Elements

We've revamped the field editor interface to make it crystal clear which elements can be edited upon creation and which are locked for users. This enhancement provides better control and reduces the chances of unintended modifications to your configurations, such as labels, auto-validation thresholds, and mandatory settings.

In our efforts to continue to make the Affinda solution configurable to all customers' requirements, we have made an improvement to our webhook capabilities. Customers can now choose to webhooks at a Workspace level (in addition to Organization level).

This means that customers can set their webhooks so that different Workspaces can be assigned to different end users, workflows, or document types. This allows for your integration to more easily identify where the document should be routed in your system, or enable you to assign different events to different use cases.

In addition, we have added a new webhook event for when a document is rejected ('document.rejected').

For more information on webhooks, see Webhooks.

We've made some important improvements to our Magic Tables feature. These updates are all about making life easier. With these Magic Tables improvements, you can effortlessly capture nested or semi-structured data. It's a more stable and intuitive experience that empowers you to work with confidence.

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Magic tables in 'beta' mode

Magic Tables are still in beta mode for a full release as the standard option for invoice tables later this month. To enable these tables, update the field settings in your invoices Collection and enable 'Line Items (beta)' (disable the existing Line Items Field).

What's New in Magic Tables?

🧙‍♂️ 1. Enhanced Validation: We understand the importance of accuracy in your data. Now, with our improved Magic Tables, you'll be prompted to validate information row by row. This ensures that your data is accurate and error-free, providing you with more control and confidence in your work.

🔮 2. Magic Fill Control: We've made a significant change to 'Magic Fill.' It will now only be applied to rows below your current selection. This adjustment increases the stability of your data and minimizes unintended changes, giving you a smoother user experience.

🔀 3. Toggle 'Magic Fill': Your data, your control. We've added the ability to toggle 'Magic Fill' on and off, allowing you to decide when you want to harness the power of automation and when you prefer manual data entry. Flexibility at your fingertips!

📊 4. Improved Table Layout: We know how crucial screen space is when working with tables. That's why we've made the table output grid from the bottom hidden by default. This means more screen real estate for you to work with, making your tasks more comfortable and efficient.

🔍 5. Consistent Field Editor: To create a seamless user experience, we've ensured that the Field Editor is now consistent with the rest of the UI. This makes navigating and editing your data fields a breeze.

We are delighted to announce the addition of some much-requested features to our app for tailored + custom models.

Learn from Reviewed Documents

We've introduced the "Learn from Reviewed Documents" toggle into our app. With this feature, users are given the power to decide if documents, confirmed in a certain Collection, should be included in the training queue for the relevant Extractor. So, now not only can you have QA/Dev & Live Collections with the same Extractor, you can also avoid model regression caused due to unwanted data being fed into the system. This means you now have greater control over which documents are used to train a model without having to rely on us making changes at the backend.

Date Last Trained

Secondly, we've also incorporated an indication of when a model was last trained. This imparts drastically improved visibility into the model’s performance capabilities. With this feature at your disposal, you can now better assess whether a model should have improved from a re-train.

Accessing the Features

To access these features is simple:

1. Navigate to 'Collection settings' in the app.
2. To enable the learning toggle, all you need to do is flip it on.

These features are available not only via the app interface but also through our API for enhanced convenience and flexibility

We've made it easier than ever for partners and resellers to gain insights into credit consumption at a more granular level. Now, you can access detailed credit usage data for specific Workspaces or Collections using our new API endpoints, enabling you to make informed decisions and streamline your billing processes.

Using the Credit Usage API Endpoints

We have released two new endpoints that both work in the same way. Simply specify the relevant Workspace or Collection that you would like usage data on, and the date range (in the form of YYYY-MM) and we will return the number of credits used by that Collection or Workspace in the period.

The relevant endpoint for credit usage by Workspace is here.

The relevant endpoint for credit usage by Collection is here.

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Credits tracked from 27th July 2023 onwards

Documents uploaded prior to this date will not be tracked at Collection or Workspace level, only at the Organization level

Benefits

📈 Accurate Cost Allocation: Partners and resellers can now accurately allocate costs to their respective customers based on the actual credit usage in each Workspace or Collection. This level of precision ensures fairness in billing and builds trust with your clients.

🔍 Granular Insights: Dive into the nitty-gritty details of credit consumption, helping you identify trends, spikes, or any anomalies that might impact cost distribution. This transparency empowers you to optimize resource allocation and improve cost-efficiency for your customers.

💼 Streamlined Billing: Say goodbye to tedious estimations! Our Credit Usage Data feature enables you to automate and simplify the billing process by providing clear credit consumption metrics. This saves you time and eliminates manual errors in your billing workflow.

We are thrilled to announce the release of our latest feature - Automated Document Splitting! This powerful addition allows you to split a single PDF document into its individual components automatically, streamlining your document management process like never before. Say goodbye to manually identifying splits and hello to increased efficiency!

We understand that dealing with multiple invoices (or other document types) in a single PDF document can be a time-consuming task. With our new automatic document splitter, you can now seamlessly handle such situations. Whether you receive multiple invoices from suppliers in one document or scan multiple physical invoices together as a single PDF, our document splitter ensures that all data is correctly parsed, saving you valuable time and eliminating the risk of missing any important invoices.

Enabling automatic document splitting

Activating the Automatic Document Splitting feature is easy! Simply navigate to the Workspace settings within the app, and you'll find the option to enable it.

We understand that each customer may have unique requirements, which is why we provide the flexibility to configure how you would like the splitter to function, with 4 options available to customers:

1. Leave - automated splitting is off, we don't split any documents or prompt the user that multiple documents may have been detected
2. Conservative - we do not action any splitting of documents, but we present a warning to the user in the validation interface that multiple documents have been detected
3. Recommended - documents that are highly likely to contain multiple are automatically split, and warnings are added to documents that we believe may have multiple
4. Aggressive - split all documents that we detect may have multiple

To provide better visibility, all split documents (automatic or manual) will have a purple 'split' icon associated with them so that users can easily see which documents have been split. This will make it easier for you to track document status in the list view and validation UI.

While the document splitter does its magic automatically, users will still have the option to manually split or combine documents again through the 'Edit' pages functionality. This gives you full control over your documents, even after the initial split.

We are delighted to announce some fantastic new features and enhancements to our validation tool that will take your experience to the next level!

What's New?

We have revamped our validation tool, adding new actions and reorganizing the layout to create a more user-friendly and efficient environment. Here's what you can now do with our improved tool:

Rename a Document: You asked, and we listened! Now you have the ability to rename your documents directly within the validation tool.

Add Tags to a Document: Organizing and categorizing your documents is now a breeze. Our updated tool allows you to add relevant tags to your documents within the validation tool, making it easier to manage and search for specific files later on.

Export Document Data: We understand the importance of data accessibility. With this new functionality, you can now export document data directly from the validation tool, saving you valuable time and effort.

See Document Warnings: Stay informed and address potential issues proactively. Our latest update enables you to view document warnings, ensuring you are aware of any important concerns that may require your attention.

Manual Annotation: In the rare instance where document parsing fails, we've got you covered. You can now annotate documents manually, ensuring that no document is left unattended.

In addition, we've also made some minor tweaks to the overall appearance and layout of the validation tool.

Embedded Users

For those of you embedding the validation interface into your platform, we now offer the flexibility to enable or disable specific actions at an Organization level. To make adjustments to the actions available in the embedded version, simply get in touch with our dedicated support team at [email protected]. We'll be happy to assist you in customizing the tool according to your requirements.