Power Automate OCR (Developer Tutorial)

Introduction

Optical Character Recognition is the technology that scans text from images, scanned documents, and PDF documents to transform it into machine-readable text. OCR enables computers to identify various formats - books, receipts, forms, and photographs - that can be digitized and automated for PDF data extraction. It analyzes the characters in an image, and patterns, then corresponds them to text. This Optical Character Recognition technology is employed in the applications of document digitization, automated PDF data extraction and entry, invoice processing, and making scanned PDFs searchable.

OCRs have improved dramatically and can recognize and read different languages, which nowadays are complex in layout understanding, such as tables and columns. Advanced OCR capabilities software also uses pre-processing techniques for images. It includes noise removal and contrast adjustment, improving the accuracy of OCR software in reading low-quality images. Three of the most popular OCR tools are the Tesseract OCR engine, Power Automate, and IronOCR with high accuracy and flexibility. OCRs have become indispensable tools for businesses, researchers, and developers to outsource managing the documentation and the recognition of text.

What is Microsoft Power Automate OCR?

Optical Character Recognition by Microsoft Power Automate: Using this feature, businesses can make themselves competent enough to automate the extraction of text from images, scanned documents, and PDFs into easily editable and machine-readable formats. Being a part of the Microsoft Power Platform, Power Automate desktop and online provides the user with the ability to create flows without necessarily needing any coding abilities. They can automate tedious data entry, process invoices, and digitize documents with the integration of OCR in workflows.

This saves them more time and minimizes errors. It's indeed a powerful search tool that can be used to provide support for many different formats and languages in Power Automate's OCR function, built using AI Builder, supporting the use of text recognition in multiple industries. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft services, including Excel, SharePoint, and OneDrive, to let end-to-end automation begin from scanning the document, then storing or even sharing it. In this respect, it helps organizations increase efficiency, streamline document management, and enhance operational accuracy in their activities.

Benefits of Implementing OCR in Power Automate

Implementing OCR in Power Automate has the following advantages:

Time and Labor Saving: The automation of document text extraction saves quite a lot of time and effort that would otherwise be used while manually entering data.

Cost-Effective: Since it is user-friendly as well as accessible, there is little or no need for expensive custom software solutions.

Integration: Microsoft Power Automate offers seamless integration with other Microsoft 365 services such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and even Excel.

Scalability: With its ability to handle thousands of documents at a go, its viability makes it suitable for large businesses.

Reducing Errors: Since it automates the data entry processes, the chance of human error occurring is at a minimum.

How to Work With OCR in Power Automate

Power Automate supports OCR functionality via several different connections, including AI Builder and OneDrive. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to get the Power Automate online or we can use the Power Automate desktop to create an OCR-enabled workflow:

1. Set up Power Automate

To get started you will log into your Power Automate account or sign up if you do not have one. Power Automate is part of Microsoft 365, meaning you will already have access if you're using Office 365 or Dynamics 365.

2: Make a New Flow

Open the Create tab, and click on Instant Flow to create a new flow that can be manually initiated.

Name your flow. For example, name it Before approval and select the following trigger: When a file is created in a folder (SharePoint or OneDrive) or Manually trigger a flow.

A New Power automation flow was created like the one below.

3: Upload a File to OneDrive or SharePoint

Add an action to upload your document (image or other PDF files) to OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. This action will trigger the OCR process to extract data. For this demo, we are using a SharePoint Document library.

4. Utilize the OCR Action of the AI Builder

Utilize AI Builder to develop the Extract text from images action. AI Builder is a deeply integrated feature of Machine Learning in Power Automate and has pre-trained OCR models that users can easily identify text from images or PDFs.

Select the image file to extract text from.

5. Processing Extracted Data

Once the language data is extracted by OCR as text, it can be sent on to further processing. For example:

Store the extracted text in an Excel format: Using the Add a row action add the extracted text in an Excel file.

Pass the text via Email: Use the action to send an email to forward the extracted text to certain recipients.

Store in Database: Using Connectors to push data into SQL Server, SharePoint lists, or other databases for storage.

What is IronOCR?

IronOCR is a powerful .NET OCR library that empowers you to extract text with OCR correctly from images, PDFs, and scans. It will shine where other libraries fail at text recognition due to poor image quality or noisy images, and it supports over 125 languages, making it perfect for multilingual use cases with diversity. IronOCR encapsulates a plethora of advanced functionalities such as automatic detection of language and image preprocessing noise removal as well as skew correction, just like the same layout document including all styles as well as the structure detail and image to text as well as PDF to text with searchable PDF.

The product can be easily incorporated through simple .NET project APIs which allow the developers to make use of OCR in an application they develop. The library is handy when it comes to document digitization, automated workflows for data entry, and text extraction tasks with high accuracy and scalability for enterprise-level applications. Its strength is when the library finds ease of use and gives powerful OCR capabilities.

Features of IronOCR

• It has outstanding precision in the text it extracts, even from low-resolution images and noisy scanned documents.
• It supports more than 125 languages, with automatic language detection, thus allowing OCR in varied linguistic environments.
• Pre-processing of an image requires tools such as noise reduction, skew correction, enhancement of contrast, and sharpening, all of which enhance performance on imperfect images.
• Create full-text searchable PDFs. The scanned paper documents or images are changed into fully searchable PDFs with the original layout for ease in searches and organizations.
• Preserve layout and formatting: This tool maintains the structure, fonts, as well as formatting of the source document since the layouts such as tables and columns are complex and must be preserved with digitization.
• Batch Processing: This enables batch processing of multiple images or documents in one operation. The technology supports large-volume document handling.
• Easy integration with .NET: As it supports a simple API, it can be easily integrated with .NET applications, making for an easy-to-implement mechanism for OCR without any large-scale effort from the developers. Sample Code to perform OCR

using IronOcr;
class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Initialize Iron Tesseract OCR engine variable
        var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
        // Add multiple languages
        Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.English;
        // Image file path
        var inputFile = @"path\to\your\image.png";
        // Read the image and perform OCR
        using (var input = new OcrInput(inputFile))
        {
            // Perform OCR
            var result = Ocr.Read(input);
            // Display the result
            Console.WriteLine("Text:");
            Console.WriteLine(result.Text);
        }
    }
}

using IronOcr;
class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Initialize Iron Tesseract OCR engine variable
        var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
        // Add multiple languages
        Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.English;
        // Image file path
        var inputFile = @"path\to\your\image.png";
        // Read the image and perform OCR
        using (var input = new OcrInput(inputFile))
        {
            // Perform OCR
            var result = Ocr.Read(input);
            // Display the result
            Console.WriteLine("Text:");
            Console.WriteLine(result.Text);
        }
    }
}

Imports IronOcr
Friend Class Program
	Shared Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
		' Initialize Iron Tesseract OCR engine variable
		Dim Ocr = New IronTesseract()
		' Add multiple languages
		Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.English
		' Image file path
		Dim inputFile = "path\to\your\image.png"
		' Read the image and perform OCR
		Using input = New OcrInput(inputFile)
			' Perform OCR
			Dim result = Ocr.Read(input)
			' Display the result
			Console.WriteLine("Text:")
			Console.WriteLine(result.Text)
		End Using
	End Sub
End Class

Conclusion

Although both IronOCR and Power Automate OCR are highly powerful regarding text recognition, IronOCR is considerably more robust and versatile in its solution to any developer or business needing serious OCR capabilities beyond the simple cases supported by Power Automate OCR. In contrast, Power Automate's OCR engine is built for simple workflows and may likely require an additional subscription.

In contrast, IronOCR stands out in delivering results of very high quality, even when dealing with input images that are low quality. It supports over 125 languages, with powerfully formatted and laid-out preservation. Its complex document processing and large batch operations are well-suited with advanced image pre-processing capabilities. Still, at times, it is highly customizable in .NET applications.

While Power Automate OCR is sufficient for more minor automation or for integrations strictly built in Microsoft, IronOCR takes the gold by the amount of control a user has, maximum accuracy, and even features like searchable PDF creation that supports multiple formats.

In organizations that may be looking for a power-critical, customizable OCR solution without platform constraints, IronOCR. Iron Software offers various types of libraries to the developer check the library suite page to know more.