Identifying Fields on a Document

Data items on a document that Enrichment will use or update, such as the customer name, are called “fields”. With the exception of rules, fields are the most important and most versatile tool you use to develop Enrichment applications. Fields define information to extract from the document for use in sorting, adding objects, creating side files, finding address information, creating the presort index, defining top or bottom of document and top of page, and in rule files.

Use the Field tag group to specify the instructions for processing a field. Generally, these instructions tell Enrichment to extract a data item into a specified variable and, optionally, to update the print stream if the value of that variable subsequently changes. The Field tag group also identifies how to locate and extract the data.

Since a field is part of a print stream, the Field tag group belongs in an Input tag group. You must define one Field tag group for each data item to select. A number of tags comprise the Field group, but the tags required in every Field group definition are:

• <FIELD> specifies a variable name for the field, actions to take on the field, and how to handle leading and trailing spaces.
• <LOCATION> defines where the field is located within the document.