Power Platform RPA to extract PDF Data
Use Case:
Any industry that deals with large volumes of data (ex: Sales order, purchase order, invoices, transit bills, packing slip, sales statements, and others)
Business Value:
- Automatic extraction of data from pool of PDF files.
- Error free data extraction. Simply worker process. Utilize RPA feature to extract and take next best actions such as email the data for approval via workflow.
Field Use Cases:
- PDF Data: Analyze and extract relevant data required for business.
- Data Quality: Ensure the data quality is error free and automate mundane data related tasks.
Solution Stack:
Microsoft Power Platform | Power Automate Premium | Desktop Flow
Refer to the demo video related to this scenario: https://citizendev.ai
Sample File:
Steps:
- Install Power Automate Desktop: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/install
- Install the solution either in your desktop or on a stand-alone virtual machine
- Desktop Flow requires premium Power Automate license
- Got to make.powerapps.com → Flows →
Desktop Flow- Launch Power Automate Desktop
In the console start by adding the following functions:
- Extract table from PDF
- For Each Loop
- Display Text
Do note: IF your requirement is to extract text or table or images, select the appropriate actions from the left navigation console.
Use the display message to view the extracted data. You can also store the extracted data into variable and enable O365 Outlook email to message the contents to users for approval and into teams.
In the extract PDF Data actions →
choose the file name (pdf) that consists of data to be extracted. Ensure to select all pages if there are more than one pages. IF you have password protected file, do enter the password and mark it as sensitive.
Name the variable where the data to be stored when RPA runs the flow:
To display the output →
Display message action →
Display table data and point to the above variables where data will be extracted and stored in the memory.
- Name and save the flow:
- Click start to enable the actions.
- Sample Results once the flow run is completed:
