What's new in Azure AI Document Intelligence

This content applies to: checkmark v4.0 (preview) checkmark v3.1 (GA) checkmark v3.0 (GA) checkmark v2.1 (GA)

Document Intelligence service is updated on an ongoing basis. Bookmark this page to stay up to date with release notes, feature enhancements, and our newest documentation.

Important

Preview API versions are retired once the GA API is released. The 2023-02-28-preview API version is being retired, if you are still using the preview API or the associated SDK versions, please update your code to target the latest API version 2023-07-31 (GA).

February 2024

The Document Intelligence 2024-02-29-preview REST API is now available. This preview API introduces new and updated capabilities:

  • Public preview version 2024-02-29-preview is currently available only in the following Azure regions:

    • East US
    • West US2
    • West Europe
  • Layout model now supports figure detection and hierarchical document structure analysis (sections and subsections). The AI quality of reading order and logical roles detection is also improved.

  • Custom extraction models

  • Custom classification model

    • Custom classification model now supported incremental training for scenarios where you need to update the classifier model with additional samples or additional classes. Learn more about incremental training.
    • Custom classification model adds support for Office document types (.docx, .pptx, and .xls). Learn more about expanded document type support.
  • Invoice model

    • Support for new locales:
    Locale Code
    Arabic (ar)
    Bulgarian (bg)
    Greek (el)
    Hebrew (he)
    Macedonian (mk)
    Russian (ru) Serbian Cyrillic (sr-cyrl)
    Ukrainian (uk)
    Thai (th)
    Turkish (tr)
    Vietnamese (vi)
    • Support for new currency codes:
    Currency Locale Code
    BAM Bosnian Convertible Mark (ba)
    BGN Bulgarian Lev (bg)
    ILS Israeli New Shekel (il)
    MKD Macedonian Denar (mk)
    RUB Russian Ruble (ru)
    THB Thai Baht (th)
    TRY Turkish Lira (tr)
    UAH Ukrainian Hryvnia (ua)
    VND Vietnamese Dong (vn)
    • Tax items support expansion for Germany (de), Spain (es),Portugal (pt), English Canada en-CA.
  • ID model

  • 🆕 Mortgage documents

    • Extract information from Uniform Residential Loan Application (Form 1003).
    • Extract information from Uniform Underwriting and Transmittal Summary or Form 1008.
    • Extract information from mortgage closing disclosure.
  • 🆕 Credit/Debit card model

    • Extract information from bank cards.
  • 🆕 Marriage certificate

    • New prebuilt to extract information from marriage certificates.

December 2023

The Document Intelligence client libraries targeting REST API 2023-10-31-preview are now available for use!

November 2023

The Document Intelligence 2023-10-31-preview REST API is now available. This preview API introduces new and updated capabilities:

  • Public preview version 2023-10-31-preview is currently only available in the following Azure regions:

    • East US
    • West US2
    • West Europe
  • Read model

    • Language Expansion for Handwriting: Russian(ru), Arabic(ar), Thai(th).
    • Cyber Executive Order (EO) compliance.
  • Layout model

    • Support office and HTML files.
    • Markdown output support.
    • Table extraction, reading order, and section heading detection improvements.
    • With the Document Intelligence 2023-10-31-preview, the general document model (prebuilt-document) is deprecated. Going forward, to extract key-value pairs from documents, use the prebuilt-layout model with the optional query string parameter features=keyValuePairs enabled.
  • Receipt model

    • Now extracts currency for all price-related fields.
  • Health Insurance Card model

    • New field support for Medicare and Medicaid information.
  • US Tax Document models

    • New 1099 tax model. Supports base 1099 form and the following variations: A, B, C, CAP, DIV, G, H, INT, K, LS, LTC, MISC, NEC, OID, PATR, Q, QA, R, S, SA, SB​.
  • Invoice model

    • Support for KVK field.
    • Support for BPAY field.
    • Numerous field refinements.
  • Custom Classification

    • Support for multi-language documents.
    • New page splitting options: autosplit, always split by page, no split.
  • Add-on capabilities

    • Query fields are available with the 2023-10-31-preview release.
    • Add-on capabilities are available within all models excluding the Read model.

Note

With the 2022-08-31 API general availability (GA) release, the associated preview APIs are being deprecated. If you are using the 2021-09-30-preview, the 2022-01-30-preview or he 2022-06-30-preview API versions, please update your applications to target the 2022-08-31 API version. There are a few minor changes involved, for more information, see the migration guide.

July 2023

Note

Form Recognizer is now Azure AI Document Intelligence!

  • Document, Azure AI services encompass all of what were previously known as Cognitive Services and Azure Applied AI Services.
  • There are no changes to pricing.
  • The names Cognitive Services and Azure Applied AI continue to be used in Azure billing, cost analysis, price list, and price APIs.
  • There are no breaking changes to application programming interfaces (APIs) or client libraries.
  • Some platforms are still awaiting the renaming update. All mention of Form Recognizer or Document Intelligence in our documentation refers to the same Azure service.

Document Intelligence v3.1 (GA)

The Document Intelligence version 3.1 API is now generally available (GA)! The API version corresponds to 2023-07-31. The v3.1 API introduces new and updated capabilities:

Document Intelligence Studio UX Updates

✔️ Analyze Options

  • Document Intelligence now supports more sophisticated analysis capabilities and the Studio allows one entry point (Analyze options button) for configuring the add-on capabilities with ease.

  • Depending on the document extraction scenario, configure the analysis range, document page range, optional detection, and premium detection features.

    Animated screenshot showing use of the analyze-options button to configure options in Studio.

    Note

    Font extraction is not visualized in Document Intelligence Studio. However, you can check the styles section of the JSON output for the font detection results.

✔️ Auto labeling documents with prebuilt models or one of your own models

  • In custom extraction model labeling page, you can now auto label your documents using one of Document Intelligent Service prebuilt models or models you previously trained.

    Animated screenshot showing auto labeling in Studio.

  • For some documents, there can be duplicate labels after running auto label. Make sure to modify the labels so that there are no duplicate labels in the labeling page afterwards.

    Screenshot showing duplicate label warning after auto labeling.

✔️ Auto labeling tables

  • In custom extraction model labeling page, you can now auto label the tables in the document without having to label the tables manually.

    Animated screenshot showing auto table labeling in Studio.

✔️ Add test files directly to your training dataset

  • Once you train a custom extraction model, make use of the test page to improve your model quality by uploading test documents to training dataset if needed.

  • If a low confidence score is returned for some labels, make sure they're correctly labeled. If not, add them to the training dataset and relabel to improve the model quality.

Animated screenshot showing how to add test files to training dataset.

✔️ Make use of the document list options and filters in custom projects

  • Use the custom extraction model labeling page. You can now navigate through your training documents with ease by making use of the search, filter, and sort by feature.

  • Utilize the grid view to preview documents or use the list view to scroll through the documents more easily.

    Screenshot showing document list view options and filters.

✔️ Project sharing

May 2023

Introducing refreshed documentation for Build 2023

April 2023

Announcing the latest Document Intelligence client-library public preview release

March 2023

Important

2023-02-28-preview capabilities are currently only available in the following regions:

  • West Europe
  • West US2
  • East US

February 2023


January 2023

  • Prebuilt receipt model - added languages supported. The receipt model now supports these added languages and locales

    • Japanese - Japan (ja-JP)
    • French - Canada (fr-CA)
    • Dutch - Netherlands (nl-NL)
    • English - United Arab Emirates (en-AE)
    • Portuguese - Brazil (pt-BR)
  • Prebuilt invoice model - added languages supported. The invoice model now supports these added languages and locales

    • English - United States (en-US), Australia (en-AU), Canada (en-CA), United Kingdom (en-UK), India (en-IN)
    • Spanish - Spain (es-ES)
    • French - France (fr-FR)
    • Italian - Italy (it-IT)
    • Portuguese - Portugal (pt-PT)
    • Dutch - Netherlands (nl-NL)
  • Prebuilt invoice model - added fields recognized. The invoice model now recognizes these added fields

    • Currency code
    • Payment options
    • Total discount
    • Tax items (en-IN only)
  • Prebuilt ID model - added document types supported. The ID model now supports these added document types

    • US Military ID

Tip

All January 2023 updates are available with REST API version 2022-08-31 (GA).

  • Prebuilt receipt model—additional language support:

    The prebuilt receipt model adds support for the following languages:

    • English - United Arab Emirates (en-AE)
    • Dutch - Netherlands (nl-NL)
    • French - Canada (fr-CA)
    • German - (de-DE)
    • Italian - (it-IT)
    • Japanese - Japan (ja-JP)
    • Portuguese - Brazil (pt-BR)
  • Prebuilt invoice model—additional language support and field extractions

    The prebuilt invoice model adds support for the following languages:

    • English - Australia (en-AU), Canada (en-CA), United Kingdom (en-UK), India (en-IN)
    • Portuguese - Brazil (pt-BR)

    The prebuilt invoice model now adds support for the following field extractions:

    • Currency code
    • Payment options
    • Total discount
    • Tax items (en-IN only)
  • Prebuilt ID document model—additional document types support

    The prebuilt ID document model now adds support for the following document types:

    • Driver's license expansion supporting India, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia
    • US military ID cards and documents
    • India ID cards and documents (PAN and Aadhaar)
    • Australia ID cards and documents (photo card, Key-pass ID)
    • Canada ID cards and documents (identification card, Maple card)
    • United Kingdom ID cards and documents (national/regional identity card)

December 2022

  • Document Intelligence Studio updates

    The December Document Intelligence Studio release includes the latest updates to Document Intelligence Studio. There are significant improvements to user experience, primarily with custom model labeling support.

    • Page range. The Studio now supports analyzing specified pages from a document.

    • Custom model labeling:

      • Run Layout API automatically. You can opt to run the Layout API for all documents automatically in your blob storage during the setup process for custom model.

      • Search. The Studio now includes search functionality to locate words within a document. This improvement allows for easier navigation while labeling.

      • Navigation. You can select labels to target labeled words within a document.

      • Auto table labeling. After you select the table icon within a document, you can opt to autolabel the extracted table in the labeling view.

      • Label subtypes and second-level subtypes The Studio now supports subtypes for table columns, table rows, and second-level subtypes for types such as dates and numbers.

  • Building custom neural models is now supported in the US Gov Virginia region.

  • Preview API versions 2022-01-30-preview and 2021-09-30-preview will be retired January 31 2023. Update to the 2022-08-31 API version to avoid any service disruptions.


November 2022

  • Announcing the latest stable release of Azure AI Document Intelligence libraries
    • This release includes important changes and updates for .NET, Java, JavaScript, and Python client libraries. For more information, see Azure SDK DevBlog.
    • The most significant enhancements are the introduction of two new clients, the DocumentAnalysisClient and the DocumentModelAdministrationClient.

October 2022

  • Document Intelligence versioned content

    • Document Intelligence documentation is updated to present a versioned experience. Now, you can choose to view content targeting the v3.0 GA experience or the v2.1 GA experience. The v3.0 experience is the default.

      Screenshot of the Document Intelligence landing page denoting the version dropdown menu.

  • Document Intelligence Studio Sample Code

    • Sample code for the Document Intelligence Studio labeling experience is now available on GitHub. Customers can develop and integrate Document Intelligence into their own UX or build their own new UX using the Document Intelligence Studio sample code.
  • Language expansion

    • With the latest preview release, Document Intelligence's Read (OCR), Layout, and Custom template models support 134 new languages. These language additions include Greek, Latvian, Serbian, Thai, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese, along with several Latin, and Cyrillic languages. Document Intelligence now has a total of 299 supported languages across the most recent GA and new preview versions. Refer to the supported languages page to see all supported languages.
    • Use the REST API parameter api-version=2022-06-30-preview when using the API or the corresponding SDK to support the new languages in your applications.
  • New Prebuilt Contract model

    • A new prebuilt that extracts information from contracts such as parties, title, contract ID, execution date and more. the contracts model is currently in preview, request access here.
  • Region expansion for training custom neural models

    • Training custom neural models now supported in added regions.
      • East US
      • East US2
      • US Gov Arizona

September 2022

Note

Starting with version 4.0.0, a new set of clients has been introduced to leverage the newest features of the Document Intelligence service.

SDK version 4.0.0 GA release includes the following updates:

  • Version 4.0.0 GA (2022-09-08)
  • Supports REST API v3.0 and v2.0 clients

Package (NuGet)

Changelog/Release History

Migration guide

ReadMe

Samples

  • Region expansion for training custom neural models now supported in six new regions

    • Australia East
    • Central US
    • East Asia
    • France Central
    • UK South
    • West US2
    • For a complete list of regions where training is supported see custom neural models.

    • Document Intelligence SDK version 4.0.0 GA release:

      • Document Intelligence client libraries version 4.0.0 (.NET/C#, Java, JavaScript) and version 3.2.0 (Python) are generally available and ready for use in production applications!.
      • For more information on Document Intelligence client libraries, see the SDK overview.
      • Update your applications using your programming language's migration guide.

August 2022

Document Intelligence SDK beta August 2022 preview release includes the following updates:

Version 4.0.0-beta.5 (2022-08-09)

Changelog/Release History

Package (NuGet)

SDK reference documentation

  • Document Intelligence v3.0 generally available

    • Document Intelligence REST API v3.0 is now generally available and ready for use in production applications! Update your applications with REST API version 2022-08-31.
  • Document Intelligence Studio updates

    • Next steps. Under each model page, the Studio now has a next steps section. Users can quickly reference sample code, troubleshooting guidelines, and pricing information.
    • Custom models. The Studio now includes the ability to reorder labels in custom model projects to improve labeling efficiency.
    • Copy Models Custom models can be copied across Document Intelligence services from within the Studio. The operation enables the promotion of a trained model to other environments and regions.
    • Delete documents. The Studio now supports deleting documents from labeled dataset within custom projects.
  • Document Intelligence service updates

    • prebuilt-read. Read OCR model is now also available in Document Intelligence with paragraphs and language detection as the two new features. Document Intelligence Read targets advanced document scenarios aligned with the broader document intelligence capabilities in Document Intelligence.
    • prebuilt-layout. The Layout model extracts paragraphs and whether the extracted text is a paragraph, title, section heading, footnote, page header, page footer, or page number.
    • prebuilt-invoice. The TotalVAT and Line/VAT fields now resolves to the existing fields TotalTax and Line/Tax respectively.
    • prebuilt-idDocument. Data extraction support for US state ID, social security, and green cards. Support for passport visa information.
    • prebuilt-receipt. Expanded locale support for French (fr-FR), Spanish (es-ES), Portuguese (pt-PT), Italian (it-IT) and German (de-DE).
    • prebuilt-businessCard. Address parse support to extract subfields for address components like address, city, state, country/region, and zip code.
  • AI quality improvements

    • prebuilt-read. Enhanced support for single characters, handwritten dates, amounts, names, other key data commonly found in receipts and invoices and improved processing of digital PDF documents.
    • prebuilt-layout. Support for better detection of cropped tables, borderless tables, and improved recognition of long spanning cells.
    • prebuilt-document. Improved value and check box detection.
    • custom-neural. Improved accuracy for table detection and extraction.

June 2022

  • Document Intelligence SDK beta June 2022 preview release includes the following updates:

February 2022

  • Document Intelligence v3.0 preview release introduces several new features, capabilities, and enhancements:

    • Custom neural model or custom document model is a new custom model to extract text and selection marks from structured forms, semi-structured and unstructured documents.
    • W-2 prebuilt model is a new prebuilt model to extract fields from W-2 forms for tax reporting and income verification scenarios.
    • Read API extracts printed text lines, words, text locations, detected languages, and handwritten text, if detected.
    • General document pretrained model is now updated to support selection marks in addition to API text, tables, structure, and key-value pairs from forms and documents.
    • Invoice API Invoice prebuilt model expands support to Spanish invoices.
    • Document Intelligence Studio adds new demos for Read, W2, Hotel receipt samples, and support for training the new custom neural models.
    • Language Expansion Document Intelligence Read, Layout, and Custom Form add support for 42 new languages including Arabic, Hindi, and other languages using Arabic and Devanagari scripts to expand the coverage to 164 languages. Handwritten language support expands to Japanese and Korean.
  • Get started with the new REST API, Python, or .NET SDK for the v3.0 preview API.

  • Document Intelligence model data extraction:

    Model Text extraction Key-Value pairs Selection Marks Tables Signatures
    Read âś“
    General document âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“
    Layout âś“ âś“ âś“
    Invoice âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“
    Receipt âś“ âś“ âś“
    ID document âś“ âś“
    Business card âś“ âś“
    Custom template âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“
    Custom neural âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“
  • Document Intelligence SDK beta preview release includes the following updates:


November 2021

  • Document Intelligence v3.0 preview SDK release update (beta.2) incorporates bug fixes and minor feature updates.

October 2021

  • Document Intelligence v3.0 preview release version 4.0.0-beta.1 (2021-10-07)introduces several new features and capabilities:

    • General document model is a new API that uses a pretrained model to extract text, tables, structure, and key-value pairs from forms and documents.

    • Hotel receipt model added to prebuilt receipt processing.

    • Expanded fields for ID document the ID model supports endorsements, restrictions, and vehicle classification extraction from US driver's licenses.

    • Signature field is a new field type in custom forms to detect the presence of a signature in a form field.

    • Language Expansion Support for 122 languages (print) and 7 languages (handwritten). Document Intelligence Layout and Custom Form expand supported languages to 122 with its latest preview. The preview includes text extraction for print text in 49 new languages including Russian, Bulgarian, and other Cyrillic and more Latin languages. In addition, extraction of handwritten text now supports seven languages that include English, and new previews of Chinese Simplified, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

    • Tables and text extraction enhancements Layout now supports extracting single row tables also called key-value tables. Text extraction enhancements include better processing of digital PDFs and Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) text in identity documents, along with general performance.

    • Document Intelligence Studio To simplify use of the service, you can now access the Document Intelligence Studio to test the different prebuilt models or label and train a custom model.

    • Get started with the new REST API, Python, or .NET SDK for the v3.0 preview API.

  • Document Intelligence model data extraction

    Model Text extraction Key-Value pairs Selection Marks Tables
    General document âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“
    Layout âś“ âś“ âś“
    Invoice âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“
    Receipt âś“ âś“
    ID document âś“ âś“
    Business card âś“ âś“
    Custom âś“ âś“ âś“ âś“

September 2021

  • Azure metrics explorer advanced features are available on your Document Intelligence resource overview page in the Azure portal.

  • Monitoring menu:

    Screenshot showing the monitoring menu in the Azure portal.

  • Charts:

    Screenshot showing an example metric chart in the Azure portal.

  • ID document model update: given names including a suffix, with or without a period (full stop), process successfully:

    Input Text Result with update
    William Isaac Kirby Jr. FirstName: William Isaac

    LastName: Kirby Jr.
    Henry Caleb Ross Sr FirstName: Henry Caleb

    LastName: Ross Sr.

July 2021

  • System-assigned managed identity support: You can now enable a system-assigned managed identity to grant Document Intelligence limited access to private storage accounts including accounts protected by a Virtual Network, firewall, or bring-your-own-storage (BYOS) enabled. See Create and use managed identity for your Document Intelligence resource to learn more.

June 2021


May 2021

  • Document Intelligence 2.1 is generally available. The GA release marks the stability of the changes introduced in prior 2.1 preview package versions. This release enables you to detect and extract information and data from the following document types:

  • To get started, try the Document Intelligence Sample Tool and follow the quickstart.

  • The updated Layout API table feature adds header recognition with column headers that can span multiple rows. Each table cell has an attribute that indicates whether it's part of a header or not. This update can be used to identify which rows make up the table header.


April 2021

  • NuGet package version 3.1.0-beta.4

  • Changelog/Release History.

  • New methods to analyze data from identity documents:

    StartRecognizeIdDocumentsFromUriAsync

    StartRecognizeIdDocumentsAsync

    For a list of field values, see Fields extracted in our Document Intelligence documentation.

  • Expanded the set of document languages that can be provided to the StartRecognizeContent method.

  • New property Pages supported by the following classes:

    RecognizeBusinessCardsOptions
    RecognizeCustomFormsOptions
    RecognizeInvoicesOptions
    RecognizeReceiptsOptions

    The Pages property allows you to select individual or a range of pages for multi-page PDF and TIFF documents. For individual pages, enter the page number, for example, 3. For a range of pages (like page 2 and pages 5-7) enter the p age numbers and ranges separated by commas: 2, 5-7.

  • New property ReadingOrder supported for the following class:

    RecognizeContentOptions

    The ReadingOrder property is an optional parameter that allows you to specify which reading order algorithm—basic or natural—should be applied to order the extraction of text elements. If not specified, the default value is basic.

  • SDK preview updates for API version 2.1-preview.3 introduces feature updates and enhancements.

March 2021

Document Intelligence v2.1 public preview v2.1-preview.3 has been released and includes the following features:

  • New prebuilt ID model The new prebuilt ID model enables customers to take IDs and return structured data to automate processing. It combines our powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities with ID understanding models to extract key information from passports and U.S. driver licenses.

    Learn more about the prebuilt ID model

    Screenshot of a sample passport.

  • Line-item extraction for invoice model - Prebuilt Invoice model now supports line item extraction; it now extracts full items and their parts - description, amount, quantity, product ID, date, and more. With a simple API/SDK call, you can extract useful data from your invoices - text, table, key-value pairs, and line items.

    Learn more about the invoice model.

  • Supervised table labeling and training, empty-value labeling - In addition to Document Intelligence's state-of-the-art deep learning automatic table extraction capabilities, it now enables customers to label and train on tables. This new release includes the ability to label and train on line items/tables (dynamic and fixed) and train a custom model to extract key-value pairs and line items. Once a model is trained, the model extracts line items as part of the JSON output in the documentResults section.

    Screenshot of the table labeling feature.

    In addition to labeling tables, you can now label empty values and regions. If some documents in your training set don't have values for certain fields, you can label them so that your model knows to extract values properly from analyzed documents.

  • Support for 66 new languages - The Layout API and Custom Models for Document Intelligence now support 73 languages.

    Learn more about Document Intelligence's language support.

  • Natural reading order, handwriting classification, and page selection - With this update, you can choose to get the text line outputs in the natural reading order instead of the default left-to-right and top-to-bottom ordering. Use the new readingOrder query parameter and set it to "natural" value for a more human-friendly reading order output. In addition, for Latin languages, Document Intelligence classifies text lines as handwritten style or not and give a confidence score.

  • Prebuilt receipt model quality improvements This update includes many quality improvements for the prebuilt Receipt model, especially around line item extraction.


November 2020

  • Document Intelligence v2.1-preview.2 has been released and includes the following features:

    • New prebuilt invoice model - The new prebuilt Invoice model enables customers to take invoices in various formats and return structured data to automate the invoice processing. It combines our powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities with invoice understanding deep learning models to extract key information from invoices in English. It extracts key text, tables, and information such as customer, vendor, invoice ID, invoice due date, total, amount due, tax amount, ship to, and bill to.

      Learn more about the prebuilt invoice model

      Screenshot of a sample invoice.

    • Enhanced table extraction - Document Intelligence now provides enhanced table extraction, which combines our powerful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities with a deep learning table extraction model. Document Intelligence can extract data from tables, including complex tables with merged columns, rows, no borders and more.

      Screenshot of tables analysis.

      Learn more about Layout extraction.

    • Client library update - The latest versions of the client libraries for .NET, Python, Java, and JavaScript support the Document Intelligence 2.1 API.

    • New language supported: Japanese - The following new languages are now supported: for AnalyzeLayout and AnalyzeCustomForm: Japanese (ja). Language support.

    • Text line style indication (handwritten/other) (Latin languages only) - Document Intelligence now outputs an appearance object classifying whether each text line is handwritten style or not, along with a confidence score. This feature is supported only for Latin languages.

    • Quality improvements - Extraction improvements including single digit extraction improvements.

    • New try-it-out feature in the Document Intelligence Sample and Labeling Tool - Ability to try out prebuilt Invoice, Receipt, and Business Card models and the Layout API using the Document Intelligence Sample Labeling tool. See how your data is extracted without writing any code.

    • Try the Document Intelligence Sample Labeling tool

      Screenshot of the Sample Labeling tool homepage.

      • Feedback Loop - When Analyzing files via the Sample Labeling tool you can now also add it to the training set and adjust the labels if necessary and train to improve the model.
      • Auto Label Documents - Automatically labels added documents based on previous labeled documents in the project.

August 2020

  • **Document Intelligence v2.1-preview.1 includes the following features:

    • REST API reference is available - View the v2.1-preview.1 reference.
    • New languages supported In addition to English, the following languages are now supported: for Layout and Train Custom Model: English (en), Chinese (Simplified) (zh-Hans), Dutch (nl), French (fr), German (de), Italian (it), Portuguese (pt) and Spanish (es).
    • Checkbox / Selection Mark detection – Document Intelligence supports detection and extraction of selection marks such as check boxes and radio buttons. Selection Marks are extracted in Layout and you can now also label and train in Train Custom Model - Train with Labels to extract key-value pairs for selection marks.
    • Model Compose - allows multiple models to be composed and called with a single model ID. When you submit a document to be analyzed with a composed model ID, a classification step is first performed to route it to the correct custom model. Model Compose is available for Train Custom Model - Train with labels.
    • Model name - add a friendly name to your custom models for easier management and tracking.
    • New prebuilt model for Business Cards for extracting common fields in English, language business cards.
    • New locales for prebuilt Receipts in addition to EN-US, support is now available for EN-AU, EN-CA, EN-GB, EN-IN.
    • Quality improvements for Layout, Train Custom Model - Train without Labels and Train with Labels.
  • v2.0 includes the following update:

    • The client libraries for NET, Python, Java, and JavaScript are Generally Available.

    New samples are available on GitHub.

    • The Knowledge Extraction Recipes - Forms Playbook collects best practices from real Document Intelligence customer engagements and provides usable code samples, checklists, and sample pipelines used in developing these projects.
    • The Sample Labeling tool is updated to support the new v2.1 functionality. See this quickstart for getting started with the tool.
    • The Intelligent Kiosk Document Intelligence sample shows how to integrate Analyze Receipt and Train Custom Model - Train without Labels.

July 2020

  • Document Intelligence v2.0 reference available - View the v2.0 API Reference and the updated client libraries for .NET, Python, Java, and JavaScript.
    • Table enhancements and Extraction enhancements - includes accuracy improvements and table extractions enhancements, specifically, the capability to learn tables headers and structures in custom train without labels.

    • Currency support - Detection and extraction of global currency symbols.

    • Azure Gov - Document Intelligence is now also available in Azure Gov.

    • Enhanced security features:

      • Bring your own key - Document Intelligence automatically encrypts your data when persisted to the cloud to protect it and to help you to meet your organizational security and compliance commitments. By default, your subscription uses Microsoft-managed encryption keys. You can now also manage your subscription with your own encryption keys. Customer-managed keys, also known as bring your own key (BYOK), offer greater flexibility to create, rotate, disable, and revoke access controls. You can also audit the encryption keys used to protect your data.
      • Private endpoints – Enables you on a virtual network to securely access data over a Private Link.

June 2020


April 2020

  • SDK support for Document Intelligence API v2.0 Public Preview - This month we expanded our service support to include a preview SDK for Document Intelligence v2.0 release. Use these links to get started with your language of choice:
  • .NET SDK
  • Java SDK
  • Python SDK
  • JavaScript SDK

The new SDK supports all the features of the v2.0 REST API for Document Intelligence. You can share your feedback on the client libraries through the SDK Feedback form.

  • Copy Custom Model You can now copy models between regions and subscriptions using the new Copy Custom Model feature. Before invoking the Copy Custom Model API, you must first obtain authorization to copy into the target resource. This authorization is secured by calling the Copy Authorization operation against the target resource endpoint.

  • Generate a copy authorization REST API.

  • Copy a custom model REST API.

  • Security improvements.

  • Customer-Managed Keys are now available for FormRecognizer. For more information, see Data encryption at rest for Document Intelligence.

  • Use Managed Identities for access to Azure resources with Azure Active Directory. For more information, see Authorize access to managed identities.


March 2020

  • Value types for labeling You can now specify the types of values you're labeling with the Document Intelligence Sample Labeling tool. The following value types and variations are currently supported:
  • string
    • default, no-whitespaces, alphanumeric
  • number
    • default, currency
  • date
    • default, dmy, mdy, ymd
  • time
  • integer

See the Sample Labeling tool guide to learn how to use this feature.

  • Table visualization The Sample Labeling tool now displays tables that were recognized in the document. This feature lets you view recognized and extracted tables from the document before labeling and analyzing. This feature can be toggled on/off using the layers option.

  • The following image is an example of how tables are recognized and extracted:

    Screenshot of table visualization using the Sample Labeling tool.

  • The extracted tables are available in the JSON output under "pageResults".

    Important

    Labeling tables isn't supported. If tables are not recognized and extracted automatically, you can only label them as key/value pairs. When labeling tables as key/value pairs, label each cell as a unique value.

  • Extraction enhancements.

  • This release includes extraction enhancements and accuracy improvements, specifically, the capability to label and extract multiple key/value pairs in the same line of text.

  • Sample Labeling tool is now open-source.

  • The Document Intelligence Sample Labeling tool is now available as an open-source project. You can integrate it within your solutions and make customer-specific changes to meet your needs.

  • For more information about the Document Intelligence Sample Labeling tool, review the documentation available on GitHub.

  • TLS 1.2 enforcement.

  • TLS 1.2 is now enforced for all HTTP requests to this service. For more information, see Azure AI services security.


January 2020

This release introduces the Document Intelligence 2.0. In the next sections, you'll find more information about new features, enhancements, and changes.

  • New features

    • Custom model

      • Train with labels You can now train a custom model with manually labeled data. This method results in better-performing models and can produce models that work with complex forms or forms containing values without keys.
      • Asynchronous API You can use async API calls to train with and analyze large data sets and files.
      • TIFF file support You can now train with and extract data from TIFF documents.
      • Extraction accuracy improvements.
    • Prebuilt receipt model

      • Tip amounts You can now extract tip amounts and other handwritten values.
      • Line item extraction You can extract line item values from receipts.
      • Confidence values You can view the model's confidence for each extracted value.
      • Extraction accuracy improvements.
      • Layout extraction You can now use the Layout API to extract text data and table data from your forms.
  • Custom model API changes

    All of the APIs for training and using custom models are renamed, and some synchronous methods are now asynchronous. The following are major changes:

    • The process of training a model is now asynchronous. You initiate training through the /custom/models API call. This call returns an operation ID, which you can pass into custom/models/{modelID} to return the training results.
    • Key/value extraction is now initiated by the /custom/models/{modelID}/analyze API call. This call returns an operation ID, which you can pass into custom/models/{modelID}/analyzeResults/{resultID} to return the extraction results.
    • Operation IDs for the Train operation are now found in the Location header of HTTP responses, not the Operation-Location header.
  • Receipt API changes

    • The APIs for reading sales receipts are renamed.

    • Receipt data extraction is now initiated by the /prebuilt/receipt/analyze API call. This call returns an operation ID, which you can pass into /prebuilt/receipt/analyzeResults/{resultID} to return the extraction results.

  • Output format changes

    • The JSON responses for all API calls have new formats. Some keys and values are added, removed, or renamed. See the quickstarts for examples of the current JSON formats.

Next steps