Get started with Azure Document Intelligence

  • 3 minutes

To start a project with Azure Document Intelligence services, you need to prepare the following:

  • An Azure resource subscription
  • A selection of form files for data extraction

Subscribe to a resource

You can access Azure Document Intelligence services via:

  • An Azure AI Service resource: a multi-service subscription key (used across multiple Azure AI Services)

OR

  • An Azure Document Intelligence resource: a single-service subscription key (used only with a specific Azure AI Service)

Note

Create an Azure AI Services resource if you plan to access multiple Azure AI services under a single endpoint/key. For Azure Document Intelligence access only, create an Azure Document Intelligence resource. Please note that you'll need a single-service resource if you intend to use Microsoft Entra authentication.

You can subscribe to a service in the Azure portal or with the Azure Command Line Interface (CLI). You can learn more about the CLI commands here.

Understand Azure Document Intelligence file input requirements

Azure Document Intelligence works on input documents that meet these requirements:

  • Format must be JPG, PNG, BMP, PDF (text or scanned), or TIFF.
  • The file size must be less than 500 MB for paid (S0) tier and 4 MB for free (F0) tier.
  • Image dimensions must be between 50 x 50 pixels and 10000 x 10000 pixels.
  • The total size of the training data set must be 500 pages or less.

More input requirements can be found in the documentation for specific models.

Decide what component of Azure Document Intelligence to use

After you have collected your files, decide what you need to accomplish.

  • To use OCR capabilities to capture document analysis, use the Layout model, Read model, or General Document model.

  • To create an application that extracts data from W-2s, Invoices, Receipts, ID documents, Health insurance, vaccination, and business cards, use a prebuilt model. These models do not need to be trained. Azure Document Intelligence services analyze the documents and return a JSON output.

  • To create an application to extract data from your industry-specific forms, create a custom model. This model needs to be trained on sample documents. After training, the custom model can analyze new documents and return a JSON output.