PDF Area Mapping & Recognition

Why It Matters

If your team regularly pulls data from structured documents — contracts, reports, forms — into CORAS records, this replaces the manual entry step. Draw the areas, submit, review the results, and the data lands exactly where it belongs.

Desktop only. Drawing areas on a PDF requires a desktop browser. This feature is not available on mobile.

Before You Start

You need write access to the node where the recognized data will be stored.

Step 1 — Upload Your PDF

1. Open the PDF parsing tool.

2. Upload your PDF.

3. The document opens in the mapping view.

⚠️ Confirm exact entry point with Preston before publishing.

Step 2 — Draw Areas

Click and drag to draw a rectangle over any section of the PDF you want to capture. You can draw as many areas as needed — each one is mapped and processed independently.

For each area, set the type:

• Text — captures the written content and maps it to a field on a CORAS record.

• Image — captures the area as an image and saves it as an attachment.

Step 3 — Map Each Area to a Destination

For each area, choose where the recognized content will go.

Start by selecting a node. The node you select scopes the lists and records available as destinations. All areas in the session use the same node.

For text areas:

1. Select a list within the node.

2. Choose an existing record or create a new one.

3. Select the field the content will be written to.

4. If writing to an existing record, choose how to handle the field:

   • Append — adds the recognized content after anything already in the field.

   • Overwrite — replaces the field's current content.

For image areas:

Choose to attach the image to a record or directly to the node. If attaching to a record, select the list and record.

Creating a new record

If you create a new record as a destination, the record's title is pre-filled with the filename and a timestamp — for example, report-2026-07-27-14-30. You can edit the title before submitting.

Step 4 — Submit

Once all areas are mapped, click Submit. CORAS processes the document in the background — you don't need to stay on the page. You'll get an in-app notification when it's ready to review.

Step 5 — Review Results

When processing is complete, open the job from the notification or from your PDF Parsing Jobs list.

The review page shows the recognized content for each area. For each one:

• Edit the value if the recognized text needs a correction.

• Accept to confirm and write it to the destination field.

• Reject to discard it — nothing is written to that field.

• Request a higher-accuracy pass if the result isn't accurate enough. CORAS reprocesses the area using a more thorough recognition method and notifies you when it's done.

After a higher-accuracy pass, re-submission is no longer available for that area. Review, edit if needed, then accept or reject.

PDF Parsing Jobs

All of your parsing jobs are listed in PDF Parsing Jobs, which works like the ingestion log. Open any job to see its status and return to the review page.