Creating Structured Layouts

Updated on Sep 24, 2025
Published on Mar 18, 2025
9 minute(s) read

If you plan on processing completed forms through Hyperscience, you first need to create a Structured layout for the form. After you add the layout to Hyperscience, you can use the Layout Editor to define what information the system should extract from the processed pages that match the specific layout.

Create a Structured layout

Go to Library > Layouts.
Click Add Layout.
Click Structured Layout, and then click Next.
Upload a PDF, TIFF, JPG, or PNG file in one of the following ways:
- Drag and drop the image file into the box provided.
- Click Choose File to find the file on your machine and upload it.
  - If you upload a multi-page TIFF or PDF file, a single layout variation will be created from the file.
If your form consists of multiple files, upload additional files by clicking Add More Files.
- When uploading multiple JPG or PNG files, the order of the layout variation’s pages will match the order of the files shown during the upload process.
- The system will create separate layouts for each TIFF or PDF file that you upload.
Click Next.
Enter a name for your layout in the Layout Name field.
Under Language, click on the drop-down list, and click on the language that you expect people will use when entering information in this layout’s documents.
- If you expect specific fields to contain text in different languages than the document’s main language, you can select languages specific to those fields in the Layout Editor. In the Layout Editor, selecting the Not in option allows you to select a language for each of those fields. You can choose from any of the languages we support.
Click Create.

By following these steps, you will create a layout with a single variation. You can add variations to the layout by following the steps in Adding a Variation to a Layout.

Access the Layout Editor

You can specify the information that should be extracted from submitted pages that match the layout by defining the field metadata in the Layout Editor.

To access the Layout Editor:

Go to Library > Layouts, and click on the name of the layout you want to edit.
Click on Layout Variations, and click on the name of the variation.

When in the Layout Editor, you’ll be making changes to the working version of the layout. To commit your changes—or to save without committing your changes—follow the steps in Saving and exiting.

Using the Layout Editor

The layout’s title appears across the top of the page. The button to commit changes appears in the upper-right corner of the page. To learn more about committing changes, see the Saving and exiting section later in this article.

The Layout Editor for Structured layouts is split into three panels: page thumbnails, the main page view, and the field list.

Page viewer

To change between pages in the layout or layout variation, click on the page thumbnails on the left-most panel, or use the paging controls above the table of extracted fields and layout identifiers. Changing pages will automatically save your progress.

Layouts consist of fields. Each field specifies a piece of information to be extracted from a submitted page matched to that layout.

Field list

The right panel displays both Layout Identifiers and Fields together, across all pages. To learn more about Layout Identifiers, see Layout Identifiers.

Fields are highlighted in blue. Layout IDs are highlighted in green.
Selecting a field or layout ID on the right panel will focus the page image in the middle panel to the corresponding bounding box for that field.
Use the search bar to find data types or field name for a field that has been defined in the layout.
- You can also click Filters to filter the list by data type.

When you create a Structured layout, the system attempts to identify its fields and adds them to the fields list. You can edit the bounding boxes and any settings for these fields.

Any fields added by you or the system are added to the layout’s shared field list. If you create variations of the layout, the fields in the shared field list will be available in those variations. In the Layout Editor, the shared field list is split into two lists:

Active items, which have bounding boxes in the layout variation
Inactive items, which have not yet been defined in the layout variation

To learn more about working with active and inactive fields, see Editing a Structured Layout Variation.

Defining fields

On a layout for a Structured document, fields have two elements:

A bounding box that defines the area on the page where one expects to find a field.
Metadata, which consists of settings used by the machine to read and process the field value, as well as names used to label the information extracted from the field.

To define a field, click and drag on the page image to create a bounding box. If the field already appears in the field list, click on its name before drawing its bounding box.

Ensure the bounding box covers the area of the layout image where information is expected to appear.
To resize, click on the bounding box, then click and drag on a corner or side to expand or shrink the box.
Make incremental adjustments by using the respective arrow keys on the keyboard, or by first clicking in the center of the bounding box and then dragging the box in the desired direction.

Defining field metadata

After drawing the bounding box, define the field metadata in the field list on the right. The following pieces of metadata can be defined for each field on a Structured layout:

Field Name - labels the field throughout Hyperscience and is intended to be human-readable. This name is also provided in the output for submitted pages matched to the layout.

Data type - designates the type of data that is expected for the given field.

Output Name - allows you to provide a programmatic name for each field, in addition to the human-readable display name. This name is included in the output for submitted pages matched to the layout.

Transcription Supervision - allows you to specify the field’s transcription handling. The possible values and their meanings are as follows:

Autotranscribe - a field with this setting will not generate manual transcription tasks and will instead output the machine’s transcription value. This is appropriate for scenarios where the accuracy of a given field’s data is not sufficiently critical to warrant human review.
Default - if toggled on, the field will undergo machine transcription, sending to Supervision if the confidence level on its transcription is below the threshold.
Always - the system will always send this field to Supervision regardless of the machine’s confidence.
Consensus - does not record a value until it receives the same post-normalization transcription value twice.

For each field, a field name and data type must be defined. If either is missing, an error message saying "Missing Field Information" will be shown, and the field will be highlighted in red in the layout editor.

Additional Settings

There are additional settings and features you can enable to improve machine performance:

Multiline - enables better processing for fields where more than one line of text is expected.
Dropout - indicates whether any background features in the field area should be included in the transcription.
Required - apply special logic for required fields, generating exceptions if a field is determined to be blank.
Duplicate - ensures only the first instance of a field is extracted from multiple pages.
Not in - select if a field contains text in a language different from the layout’s main language.

Editing multiple fields

You can select multiple fields from the field list and change parameters such as data type and supervision settings. To select multiple, use CMD + Click for non-contiguous items and Shift + Click for contiguous items.

Saving and exiting

All layout working versions auto-save, so there is no need to manually save changes that have been made.

To commit your changes, click Commit Changes at the top of the page.
To leave the Layout Editor without committing, click the X in the upper-right corner of the page.

To match submitted pages to a layout, the layout must have at least one committed version, and must be deployed in a live release.