Layout Management Overview

Layout Management Overview

Using features for Semi-structured documents
This article mentions features used in the processing of Semi-structured documents. Your access to those features depends on your license package and pricing plan.

In the past, customers with multiple variations of the same form needed to create completely new layouts for each variation, resulting in repetitive work. Once those layouts were created, there was no straightforward way to organize and find in the Layouts table. Then, when it was time to create a release, the versioning of each of these separate layouts could cause confusion about which versions should be included.

We created our Layout Management feature to address these concerns.

In particular:

Content of a layout

Layouts can now have the following components.

Layout variations

Each layout now consists of at least one layout variation. If you have many forms for the same purpose that are very similar (e.g., HCFAs, tax forms) but would ordinarily require separate layouts, you can create a single Structured layout with multiple variations. After you create an initial layout with one of the forms, you can then add a variation for each instance of the form you want to process in Hyperscience. When creating a variation, all of the layout's fields and their metadata appear in the field list, and you have the option of copying bounding boxes from an existing variation.

For more information, see Adding a Variation to a Layout.

Shared field list

The shared field list for a Structured layout consists of all the fields that appear in at least one of the layout's variations. This list is available in the layout editor and can also be accessed from the layout details page. If you want to change a field's settings across a layout's variations, you can make those edits in the shared field list.

Field customizations

If you want to change a field's settings for a specific release, you can create a field customization that captures those changes. You can then include that customization when creating the release, and your customization will be applied to all instances of that field in the release's layout variations.

The diagram below shows the differences between Structured layouts in v28.2.0 and Structured layouts in previous versions.

Features by layout type

The features available in each type of layout are as follows:

| | Layout Variations | Working Version | Shared Field List | Field Customizations | | Structured | At least 1, can add more | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Semi-structured | Only 1 | Yes | No | No | | Additional | Only 1 | No | No | No |

Other changes in Layout Management

In addition to these changes to layouts, you’ll notice differences in other parts of the user experience after upgrading, as described below.

Layout Library

In the Layout Library, Structured layouts that have at least one committed version will have a drop-down list of the variations included in the layout.

Clicking on a variation name opens a read-only instance of the Layout Editor, allowing you to view more information about the variation and its fields. To make changes to the variation, you need to click on the variation's name on the layout details pages.

Layout details page

To access the Layout details page, go to Library and click on your layout’s name.

On this page, you can see the following information:

Versioning

There is always one working version for each layout that's ready for you to make changes to. You no longer need to create a new version of the layout if you want to edit the layout. Versioning happens at the layout level. You can restore previous versions of a layout.

Change management

"Committing changes" has replaced "locking" as the way to finalize changes to a version and make it available for use in a release. The "Currently Editing” card gives details about the changes to the working version that haven't been committed yet. You can also commit changes while in the Layout Editor by clicking Commit Changes in the upper-right corner of the page.

Retrieving exported layouts

Layout exports are now asynchronous. When you export a release, you will receive a notification when your file is ready.

Creating releases

Releases consist of committed versions of layouts. When creating releases, you can choose to include all variations of a layout, or you can select individual layout variations within that layout.

Your layouts after upgrading to v28.2.0 or later

After upgrading to v28.2.0 or later from a previous version, each of your layouts will be converted to a layout with a single layout variation. To make the merging of layouts possible, we’ve created a script that allows you to group individual layout variations into a single Structured layout.