2023.1:Footer Rows and Footer Modes (Concept)

This article is about an older version of Grooper. Information may be out of date and UI elements may have changed.
2025	2023.1

"Footer Rows and Footer Modes" refers to how a table Data Table's "footer row" provides Grooper users a quick way to validate numerical data in a view_column Data Column. The Data Column's Footer Mode property controls if and how a total is determined for numerical values in a Data Column.

You may download the ZIP(s) below and upload it into your own Grooper environment (version 2023.1). The first contains one or more Batches of sample documents. The second contains one or more Projects with resources used in examples throughout this article. Media:2023.1_Wiki_Footer-Rows-and-Footer-Modes_Batch.zip Media:2023.1_Wiki_Footer-Rows-and-Footer-Modes_Project.zip

About

We will begin by addressing some simple questions you may have.

What is a footer?

A "footer", in terms of table extraction, is a line that indicates you've reached the last row of a table.

What is a footer row?

A "footer row" is a special row at the end of a table that displays totals for some or all numerical columns in the table.

How do I display a footer row in Grooper?

There are two ways depending on what Data Table extract method you're using.

• For all table extract methods, you can enable the Data Table's "Generate Footer Row" property to generate a blank footer row.
  • This option is useful for situations where you want Grooper to simply calculate the sum total of Data Columns.
  • When enabled, a footer row will always be present in the table Grooper extracts, whether a footer row is present on the document itself or not.
  • To generate a computed sum of the Data Column's values, the Data Column's Footer Mode must be set to Calculate.

• For the Tabular Layout method only, you can collect a footer row from the document itself by enabling the Capture Footer Row property.
  • This will extract a row from the document using either the Footer Detection extractor's result or a Footer label (if collected in the Document Type's Label Set) for the Data Table
  • Creating a footer row in this way has additional Footer Mode options. You can simply populate the footer row with values collected from the document. You can validate the value collected totals up according to values collected for a column. There are also modes that allow you to calculate a footer value if not present on the document (or otherwise not extracted from the document).
  • Enabling this property will override the Generate Footer Row property, if configured.

What is a "Footer Mode"?

This property determines how footer values are extracted or calculated for each Data Column. This property is located on each individual Data Column's property panel. This property and its configuration options will be discussed in more detail in the following "how to" sections of this article:

• #How to use Generate Footer Row
• #How to use Capture Footer Row

⚠

Footer values will ONLY be collected/calculated for Data Types with numerical Value Types (Decimal, Double, Int16, Int32, Int64). Furthermore, the Footer Mode property will only appear for Data Columns with numerical Value Types selected. You will not see this property if the Data Column is using the default "String" Value Type.

How to use Generate Footer Row

A footer row can be created for any Data Table by enabling the Generate Footer Row property.

While there are multiple Footer Mode options, only two apply for footer rows generated by the Generate Footer Row property:

• Disabled - This will disable footer calculation for a Data Column
• Calculate - This will enable footer calculation for a Data Column

Generate Footer Row can create footer rows regardless of whether or not a footer row appears on the document. In the case of the image below:

• "Table A" has a footer row present on the document totaling the "Salary" column.
• "Table B" has no such row on the document.

In either case, the Generate Footer Row property can generate the footer row and calculate the totaled value for the column, as seen in the image below.

For this example, the "Salary" Data Column's Footer Mode was set to Calculate, allowing Grooper to add up each of the collected "Salary" column values in both cases.

• Please note, no document extraction is taking place in this case. Grooper is simply adding up the values in the "Salary" column to get to this number (i.e. 10000 + 25000 + 15000 = 50000)
• Furthermore, the "Employee ID" Data Column's Footer Mode was set to Disabled. Even though these are numerical values, it does not make sense for us to total them in a footer row.

FYI

Why would I ever use this? Commonly, Generate Footer Row is used to aid data reviewers executing a Grooper Review step. It can be an "at-a-glance" way to verify if the numbers Grooper collects for a column add up correctly. This can help catch: OCR errors for that column. Mistakes on the source document, such as an improperly listed total value. Less commonly, the footer data may be exported during the Export step. The footer row is collected and stored as a special footer instance in the Data Table's extracted data (saved in each document's "Grooper.DocumentData.json" file). Certain Export Formats, such as XML Metadata and JSON Metadata, will include this footer instance as part of the data in the exported file. Be aware, Data Export will not export the footer instance to a database table.

Enable Generate Footer Row

To create a footer row using Generate Footer Row you first must enable the property.

1. Select the Data Table.
2. Turn the Generate Footer Row property to True.
3. After saving these changes to the Data Table, you will see a blank footer row in the "Preview" panel.

FYI: Generate Footer Row can be used in conjunction with any Extract Method.

Enable footer calculation for Data Columns

After enabling Generate Footer Row, you must choose which Data Columns will have their values totaled in the footer row. To do this, you will select the Data Column and turn the Footer Mode property to Calculate.

4. Select the Data Column.
   • In our case, we want to calculate the total of the "Salary" column.
5. Ensure the Value Type is set to a numerical type.
   • Footer rows will only calculate totals for numerical data. Grooper can add numbers together. It can't add strings together!
6. Change the Footer Mode to Calculate.
   • BE AWARE: This property will not appear unless the Value Type is numerical. This property will not be visible when the Value Type is String.
   • BE AWARE: Using Generate Footer Row, the only valid choices are Disabled or Calculate.

7. Test the Data Table's extraction to verify results.
8. Navigate to the "Tester" tab.
9. Select a document and hit the "Test" button.
10. Upon extraction, Data Columns whose Footer Mode is Calculate will be totaled in the footer row.

FYI	Generate Footer Row will always create the footer row, whether or not there is one on the document. Nothing is actually being extracted from the document to populate the footer value. Instead, Grooper is just adding up each of the previously extracted values for the Data Column.

How to use Capture Footer Row

FYI

The big difference between Capture Footer Row and Generate Footer Row is this: Capture Footer Row obtains the footer row by extracting data from the document, whereas Generate Footer Row does not (It adds up data previously extracted). Despite this difference, there is no difference in how the data Grooper collects for the Data Table is exported by the Export activity.