Smart Metadata for Purchase Order Number

Question

Hi all, 
 
 Currently, we are working on the smart metadata feature for purchase order document. In this scenario, we will be the supplier. Therefore, we will be receiving PO from various clients which will be using different template. 
 
 Let say we create a property definition with a type "text" for PO number. Would it be possible for us to train the model so it will identify the PO number from various template? 
 The format would be different for each client. For instance, PO 1234, 111223444, PO-122244, PO1235... 
 
 Can this be done in M-Files smart metadata? Or is it technically impossible?

Joonas Linkola · Answer

Smart Metadata learns to extract values based on the context in which they appear in the documents, so the more similar the different incoming documents are the higher the probability that the correct value can be extracted. You would need to test this with real documents to find out for sure if it works in all cases. 
 However, if the PO numbers always follow a certain pattern, for instance if they always have "PO" in the beginning, then you might want to use Text Analytics instead since it can detect such patterns in the content more reliably.