User Exits and the Editing Cycle

The following procedure outlines the post-scan editing process. It shows when user exits occur in relation to other events during editing, and it lists some actions you can cause with the user exit. The diagram at the end of this topic summarizes the editing actions and where user exits can occur.

1. Start the Scoring Process by doing one of the following:

• clicking Actions...Edit on the Main Window Menu bar
• clicking the Edit button in the Action Bar
• pressing F3.

The Edit process can also be started using the /Editcommand line parameter with a context file when starting ScanTools software.

2. ScanTools software opens the data file (or files if Double Key Verify special edit mode is being used) to be used during the edit, and application and edit profile document structures.
3. Edit Setup user exit is called permitting the programmer to change the edit screen title, and allowing the Edit User Exit shell code to pick up the document structures and Edit Pass to determine if special editing is to be carried out. Also, possibly to allow chaining of an additional Edit User Exit.
4. Edit Batch Entry user exit is called permitting the programmer to allocate/initialize any global storage or other resources to be used during editing.
5. ScanTools software checks the data file to be edited to locate a failing document and prepares the document record data buffer for presentation to the Edit User Exit, or the user, if the Edit User Exit is not present.
6. Document Entry user exit is called permitting the programmer to set data in the full output record prior to editing and allowing the user exit shell code to pick up a copy of the fully unedited record for use by the user exit and optionally, if the Double Key Verify Special Edit Mode is being used, to pick up the fully edited records from previous edit passes.
7. ScanTools software checks the data for the document to locate a failing field and prepares the field data buffer and edit error prompt string for presentation to the Edit User Exit, or the User, if the Edit User Exit is not present.
8. Field Entry user exit is called permitting the programmer to modify the field’s data or edit failure prompt, or do special verification of the field’s data and signal the Edit code to not present this field to the User (skip the field) prior to anything being changed on the Edit screen. It also permits the programmer to signal to ScanTools to update the Edit screen and return to this user exit.

If the field Entry Edit user exit indicates the Edit screen should be updated, the Edit screen is updated with the field data, edit error prompt, and image clip (Image Scanner Only) for the field and ScanTools returns to step 8.

9. ScanTools software updates the field’s data and edit error prompt if the Field Entry user exit indicates for new data to be placed in these values.

If the Field Entry user exit indicates the field should not be presented to the User (skipped), the editing process goes to step 13.

10. ScanTools software shows the field’s data, and edit error prompt, and image clip (for Image Scanner Implementation Only) on the Edit screen.
11. The user then edits the field data.
12. ScanTools software updates the memory copy of the document’s data with the user’s input from the Edit screen.
13. Field Exit user exit is called permitting the programmer to carry out special verification of the field’s edited data and force the field to be re-edited, or to force data into the field after it has been edited (for example a translation of the data entered by the user). This "forced" data will be placed in the document’s data record in memory, if the field is not to be re-edited or, will be presented to the user, if is to be re-edited.
14. ScanTools software updates the field’s data and edit error prompt if the field exit user exit indicates for new data to be placed in these values.

If the Field Exit user exit indicates the field needs to be re-edited, the edit process goes to step 8.

If there are more failing fields to be edited, the edit process goes to step 7.

15. Document Exit user exit is called permitting the programmer to carry out special verification of the full document’s edited data and force the document to be re-edited, if this verification fails. The field on which to start when the re-edit occurs can be set by the programmer in this case. It also allows the programmer to modify the data in any desired portion of the full data record. This modified data record will be written to the document’s data record on disk, if re-editing is not required, or will be presented to the user, if re-editing is required.

If the Document Exit User Exit indicates the field needs to be re-edited, the edit process goes to step 8 with the field on which to start the re-edit set to the field selected by Document Exit User Exit.

16. ScanTools software writes the edit data for the document to disk.

If there are any more ebdit failing documents to be edited, the edit process goes to step 5.

17. Batch Exit user exit is called permitting the programmer to do any necessary cleanup including freeing any resources allocated during batch entry.

The ScanTools edit process terminates at this point and the user is sent back to the main ScanTools screen, or ScanTools terminates if it was started with the /edit command line parameter.

Edit Errors and Edit User Exit Sequence

Because all Edit errors (such a corrupted or inaccessible data file or image clip file (for Image Scanner Implementation Only), or memory allocation errors) are always fatal, all edit errors stop the editing process at the point where it fails and causes no additional Edit User Exits.

ScanTools Edit User Exit Process Flow

This section provides a graphical illustration of the ScanTools Edit Operation as it relates to the available Edit exit point functions: