Document Intelligence terminology

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated January 27, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read

    • Before getting started with Document Intelligence (DocIntel), it's important to understand some key concepts used in the application.

    Important:
    Starting with the Zurich release, Document Intelligence is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer activated on new instances but will continue to be supported. For details, see the Deprecation Process article [KB0867184] in the Now Support Knowledge Base. Instead, you can extract information from documents using the Now Assist in Document Intelligence application. For more information, see Now Assist in Document Intelligence.

    Updated terminology

    As of Document Intelligence v2.3, DocIntel features include updated terminology.

    Table 1. Terminology updates
    New term Old term
    Document task Task, extraction task
    Field Key, attribute
    Field group Key group
    Field value Extracted value
    Integration Integration setup
    Recommendation Candidate, suggestion
    Fully automated Straight through processing
    Use case Task definition

    classification

    In Document Intelligence, the process of categorizing documents and document pages based on their type.

    confidence score

    A numerical value assigned to a recommendation by Document Intelligence indicating its certainty about the extracted information. The higher the score, the more reliable the recommendation.

    document class

    A field used to apply a category or label to a document and to pages within a document in Document Intelligence.

    For example, for an identity document use case, the classes might be passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, and the like.

    document task

    A document processing activity in Document Intelligence. It includes the information that you want to extract from the document or documents.

    extraction

    In Document Intelligence, the process of identifying relevant information in a document and using it as a basis for the AI to recommend a field value.

    field

    A single piece of information to extract from a document in Document Intelligence. For example, the date on a document.

    Fields are sometimes called keys or attributes.

    field group

    A group of fields that belong together in Document Intelligence. Field groups are used to extract information from lists and tables.

    For example, a group named "item" contains description, quantity, and unit price fields from a purchase order.

    field value

    The final output of the Document Intelligence application. The output contains the values for the specified fields that were extracted for a given document task.

    recommendation

    A bit of text found on a document. The recommendation includes details about its location in the document, such as the page of a document and the specific location on that page.

    The recommendations that the AI provides are sorted based on how likely the AI believes a given recommendation to be the correct value for the current field.

    unstructured document

    A document that mainly contains free-form textual information and does not conform to a specific format or structure.

    use case

    A use case is a set of configurations used to define the structure of a type of document that you want to process. It’s made up of the use case record and its related fields, field groups, integrations, flows, and all the related machine learning (ML) models. The use case also includes the mode for how the extraction should occur.