The Forms API implements structured forms processing that conforms to a standard workflow. The components of FormSuite could be used to build a forms processing application implementing other workflows, however, the workflow that is implemented by the Forms API has been designed to satisfy a broad range of customer needs without introducing unnecessary complexity to the code.

For an image of a filled form of unknown identity ("unknown image"), the image is first acquired and then passed to the API. The processing flow of the image as it is analyzed is as follows:

1. The unknown image is optionally cleaned up, enhanced, or transformed, using ScanFix Xpress, to create an enhanced image.
2. The image is passed to an Accusoft.FormFixSdk.IdentificationProcessor to be matched to a template image from a set of forms.
3. The image is optionally aligned to the template image to create an aligned input image that may be saved.
4. Predefined fields on the image are processed in the following steps:
   1. A clip image of the field is created.
   2. The field image is optionally cleaned up, enhanced, or transformed, using ScanFix Xpress.
   3. Optionally, the field image is passed to an engine that will extract content from the image. The engine may perform optical character recognition (OCR), intelligent character recognition (ICR), or optical mark recognition (OMR.

Parallel Processing

The Forms API supports processing fields (step 4) serially or in parallel through the methods ProcessImage and ProcessImageParallel. Parallel processing can be conditionally compiled into or out of the Forms API. The compiled binary of the Forms API that is installed with the FormSuite SDK includes parallel processing and targets the .NET 4 runtime.