Smart Templates

Want a working capture template without drawing a single zone? Drop in one good sample page and Scanix Desktop's Smart Template wizard reads it, classifies the document, and proposes the zones, index fields, splitting strategy, and outputs for you. You review the suggestions, save, and you're ready to process. This guide walks you through it end to end.

What a Smart Template is

A Smart Template is a capture template that AI builds from one example. You give the wizard a single sample — an invoice, a passport, a receipt — and it proposes a complete template: the detected document type, suggested extraction zones, suggested index fields (the metadata columns you export), a splitting strategy, default outputs, and, when it's confident, an anchor so each zone keeps lining up even when later scans drift or rotate. You accept or reject each suggestion, rename anything inline, and save. Nothing is drawn by hand unless you want to refine it afterwards.

The AI looks at the first page only of your sample, and the exact image it analysed is stored with the template, so you can re-run the analysis later and get pixel-accurate results.

Bring your own AI

Smart Templates run on the AI engine you've configured. Cloud calls go straight from your machine to your own provider account (Anthropic or OpenAI) — Scanix is never the account holder and never sees your key or your documents. You can also run entirely on-device. See Configure AI capture.

Before you start

The wizard uses whichever AI engine is set under Settings → AI Providers → Smart Template defaults. On a fresh install this is Anthropic / Claude. You don't pick the engine inside the wizard — it's chosen once in Settings, and the wizard header shows which engine is active. Click that engine badge to jump straight to the setting.

If you've selected a cloud engine but haven't added a key for it yet, the wizard still works: it shows an amber "provider isn't configured" banner and falls back to building a template from OCR clustering alone. You'll get zones and fields, just without the AI's document classification and field smarts. To get the full experience, configure your provider first in Configure AI capture.

Build a Smart Template

Open the wizard

In the left navigation, open Templates. At the top of the list, click the first creation tile, Smart Template (subtitle "AI builds it from a sample", marked with a NEW badge). A full-screen overlay opens, titled Smart Template, with a step pill that reads Step 1 of 4 · Source.

Screenshot

The Templates page with the three creation tiles in a row — Smart Template (NEW badge, sparkle icon), Custom Builder, and Guided Wizard — the Smart Template tile highlighted. — shot ai-capture-smart-templates-01

Add your sample

On the Source step, drop a file anywhere in the window, or click Choose file…. Supported formats are PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, and BMP. A preview of the page appears, and the header shows the active AI engine.

Pick one clean, representative example of the document type. Remember the AI reads only the first page.

Analyze

Click Analyze in the footer. The wizard moves to the Analysis step and shows progress through five stages:

OCR baseline
Document classified
Fields detected
Zones aligned
Template assembled

Along the way it reports the detected document type, language, and a confidence reading.

Screenshot

The Smart Template Analysis step mid-run: the five-stage rail (OCR baseline → Document classified → Fields detected → Zones aligned → Template assembled) with the detected document type, language, and confidence shown. — shot ai-capture-smart-templates-02

Review the proposal

On the Review step, the wizard lists everything it found across two sections — Zones and Index Fields, each headed with an accepted / total count. Every suggested zone and index field has an accept/reject control: leave it accepted to keep it, reject it to drop it. You can rename any zone inline, and clicking a row highlights it on the page preview so you can see exactly what it captures.

An Apply suggestions section at the bottom carries three more toggles. By default:

Suggestion	Default state
Accepted zones and fields	All accepted — reject anything you don't want
Apply suggested splitting rule	On when the AI proposed a strategy other than "none"
Apply default output preset (Searchable PDF + JSON sidecar)	On
Use AI-proposed anchor	On only when the AI's anchor confidence is high enough

Low-confidence anchors stay off on purpose — a shaky anchor hurts more than it helps. You can always add or adjust anchoring later in the Designer.

When the proposal looks right, click Continue.

Name it, and (optionally) add it to a Job Group

On the Save step, give the template a name. A sensible default is pre-filled for you (for example, "Invoice (Smart, 2026-06-27)").

If you run mixed batches, you can attach the template to a Job Group here. The dropdown starts at (none — standalone); groups whose AI module matches the detected document type are flagged Suggested to make the right one easy to spot.

Save and open, or save and close

Finish with one of the two save buttons:

Save & Open Designer — saves the template and opens it in the Template Designer so you can refine zones, anchoring, and outputs straight away.
Save & Close — saves and returns you to the Templates list.

That's it — your template is ready to run documents through.

Handling a near-duplicate

If the new proposal closely matches a template you already have, Scanix doesn't quietly create a second copy. Instead a Near-duplicate template dialog appears with three choices:

Overwrite — replace the existing template with this one.
Save as new — keep both, saving this as a separate template.
Cancel — go back to the Save step without saving.

This keeps your Templates list tidy when you re-process similar samples.

Re-analyse an existing Smart Template

Document layouts evolve, and AI models improve. You can re-run the analysis on a Smart Template at any time using the sample that was saved with it.

In the Templates list, hover the Smart Template's card and click Re-analyse (tooltip: "Re-analyse with current AI model"). The wizard reopens with a banner letting you know that saving will overwrite the existing template's zones and fields. Because the original sample image is stored with the template, the re-analysis is pixel-accurate against the same page you started with.

Re-analysing overwrites zones and fields

Saving after a re-analysis replaces the template's existing zones and fields. If you've hand-tuned them in the Designer, weigh that against the benefit of a fresh AI pass. The Re-analyse action needs the sample image that was saved with the template; if it's missing, recreate the template through the Smart Template wizard.

Good to know

The wizard reads only the first page of your sample, so make page one representative.
Closing the wizard cancels an in-flight analysis — if you close mid-run, the analysis stops.
The backdrop doesn't dismiss the wizard. Close it deliberately with the ✕ or Cancel.
Smart Templates are still templates. After saving, everything is editable in the Designer — zones, fields, anchoring, splitting, and outputs.

Troubleshooting

The wizard shows a "provider isn't configured" banner. Your selected cloud engine has no key set up, so the wizard falls back to building a template from OCR clustering — usable, but without AI classification and field detection. Configure your provider's key, then re-run, or use Re-analyse on the saved template once the key is in place. See Configure AI capture.

A suggested zone or field is wrong. On the Review step, toggle it off or rename it inline before saving. For finer control — repositioning a zone, fixing an anchor — choose Save & Open Designer and adjust it on the canvas.

It created a second copy of an existing template. If you meant to update the original, re-run the wizard with the same sample and choose Overwrite in the Near-duplicate template dialog instead of Save as new.

I want to update zones to a newer AI model. Use the Re-analyse action on the template's card in the Templates list, then save to overwrite with the fresh suggestions.