Azure Document Intelligence

Azure Document Intelligence was originally released under the name Azure Form Recognizer before Microsoft rebranded the cloud service. The name change reflects its expanded capabilities beyond standard OCR to include deeper machine learning models that understand document structure.

Yes, the service uses advanced machine learning to extract text, tables, and key-value pairs from scanned documents, PDFs, and images. It can be trained on custom layouts to automatically process specific forms, such as tax documents or medical intake sheets, with high accuracy.

Yes, the service includes robust handwriting recognition capabilities, allowing it to pull both printed and cursive text from unstructured data sources. This enables automated document processing workflows for industries that still rely heavily on manually filled-out forms.

It integrates seamlessly with Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, and standard REST APIs to automate data entry pipelines. Developers can easily build workflows where an uploaded PDF is instantly read by Document Intelligence and the extracted data is pushed directly into a SQL database.