topic RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name in Product Forum

How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

SwatiAgrawal — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 06:36:00 GMT

Hi,
Please suggest what formula/calculation should I put in to split full name into forename & family name.
Eg: I have a data item with name - Swati Agrawal. Then how can I split this so that I get one data item as "Swati" and other data item as "Agrawal". In short, how do I split full name into forename & family name.

Looking forward to your help.
Thanks.

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Swati Agrawal
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

John__Carter — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 09:45:00 GMT

One way is to use the InStr function to find the position of the space, then use the Mid function to extract the text on either side of that position. The Utility - String VBO also has a Split function. There are also thousands of examples of string manipulation online,

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John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

SwatiAgrawal — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:27:00 GMT

Can you show me through screenshots how to do this? I am relativey new to Blueprism. Hence, lost in between of a bot 😞

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Swati Agrawal
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

ManojSivasankar — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 15:33:00 GMT

Hi Swati
I'm using the below expression in the calculation to collect the first part of a string which is having a space.
Mid(Trim([Data Item]),1,InStr(Trim([Data Item])," ")-1)

Actual Formula:
Mid(Value, Start Position, End Position), here we have to find the end position by finding the space (" ") in the stored value. Given -1 to remove the additional space which will be in the output.

Hope this helps.

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[Manoj] [S]
[Principal Consultant]
[Infosys]
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

Ben.Lyons1 — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 09:09:00 GMT

Hi Swati,

There's a really useful function in the "Utility - Strings" VBO for cases such as this. You can split strings of text by a particular character, which in this case would be a space.

The action is called "Split Text" and more information on how to use it can be found by clicking the little blue "i".

Thanks

Ben

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Ben Lyons
Product Consultant
Blue Prism
UK
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

ChakkravarthiPR — Mon, 23 May 2022 07:35:00 GMT

Hi John,

How do we split the text without space?

For Example:
Text: MichaelHolding

Where,
FirstName: Michael
Last Name: Holding

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Chakkravarthi PR
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 23 May 2022 07:49:00 GMT

Hi,

There must be some logic or a rule defined first for even a digital worker to know what a first name and what a last name is. In your case, how will any digital worker know that without any separator in between ?

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

ChakkravarthiPR — Mon, 23 May 2022 08:00:00 GMT

Thanks for the swift reply Dev,

Actually, the data that I have is being extracted from PDF and that is saved as a text file and we perform sting manipulation in that,
this is the PDF text fields and after saving it as a text file

We got the logic to find the string between first name and last name, but how do we separate it as FIRST and LAST name respectively?

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Chakkravarthi PR
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 23 May 2022 08:07:00 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for sharing the overall picture with us. I think the issue here is if you via this extraction route, you won't be able to really build any logic to separate first name and last name since there is practically no identifiers here as well to distinguish between the two sections. Perhaps, the way you have been extracting the text from PDF is probably what is causing this weird formatting which is going to impact the further logic.

Can you tell us what kind of PDF extraction method or which specific action have you used to get the text from PDF file?

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

ChakkravarthiPR — Mon, 23 May 2022 08:22:00 GMT

Hi,

PDF- Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.
we are considering PDF as a text (Save As Other) and then saving it to a TEXT data item(performing data extraction over that).

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Chakkravarthi PR
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 23 May 2022 12:22:00 GMT

Hi,

Can you confirm once if you are using the following asset from DX Exchange: Blue Prism PDF Tool Kit

If yes, then can you try to use the below action within it and show me exactly what kind of an output you are getting?

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

ChakkravarthiPR — Mon, 23 May 2022 12:29:00 GMT

Hi,

We tried using this methodology but with no luck, because our PDF has checkboxes, the asset was not providing us the necessary outputs so we switched to the basic stuff of considering it as a text file(able to recognize checkboxes as a key-value pair) and performing data extractions.

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Chakkravarthi PR
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 23 May 2022 12:39:00 GMT

Hi,

Well you guys can try one approach at this point, keep the original way that you guys are using for identifying the checkboxes but at the same time if this approach is giving you the proper formatted first name and last name then use this piece of code for identifying this section of PDF.

You can employ a mixed strategy of using both the ways to get the desirable output because your current approach of text extraction won't work for separating the first name and last name.

I would suggest you verify the results of this VBO for the section we are concerned with and let me know if that is giving us a formatted first name and last name or not.

Other options can be to try other VBO's for extracting the text from PDF such as the iTextSharp one or by employing a python script to get the data but I would suggest lets first try the above approach and see if we get the formatted text or not.

------------------------------
----------------------------------
Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

ChakkravarthiPR — Mon, 23 May 2022 13:55:00 GMT

Hi,

If we are going with the first approach, which Adobe version do we need to use( we have Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, not Adobe DC PRO).
The inputs for the PDFtoWord have 3 inputs were in which are aware of the PDF File path and Docx Output Path but what is the Credentials file path, could you please give us a brief with any SS that will be really helpful!.

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Chakkravarthi PR
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RE: How to split one name (full name) into forename & family name

VikrantSharma — Wed, 25 May 2022 12:07:00 GMT

Hi Chakkravarthi,

Per your requirement for splitting text without space, you can achieve it using Regular Expressions. Please refer to the solution below:

Use 'Extract Regex Values' action from Utility - Strings VBO.
The action asks for 3 input parameters : Regex Pattern(Text), Target String (Text) and Named Values (Collection). I've created the respective data items for all the 3 parameters.
Use this as Regex Pattern : (?<FirstName>[A-Z][a-z]+){1}(?<LastName>[A-Z][a-z]+){1}
Input String is the text you want to split without spaces. I've used my name VikrantSharma in this case.
For Named Values, create a collection and define it with two text type fields : 'Name' and 'Value'
And create two initial values as below:
Assign 'Named Values' collection to the action output and Run the action. You'll have your output with the First name and Last name like below.
Now you can extract first name and Last name by either using Filter Collection in default Collection Manipulation VBO or using a loop like below:
In the Loop , just check if 'Named Values.Name' is First Name. If yes, assign 'Named Values.Value' in 'Yes' path of the decision for First Name and if no, then same expression for 'No' path for Last Name.

Note: Please make sure that the input text is constant, i.e., First name and Last name should start with an Uppercase letter without any spaces and in case there are 3 uppercase letters in your string, only first two Uppercase sets will be considered.

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Vikrant Sharma
Senior Solution Designer
Blue Prism
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