Monarch is a data capture tool created by “Datawatch”. It is an extremely powerful piece of software designed to capture data from print image file formats, which generally have peculiar formatting. This tool acts as an additional layer on top of data transformation as needed to ensure correct data capture from the raw data files. A few distinct features of Monarch are listed below:
1. Intuitive Interface – Figuring out how to go about isolating issues in the raw data files or identifying patterns is the most challenging aspect of the data capture. The user interface plays a very critical role here. For most tools, the documentation in the help sections are not very useful. However, in Monarch the documentation helps users to quickly grasp the interface on the tools and how it is meant to be used. For added measure, the designers have laid out the interface in the Microsoft Office ribbon format. This makes things more familiar for users.
2. Flexibility – Monarch is anything flexible. It allows users to work with text files, .pdf files, which can then be converted to a variety of formats. The captured data can be extracted, depending on how the data transformation steps are defined in a project. File formats like, simple text, delimited text, MS Access, MS Excel are all supported. This makes it very convenient to import the capture into any project very easily.
3. Accuracy – Although this feature forms a part of the interface itself, but it certainly merits a separate mention. Monarch provides ways to check if all the data is captures as per criteria. For instance, while defining the traps to capture data lines, varied colours are displayed to highlight the relevant section. This allows users to modify the trap criteria as relevant. Also, once all criteria are in place it allows for a check on the entire file (by clicking the ‘verify’ button in the ribbon). This is an extremely powerful feature because it goes through the entire file and is able to point out every single unexpected data capture as per the criteria put in place by the user. To take it further, it allows changes to be made on the fly to adjust the criteria.