Every card your team scans is read the moment its photograph reaches the server: name, designation, company, every mobile and phone, every email, website, GSTIN, the whole address with its city, state, PIN code and country, the services the firm offers, and anything else printed on it. When an AI model is available it does the reading, which copes far better with coloured, glossy, foiled and two-language cards. When none is, the built-in reader on our own server reads it.
A QR code on the card is read as well, by our server, whichever reader reads the rest: a vCard in it is the person’s own details, exactly.
Which reader reads a card
- Your own key, when you have added one in Settings › AI writing › Your own AI account and chosen a model for Reading business cards. Your provider bills you directly.
- The AI included with your workspace, otherwise, when it is offered to your business.
- The built-in reader, when neither is available, or when the model does not answer in time or cannot read the card. A card is never left unread because a model failed.
Both sides are read together when the back was photographed, and a back added later on the card page is read with the front again. A model chosen for cards is separate from the ones that write email, so a business can use a fast, low-cost model for cards and a careful one for replies.
The reader on our own server
It reads each card three ways (as photographed, in grey, and as a negative for white print on a dark card) and keeps the best reading of each part, splits two printed columns apart, takes the firm from the line that spells its own email or website domain, and takes the whole address around its PIN code. A guess it is not sure of is not filled in.
Switching it off
Settings › AI writing › Reading business cards has one switch, Read business cards with AI, on unless you turn it off. With it off, or with no model available, card photographs never leave our server. The line under the switch says which reader your cards use right now.
Nothing is filed without a person. Whichever reader read it, every card waits in Review. Anything the reader was not sure of is underlined in amber, and anything it could not read is left blank rather than guessed.
What is sent
Only the card’s photographs, turned the right way up and reduced to a size a model reads well, with an instruction to copy what is printed. Nothing else about your business or the person is sent.
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.