So far you have created a case and then put documents into it. Real work often happens the other way round: the document arrives first, and nobody has decided what it is yet.
An email lands with three attachments. A partner posts a file through an integration. Somebody photographs a paper document. A colleague has a certificate in their hand and does not know which case it belongs to.
Document intake is the named place for that.
Why it is not just a dossier in "New"
This trips people up, so it is worth being blunt about: an inbound document is not a dossier sitting in a waiting state. It is a different thing with a different lifecycle.
The reason is measurement. A queue of things that might be work, mixed in with the queue of things that definitely are, is a queue nobody can measure. "How many open cases do we have?" stops having an answer the moment undecided files are counted among them.
Where documents come from
| Channel | What it means |
|---|---|
| An attachment on a message that reached the organisation: through the platform's address, or one of its own Mailboxes | |
| API | A direct call from another system |
| Upload | A person dropped the file on the intake strip without choosing a destination |
| Camera | A person photographed the document with Photograph, on the intake strip. In the queue's filter it counts as Scanner |
| Scanner | A page or batch from a scanning session |
Upload is the one worth explaining to your team. It exists so that somebody who does not know which process a document belongs to has somewhere to put it — instead of guessing a process and creating a dossier in the wrong place, which is considerably harder to undo.
Tell people: if you are not sure, put it in Document intake. That instruction is cheaper than the cleanup.
Who reads and who decides
What separates the channels is not technical: it is whether somebody is there.
- What arrives with nobody watching — by email or through the API — is read by the machine. It extracts the text and proposes the process and the document. It is the only chance that file has of not waiting for somebody to walk past the queue.
- What a person put there — an upload or the camera — is neither read nor classified. Whoever put it there knows where it belongs, faster and more often right than a guess, and making them wait for one would be time wasted. The row appears in the queue at once, with its selectors empty, waiting for that person.
And a dossier is created with nobody involved only when all of this holds at once: the file arrived by email or through the API; the sender is proven (an authenticated API call, a device under Authorized senders, or the address of one of the organisation's users that the mail server confirmed); the machine identified it with confidence; and the proposed process has How dossiers of this process are created set to Automatic — or to Follow the shape of the process, with a single document (chapter Your first Process). Everything else waits for a person.
The queue
Open Document intake in the areas menu. Each row is one file: where it came from, what state it is in, and three selectors — Area, Process and Document — holding its destination, proposed by the machine or still to be chosen.
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| Being read | Not waiting for anybody yet: it has just arrived, it is being read, or its dossier is being created |
| Not identified | Waiting for a person, with no process: the machine did not read it or could not place it |
| Identified | Waiting for a person, with the destination the machine proposed: it needs confirming |
| Ready to create | Waiting for a person, who has chosen the process on the row: the dossier can be created |
| Filed | It is now inside a dossier, new or existing |
| Discarded | A person decided this should not become a case |
| Failed | It could not be read or routed. The reason is recorded, and it can be retried |
Failed is a state, not an error. The reason is recorded and the document can be retried — which is what stops an integration problem becoming a log line nobody reads.
Deciding a row
Choose the Process and the Document on the row itself (the Area beside them only narrows the
list of processes). Then the row's menu (…) has five actions, each only when it makes sense:
- Create dossier — creates a dossier of the chosen process, with the file in the chosen document. It stays disabled until there is a process and, for a document collected per person, the person.
- File into dossier — puts the file into a dossier that already exists (next section).
- Preview — opens the file, to see what it is before deciding.
- Retry — only on a row that failed.
- Discard entry — marketing mail, a duplicate, something that was never a case.
A dossier created here starts in Draft, because a person decided where it goes. Only the dossiers the machine creates on its own start in New.
Who may do what, by permission: seeing the queue is View inbound documents; putting files into it is Submit inbound documents; creating a dossier from a row is Create a dossier from an arriving document; resolving the queue — putting together, discarding, retrying — is Resolve inbound documents; and filing into a dossier takes that and Update work items. The screen only shows each person what they can do.
Putting several files into one dossier
By default every file gives its own dossier. When several belong to the same case, tick them in the left-hand column and click Put into one dossier, above the grid — or drag one row onto another. At least one of the rows must have its process chosen.
Putting together creates nothing: it forms a group, One dossier with N files, shown as a row of its own, and that row is where you click Create dossier. Separate undoes the group. The attachments of a single email may arrive already together, marked Proposed automatically; the decision to create is still a person's.
Filing into a dossier that already exists
File into dossier, on the row's menu, opens File into an existing dossier: look the dossier up by number, process or area, choose the document that receives the file and click File. It needs no process chosen on the row, because the dossier carries its own. A document that is already full, or that does not take that type of file, says so before you choose it.
Uploading files yourself
The strip at the top of the queue is the way to put files into Document intake: drop them on Drop files here, pick them with Browse files, or take a photograph with Photograph. The limits — how many files at a time, the size and the accepted types — are written on the strip before you choose.
Each file is a row in the grid and appears at once, waiting for you: choose its destination on the row, as above. For one dossier, put the rows together. A file that had already arrived does not come in twice — the screen says which entry already holds it.
With a batch open, the strip also offers Load, to put the files into that batch.
Batches
Batches, in the areas menu, follows a load of documents: how many entered, how many became dossiers, where those dossiers have got to, and what needs a person. Open batch asks for a label and, if you want, an Expected Process (optional): the files of a batch with a process arrive with that destination already. Every document still gives its own dossier unless somebody puts several together. Close batch ends the load.
The mail
Four screens around e-mail, each for whoever needs to see it:
- Received mail, in the areas menu — the messages that reached this organisation by e-mail: how they were found to be its own, whether the machine could act on them alone, and where each file went.
- Authorized senders, under Admin settings — the addresses that may file documents into the organisation by e-mail without being users, such as a multifunction printer sending with its own address. Exact addresses only, never a domain. It takes the permission Manage authorized e-mail senders.
- Mailboxes, under Admin settings — connect a mailbox of the organisation's own, such as invoices@company.com, and Document intake reads the documents that arrive in it. It takes the permission Manage the organization's mailboxes.
- Inbound mail, also in the Settings menu, but only in the root organisation: every message the platform mailbox reader took, and what became of it. Quarantined messages stay in the mailbox for a person to read.
Sending the same thing twice is safe
An email connector that retries does not create duplicates. Each inbound document carries its channel and the identifier the sender gave the delivery, so a message with three attachments becomes three documents distinguished by content, and a replay of that same message adds nothing.
You will never notice this working. It is the reason nobody has to clean up after a retry.
What you should have now
- At least one document in the queue.
- One routed into a dossier, so you have seen the join between this chapter and the last one.
- Your team told the one rule that matters: when in doubt, Document intake.