Inbox

An inbox is an intake address that belongs to no workflow. Documents reach it by email or by upload, are parsed for their page count, and then wait as Unassigned until someone assigns them to a workflow, unless a routing rule matches them and assigns them for you. Arrival charges the ingestion credit of 1 credit per page. Nothing runs on arrival: an inbox never starts a run by itself, so no workflow step is billed and no output node fires until a document has been assigned and released. Use an inbox when documents arrive before anyone knows which workflow should process them: a shared address that suppliers, scanners or forwarding rules send to, where a person sorts what came in and routing rules sort what you can describe: the senders you already know, or the kind of document you expect.

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Create an inbox

1. Open Inbox in the navigation, choose Unassigned, and click New Inbox.
2. Enter a Name and click Create Inbox.

The dialog then shows the inbox’s email address with a copy button. An inbox belongs to the environment you are working in (Development or Production): its name must be unique within the workspace and environment, and its documents can only be assigned to workflows in that same environment. Every other setting starts at its default: a 30-day expiry, PDF as the only accepted format, a 25 MB size cap, no allowed-senders list, and sender authentication required. Change them from Edit once the inbox exists (see Intake rules).

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The address

Each inbox has one email address, minted when the inbox is created. It has a short environment prefix, the marker -in-, an eight-character token, and the inbound domain, for example p-in-3f9a1c2e@inbound.ingestly.ai. The -in- marker is what tells an inbox address apart from a workflow’s own email address. The address never changes and cannot be edited. Senders and forwarding rules are pointed at it, so it is fixed for the life of the inbox. To stop mail arriving, disable the inbox rather than looking for a way to change the address. Copy the address from the Unassigned list (the copy button beside it in the Address column) or from the confirmation shown when the inbox was created, and hand it to whoever sends you documents: a supplier, a scanner, or an email forwarding rule.

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The inbox list

Unassigned under Inbox in the navigation lists every inbox in the workspace: its Name, its Address with a copy button, the number of Unassigned documents waiting in it, its Expiry in days, and its Status (Active or Disabled). Click a name to open that inbox. The row menu offers Open, Edit and Delete. Documents that have already been assigned are not counted here. They wait under Held, in the inbox they arrived at; see Held documents. The list updates live: once a document that arrived at any inbox has been parsed, that inbox’s unassigned count changes without a refresh.

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Documents in an inbox

Open an inbox from Unassigned to see every document received at its address or uploaded into it that has not been assigned to a workflow. Each row shows the Document Name, its Status, who it was Received from, the email Subject, when it was Received, its Size, its Pages, and when it Expires. You can filter by name, status, sender, subject and received date. Received from is the sender’s address for an emailed document. For a document uploaded from the UI it is the user who uploaded it, because an upload has no sender. A document in an inbox is in one of four statuses: Only Unassigned documents can be assigned. A document that is still Processing cannot be deleted until the parse finishes. The list is live: once a document has been parsed, whether it settled as Unassigned or as Failed, its row appears or changes without a refresh. Parsing takes seconds. A failed parse also raises a toast with the reason.

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Upload into an inbox

Click Upload in the inbox header. The inbox’s accepted formats and size cap apply to uploads exactly as they apply to email attachments, so a document the inbox would bounce by mail is refused as an upload too. Upload is unavailable while the inbox is disabled.

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Send email to an inbox

Send or forward an email with attachments to the inbox’s address. Each attachment becomes a separate document. Attachments in a format the inbox does not accept are dropped, and the message is rejected if none remain. A message with any attachment over the size cap is rejected as a whole. The email body is not processed. Mail that is rejected raises a notification in the Inbox category with the reason: the sender is not on the allowed list, the sender could not be authenticated, the message has no attachments, no attachment is in an accepted format, an attachment is too large, an attachment’s content does not match the format its name claims, or the inbox is disabled. Turn the Inbox category off under Settings > Notifications if you do not want these.

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Intake rules

Open Edit from the inbox header or from the row menu on the Unassigned list. The Edit Inbox dialog holds every setting except the address. Click Save Changes to apply.

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Allowed senders and authentication

A domain pattern matches that domain exactly and does not cover subdomains: @example.com admits billing@example.com but not billing@mail.example.com. Add each subdomain you expect as its own entry. Matching is case-insensitive. Require sender authentication accepts a message only when the mail provider reports an SPF pass or a DKIM pass for it. It is on by default. While the Allowed Senders list has at least one entry the switch is locked on and cannot be turned off, because an allowlist without authentication can be defeated by forging the From address. The same rule is enforced when the inbox is saved. The lock releases as soon as the list is emptied. An allowlist is a filter, not proof of who sent a message: a DKIM pass is not tied to the address you listed, so a sender who signs their own mail can still claim a listed address. Treat the list as a way to narrow which mail arrives, not as authentication of the sender. The email trigger carries the same three controls with the same meanings, with one difference: an email trigger requires at least one accepted format, while an inbox with an empty Accepted Formats list accepts every supported format.

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Disable an inbox

Turn on Disabled in Edit Inbox and save. A disabled inbox refuses every email and every upload: rejected mail raises a notification, and Upload in the inbox header is unavailable with the reason shown. Documents already in the inbox stay there and can still be assigned or deleted. Turn Disabled off to resume intake. Mail sent while the inbox is disabled is refused in a way that lets the sending service retry, so a message sent shortly before you re-enable the inbox may still arrive.

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Assign a document to a workflow

Assigning gives an unassigned document a workflow and the trigger it enters through. It does not start a run. Documents a routing rule matches can be assigned for you instead; see Route documents automatically. After assignment the document is Held on that trigger and appears under Held, in the inbox it arrived at, where you release it exactly like any other held document (see Held documents). Keeping the two steps apart lets you sort a batch of arrivals first and run them when you are ready, and lets one person assign while another decides what to run.

1. Open the inbox and choose Assign to Workflow from a row menu. To assign several at once, select the rows and click Assign (shown with the count) in the action bar; the confirmation says how many of the selected documents are unassigned and warns that the rest will be left out.
2. In the Assign to Workflow dialog, pick a Workflow. Sections are not offered, because they are entered by a call rather than by intake. A paused workflow is listed as (Paused) and cannot be chosen.
3. The dialog resolves the trigger from how the document arrived: an emailed document enters through an Email trigger and an uploaded one through an Upload trigger.
   • If the workflow has exactly one trigger of that kind, it is selected for you and shown read-only.
   • If it has several, choose one under Trigger. They can declare different accepted formats and size caps, so the choice is yours rather than guessed.
   • If it has none, the reason is shown (for example “This workflow has no Email trigger.”) and the dialog cannot be submitted. Pick a different workflow.
4. Click Assign (or Assign N Documents).

The server then checks each document against the chosen trigger’s own Accepted formats and Max document size, as if the document had arrived through that trigger directly. A document the trigger would not have accepted is refused with the reason shown beside it in the dialog. A bulk assignment reports per document: the rows that were assigned leave the inbox, the rows that were refused stay in the dialog with their reasons, and submitting again sends only those. A bulk selection that mixes emailed and uploaded documents can be assigned in one go only when the workflow has exactly one Email trigger and exactly one Upload trigger. Otherwise select documents that arrived the same way and assign them separately. Once assigned, the document keeps a record of which inbox it came from, but it belongs to the workflow: it appears on the workflow’s documents list and under Held, in the inbox it came from, and the inbox’s expiry no longer applies to it.

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Route documents automatically

A routing rule assigns documents that arrive in the inbox for you, whether emailed or uploaded. Each inbox keeps an ordered list of rules, and each rule names a workflow and the conditions a document must meet. When a document has arrived and been parsed, the inbox walks its enabled rules in order, and the first rule whose conditions all match assigns the document to that rule’s workflow. The document is then Held on the workflow’s Email trigger (an uploaded document on its Upload trigger), exactly as if a person had assigned it: it appears under Held, in the inbox it arrived at, no run starts, and no workflow step is billed until someone releases it (see Held documents). A document that matches no rule stays Unassigned for a person to sort. Click Routing in the inbox header to open Edit Routing Rules. Each rule has: Drag rules to change their order, then click Save Changes. The list is saved as a whole.

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Conditions

A condition names a field, an operator and its values. Document like routes by what a document is rather than where it came from, without writing a description. A rule holds one sample document: a document you point at that says “documents like this match”. A document matches when AI judges it to be the same kind of document from the same issuer as the sample: a Sunfire invoice matches a Sunfire invoice, while a Sunfire purchase order or an Acme invoice does not. Different numbers, dates, amounts and line items do not matter, so one sample is enough; for another issuer or another kind of document, add another rule. Word similarity first narrows the samples worth comparing, so a document that shares almost no words with any sample is not compared at all. When AI is unavailable, routing falls back to word similarity alone: the document matches when its words are close enough to a sample’s. Add the sample from the rule with Add Sample: Pick Documents chooses a document already waiting in this inbox, and Upload Files uploads one file only to read it as the sample. An uploaded file never appears in the inbox and is never assigned; once its text is read, the file is deleted and only the text is kept. Once a rule has its sample, Add Sample is no longer offered; remove the sample to use another. Changing or removing a rule’s Document like condition deletes its sample when you click Save Changes. If a rule keeps taking the wrong documents, replace its sample with a more typical one. Only the text of the first pages is read, so a scanned document that never went through OCR has nothing to compare and cannot be used as a sample or matched by one. On a rule you have just added, the sample you pick or upload is listed as Saved with the rules and is added when you click Save Changes; if it cannot be added (for example, a picked document with no readable text), the rules are still saved and a message says so. Comparing a document with the samples costs no extra credits: it is part of receiving the document. A shortcut keeps the samples close to the documents: on an Unassigned document, Route Documents Like This… picks one of the inbox’s rules with a Document like condition and no sample yet (or creates a new one for a workflow) and makes the document its sample. A rule without that condition never reads a sample, and a rule that already has one cannot take another, so neither is offered. Click Test rules in Edit Routing Rules to see what the rules you are editing would do with the documents waiting in the inbox right now, before you save. The list holds the newest 100; when nothing is waiting, a message says so instead. The documents are compared with the samples the same way arriving documents are, AI included, so the preview shows what routing will really do. Each row names the rule the document would hit and why: the sender or subject that matched, the sample AI judged it the same as and how sure it was (for example “Same as ‘March invoice’ (92%)”), “Not the same as any sample” when AI found no match, “Unsure it is the same as ‘March invoice’ (64%)” when AI was not sure enough to route it, or, when AI was unavailable, the sample it reads like by word similarity and its score (for example “Like ‘March invoice’ at 0.81”). When nothing matched, a row can also name the nearest sample and its score, or say “No readable text” for a document with nothing to compare. A rule you have not saved yet has no sample to compare, since its sample is read after you save, so the preview says so for it unless a saved rule came closer. An uploaded document is routed too, but it has no sender and no subject, so a rule with a Sender or Subject condition never matches it; only a rule whose conditions are all Document like can. A routed upload enters the workflow through its Upload trigger, so that workflow needs exactly one Upload trigger; with none or several, the document stays Unassigned and a notification says why.

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When the workflow cannot take the document

The rule’s workflow is checked when the document arrives, the same way an assignment by hand is checked: the workflow must not be paused, and the trigger the document enters through must accept its format and size. If it refuses, the document stays Unassigned in the inbox and a notification in the Inbox category names the rule, the inbox, the workflow and the reason. Later rules are not tried, because the rule did match and quietly sending the document to a different workflow is the surprise routing exists to avoid. Fix the workflow or the rule; the document is still in the inbox to be assigned by hand. The notification is raised once per rule and reason each day, so a paused workflow that receives a batch does not raise one notice per document. Rules apply to new arrivals only. Adding or changing a rule does not touch documents already waiting in the inbox; assign those by hand.

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Expiry and retention

Two different clocks govern a document, depending on whether it has been assigned.

• Unassigned: the document expires the inbox’s Expiry (Days) after it arrived, counted from arrival, not from any later action. The Expires column shows the date. Shortening an inbox’s expiry moves the deadline for every document already waiting in it; lengthening it extends them.
• Assigned: the workflow’s own retention period governs instead, again counted from when the document arrived. The inbox expiry no longer applies, and the Expires date shown in the inbox is gone because the document has left the inbox.

A Failed document in an inbox expires on the same clock as an unassigned one. Documents still Processing are exempt from the sweep, because a parse may still be reading them. Nothing else is.

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Delete a document or an inbox

• One document: choose Delete from its row menu. The document is removed and never processed.
• Several: select the rows and click Delete in the action bar. Documents that are still being parsed are left out.
• The inbox: choose Delete from its row menu on the Unassigned list. This permanently deletes the inbox and every document still waiting in it. Documents that were already assigned to a workflow are not touched: they belong to the workflow now and stay in it. Their link to the deleted inbox goes with it, so any of them still held leave Held and appear under Workflows, beneath their workflow.

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Held documents

A held document already belongs to a workflow and is waiting for you to run it. The ingestion credit was charged when the document arrived; until you run it, no workflow step is billed and no output node fires. A document is held for one of two reasons, and the reason decides where you find it:

• Assigned from an inbox, by hand or by a routing rule. It keeps a record of its inbox, and it waits under Held, in that inbox.
• Received by a workflow trigger that has Run automatically turned off. It never went through an inbox, so it waits under Workflows, beneath that workflow.

Held and Workflows list only the inboxes and workflows that are holding something, each with its count. An inbox or a workflow that holds nothing does not appear.

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Hold documents on a trigger

1. Open the workflow in the builder and select its Upload, Email or Webhook trigger.
2. Turn off Run automatically.
3. Save and activate the workflow.

From then on, every document that trigger receives is marked Held and appears under Workflows, beneath its workflow. Turning the setting back on affects new documents only: documents already held stay there until you run them, delete them, or their workflow’s retention window removes them. The Forward and Sub-workflow triggers have no such setting. A forwarded or called document always runs.

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Run held documents

Open Inbox in the navigation, then Held for a document that was assigned from an inbox, or Workflows for one a workflow’s own trigger is holding. Choose the inbox or the workflow to open its held documents. Each row shows the document, its size, its page count and when it arrived. The list is already scoped to what you opened, so that inbox or workflow is not repeated as a column. Under Held, each row also shows the Workflow the document is assigned to, and you can filter on it, because one inbox’s documents can be assigned to different workflows. The Routed by column shows the rule that assigned a routed document; a document a person assigned reads “Assigned by hand”, and so does one whose routing rule was later deleted.

• Run one document: open the row menu and choose Run.
• Run several: select the rows and choose Run selected. One request accepts up to 1,000 documents.

Either way, a confirmation reminds you that the run may consume credits and that output nodes send real requests and emails. Runs start on the workflow’s current version. A document leaves the list as soon as it is queued, and you can follow it on the Runs page. You can also run held documents from the workflow itself: select them on the workflow’s Documents tab and choose Run in the action bar, beside Export and Delete. A document that cannot be queued, for example because its workflow is paused, stays held and the reason is shown in a notification.

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Remove without running

Select the rows and choose Delete, or use Delete in a row menu. The document is removed and never processed.

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Retention of held documents

A held document is not exempt from its workflow’s retention period. It ages out on the same schedule as any other document: the workflow’s own retention setting, counted from when the document arrived, not from when it was held or assigned. A workflow with a 30-day retention window deletes a held document 30 days after it arrived, whether or not you ever ran it. Only documents in Processing are exempt from retention, because a run may still be actively working on them. Held documents have no such protection.

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