Automating document intake

No one on your team clicks upload. The work that used to mean opening an email, downloading an attachment, naming it, and filing it against the right job now happens before anyone looks. A workspace processing 200 documents a week reclaims hours that were going to busywork, and nothing sits in an inbox waiting to be noticed. For the building blocks behind this, see core concepts.

What you need and how it's shaped

You need a workspace with at least one connected integration (Gmail or Drive) for file triggers. Time triggers need none. Every automation binds one trigger to one destination tuple across three builder nodes:

• Trigger: what fires it. Gmail filters by subject contains, sender contains, label, and read status (all set filters must match, AND-logic). Drive watches a folder, filtering by filename and MIME type. Time fires when a case sits idle in a mailbox for N days (no file needed); it only moves the case (no intake) to the Destination mailbox, on a daily schedule. Case Data automations react when watched case fields change (e.g. a Calendar reminder from a bid due date). See triggers.
• Destination: the mailbox the case lands in, the file category tag (when extraction is off), and a File storage choice (Firebase / Google Drive / Both) for file triggers. A matching existing case is moved here. A file already imported from the same source is skipped automatically (there's no duplicate setting).
• Extract Data (optional): a template that runs extraction inline. Picking it auto-resolves the source and file category; the standalone category selector hides.

Delivery is push-based: Gmail pipes new-message events in via Pub/Sub, Drive uses a Changes API webhook. Matches typically appear within a minute.

Walkthrough: vendor invoices from Gmail

Your AP team forwards every vendor invoice to a Gmail label Paperwork/Invoices; you want each as a case in the AP mailbox, extracted with your AP cover sheet template.

1. In Settings → Account, turn on the Gmail toggle row and grant access in the Google sign-in.
2. Click the Automations button at the bottom of the workspace sidebar (below the mailbox list), then New Automation.
3. On the Trigger node, pick Gmail, set Gmail label to Paperwork/Invoices. Leave Capture From Email at its default Sender + Subject + Files.
4. On the Destination node, pick the AP mailbox.
5. On Extract Data, check Extract data with a template, pick the AP cover sheet template, and Done.
6. Click Save.
7. Forward a test invoice to the label. Within a minute, it appears in the AP mailbox.

TriggerGmail, label Paperwork/Invoices

DestinationAP mailbox

ExtractAP Cover Sheet template

Patterns that hold up

Use one label per process: sharing a label across automations makes debugging hard, and only one automation processes each message with no way to pick the winner on overlap, so keep filters mutually exclusive. The capture pills (Sender, Subject, Body, Files) control what's pulled in; keep Body off unless a template field reads it (bodies add noise). Test one item before pointing a high-volume label at any automation, since the first version of any automation tends to have a misconfiguration.

Troubleshooting

Stopped firing. Open the card. An amber Auto-paused chip means the system disabled it; the banner explains why, usually OAuth expired, reconnect Gmail or Connected user removed from workspace.

Matches but no case appears. Open the automation's Activity log under the canvas; the entry for that message names the failed step.

Wrong mailbox or category. The Destination node holds the mailbox; the category comes from the Extract template's linked source. Switch the template, or turn extraction off and pick a category directly.

Attachments skipped. If Files is off in the capture pills, attachments are ignored. Attachments whose MIME type isn't in the automation's File types allowlist are filtered before ingestion. If the destination's category or extraction template can't resolve at run time, ingestion is skipped on purpose: fix the missing piece and the next message goes through.

Related

• Triggers
• The action pipeline
• Managing automations
• Process an Invitation to Bid: see it in action