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Document ingestion

Rossum.ai specializes in (transactional) document processing and provides a simple way to ingest documents into Rossum. In this section, we will learn how to ingest documents into Rossum using Rossum.ai's intelligent email mailbox.

note

Ingesting documents via email is not the only way. You can also use:

The most favorite way is email ingestion, however.

Emails and queues in Rossum​

Documents in Rossum can be organized into queues, which are "folders" with their own email address. Each queue can then be organized in a "workspace" for better orientation. The overall structure is as follows:

         Rossum.ai Organization
+---------------------------------------+
|                                       |
|             Workspace(s)              |
|         +-------------------+         |
|         |                   |         |
|         |      Queue 1      |         |
|         |   +-----------+   |         |
|         |   | Mailbox 1 |   |         |
|         |   +-----------+   |         |
|         |                   |         |
|         |      Queue 2      |         |
|         |   +-----------+   |         |
|         |   | Mailbox 2 |   |         |
|         |   +-----------+   |         |
|         +-------------------+         |
+---------------------------------------+

Each queue has its own email address which can be found by opening the relevant queue and clicking either on Upload button or by going to queue settings and clicking on Emails tab.

note

Technically, there can also be queues without the email address. In case this happens and it is not desirable, please contact your Rossum representative or [email protected].

The typical format of queue emails is composed of the project name (email prefix) and a security hash:

[email protected]

<Email prefix>-<Security hash>@elis.rossum.ai

You can set the prefix of your email inbox in queue settings. Rossum will append a security hash after the prefix in order to create a hard to detect email address. Easily predictable addresses could be exploited by potential attackers for sending fake documents. Moreover, the hash helps to differentiate emails for each queue.

Submitting documents to Rossum via email​

Submitting documents to Rossum via email is as simple as attaching the relevant files and sending the email. Typically, customers would create a forward rule in their email client or provide the Rossum email address to their suppliers.

Default supported file formats are PDF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, XLSX/XLS, DOCX/DOC and ZIP. Maximum supported file size is 40 MB (this limit applies also to the uncompressed size of the files within a .zip archive). With the help of Rossum representative, you can also submit structured formats such as XML and JSON.

Each attached file is then processed separately (in parallel) and a reference to the original email is kept.

tip

It might be necessary to also ingest the email body in some scenarios. By default, email bodies are ignored. They can however be converted to a PDF file for processing. For more information please visit the Email body converter page.