What Are Workflows?

Workflows let Essal Office automatically take actions on documents when certain conditions are met. Instead of manually tagging, assigning, or processing documents one by one, you define a set of rules and Essal Office applies them in the background — without any human intervention.

Think of a workflow as: "Whenever [this happens], automatically do [these things]."

Why Use Workflows

Workflows save time on repetitive tasks and reduce human error. Common uses include:

Automatically tagging every new document from a specific correspondent
Setting the document type on all invoices as they arrive
Assigning new documents to the right team member based on the correspondent
Removing the Inbox tag once a document has been assigned a correspondent and type
Triggering a re-indexing of documents under specific conditions

How Workflows Work

A workflow consists of two parts:

Part: **Trigger**
Description: The event that starts the workflow. When does this run?

Part: **Actions**
Description: What Essal Office does when the trigger fires

When a trigger condition is met — such as a document being created — Essal Office evaluates the workflow's filter conditions and, if they match, runs the actions.

Trigger Types

Trigger: **Document created**
When it fires: When a new document first arrives in the system (via upload, email, or scanner)

Trigger: **Document updated**
When it fires: When a document's metadata changes

Trigger: **Document added to workflow**
When it fires: Manually triggered by adding a document to a specific workflow

Example Workflow

Workflow: Auto-classify Acme Supplier documents

Trigger: Document created
Filter: Correspondent is Acme Supplies
Actions:
Set document type: Invoice
Add tags: Finance, Inbox
Set owner: finance-team-lead

Any new document arriving from Acme Supplies is instantly classified with the right type, relevant tags, and assigned to the finance team lead — no manual work required.

Workflows vs. Auto-Matching

Auto-matching (on correspondents and document types) assigns a single field at a time based on text patterns. Workflows are more powerful — they can trigger multiple actions at once, apply across multiple fields, and fire based on conditions beyond text matching.

Use auto-matching for simple single-field assignments; use workflows for multi-step automation or conditional logic.