Digitisation and AI-supported processing of incoming mail

Digitisation and AI-supported processing of incoming mail

Find out in this article how SMEs can move towards a paperless office with the help of PowerAutomate and Azure AI Document Intelligence. The approach described is ideal for the automated processing of scanned documents in both analogue and digital inboxes.

Efficient digitalisation of incoming mail

Scanned documents are uploaded directly from multifunctional devices or document scanners from the manufacturers Epson and Brother to OneDrive or SharePoint Online. Services such as Epson Connect or Brother Web Connect can be used to make the PDFs searchable.

The automated analysis of these documents using AI enables the following information to be recognised:

• Creation or constitution date
• Name of the sender
• Name of the recipient in the address range

Regardless of the number of pages, only the first page is analysed in order to keep costs low and increase processing speed. For machine-generated documents, the AI's recognition rate is almost 100%.

The recognised information is used as follows:

1. The creation date of the document is used for the file name in the format YYYY-MM-DD.
2. The name of the sender is also integrated in the file name.
3. The recipient is assigned to a keyword using a mapping table, which serves as a metadata for document routing.

Azure AI Document Intelligence acts as a technical AI service in this scenario and analyses the documents based on Microsoft's AI model „Invoice”.

The service is called up via a workflow (Cloud Flow) in PowerAutomate, which is started automatically when a scanned document is filed in a monitored inbox folder. Digitally transmitted incoming mail can also be filed here.

PowerAutomate can be used without a premium licence.

Azure AI Document Intelligence offers a free usage level for up to 500 pages per month with a maximum file size of 4 MB, which corresponds to around 500 letters. This means that there is no need for paid add-ons such as SharePoint Syntex or AI Builder.

Further information:
Price levels in Azure AI Document Intelligence