Digitization and AI-Powered Processing of Incoming Mail
Learn in this article how medium-sized businesses can embark on the path to the paperless office using PowerAutomate and Azure AI Document Intelligence...
Digitization and AI-Powered Processing of Incoming Mail
Learn in this article how medium-sized businesses can embark on the path to the paperless office using PowerAutomate and Azure AI Document Intelligence. The described approach is ideal for automated processing of scanned documents in both analog and digital mail inboxes.
Efficient Digitization of the Mail Inbox
Scanned documents are uploaded directly from multifunction devices or document scanners from manufacturers Epson and Brother to OneDrive or SharePoint Online. To make the PDFs searchable, services like Epson Connect or Brother Web Connect can be used.
The automated analysis of these documents using AI enables the recognition of the following information:
- Creation or composition date
- Name of the sender
- Name of the recipient in the address area
Regardless of the number of pages, only the first page is analyzed to keep costs low and increase processing speed. For machine-generated documents, the AI recognition rate is nearly 100%.
The recognized information is used as follows:
- The document’s composition date is used in the YYYY-MM-DD format for the filename.
- The sender’s name is also integrated into the filename.
- The recipient is assigned to a keyword via a mapping table, which serves as metadata for document routing.
Azure AI Document Intelligence serves as the technical AI service in this scenario and analyzes the documents based on Microsoft’s AI model “Invoice”.
The service is called via a workflow (Cloud Flow) in PowerAutomate, which is automatically triggered when a scanned document is placed in a monitored inbox folder. Digitally transmitted incoming mail can also be deposited here.
With PowerAutomate, use is possible without a Premium license.
Azure AI Document Intelligence offers a free tier for up to 500 pages per month with a maximum file size of 4 MB, which corresponds to approximately 500 letters. This allows you to do without paid add-ons like SharePoint Syntex or AI Builder.
Further Information: Price tiers in Azure AI Document Intelligence