Automatic Document Distribution Overview

Written by Uday Kumar Updated

Who this is for. SuperAdmins, and anyone who works the queue. Applies to. AP Invoices. Access. Creating policies, rules and teams requires the TEAM_MANAGEMENT permission. See the Roles and Access Reference.

What document distribution is

Document distribution gives every incoming invoice an owner at the moment it is created. Instead of one person watching a shared mailbox and handing work out, each invoice reaches the right queue on its own. Whoever is responsible sees it in the Assignee column.

You control who gets what through a distribution policy. A policy is an ordered list of rules. One rule might send invoices from a given domain to one person. Another might send vendors whose name starts A to M to the north-east team.

The first rule whose conditions all match decides the owner. Where no rule matches, the invoice is created without an assignee.

Why use it

Document distribution is for a queue that more than one person works. It does three things.

  • Gives each invoice an owner without anyone sorting the queue by hand.

  • Spreads work across a team in turn, rather than onto whoever looks first.

  • Records every assignment in Document History, so you can see who got what and when.

Where one person handles every invoice, the assignee is always the same. Rules apply where the queue is shared, or where invoices are split by vendor, entity or region.

Where to find it

Three places matter.

Table 1. Where each part is set up

What you want to do

Where it is

Create policies and the rules inside them

Administration in the left navigation rail, then Automatic Task and Document Distribution.

Create the teams that rules assign work to

Administration, then Team Management.

Turn document distribution on

The SmartFlow itself, at Define capabilities and Document intake.

See who owns a document

The Assignee column on the AP Invoices lists.

Roles involved

Three roles appear throughout this section. A role can be granted to the user directly or inherited from their team. An inherited role shows in the Team Roles column of User Management.

Table 2. Roles this section refers to

Role

What it does with document distribution

SuperAdmin

Creates and edits policies, rules and teams. Assigns or reassigns any document to any eligible user, or sets it back to [None].

ProcureToPay Manager

Assigns or reassigns any document to any eligible user, or sets it back to [None]. Cannot create policies or teams.

ProcureToPay Agent

Picks up an unassigned document and puts it back down. Cannot hand it to someone else.

All three can receive documents. Only a user whose role covers AP Invoices can be assigned one. Eligibility is checked at the moment of assignment. That applies to a rule naming a person and to team rotation alike. For what happens when someone stops being eligible, see Working with Assigned Documents.

The parts of a policy

Table 3. What each part is

Part

What it is

Distribution policy

The container for your rules. One policy for each SmartFlow, and one SmartFlow for each policy.

Rule

A single statement of when this, then assign to that. It has a position in the order, one or more conditions, and one or more actions.

Condition

One test, made of an input attribute, an operator and a value.

Action

What happens on a match. Assign to a user or to a team, and on a task rule, set a priority.

Team

A named group of people. A rule that assigns to a team gives its members work in turn.

Rule type

Whether a rule routes documents or AP Helpdesk tasks. It matters only where the agent runs both.

What your agent runs changes what you see

One question drives almost every difference in these articles. Does the agent run AP Invoices on its own, or alongside AP Helpdesk? Read this once and the rest of the section follows.

Table 4. The two setups

What the agent runs

What the policy looks like

What the policy list shows

AP Invoices on its own

One list of rules and no tabs. Every rule routes documents, so there is no rule type to choose when you add one.

A single document rules badge.

AP Invoices with AP Helpdesk

Two tabs, Document Rules and Task Rules. Each keeps its own order and its own rule numbering, and a rule belongs to one tab.

Two badges side by side, one for each kind.

Document rules and task rules never compete. When a document is created only document rules are considered, and when a task is created only task rules are. One email that raises both produces two assignments, decided separately, so a document and a task from the same email can have different owners.

Availability

Document distribution is turned on for each SmartFlow rather than for the tenant, so one can use it while another does not. For the setting and what each choice does, see Turn On Document Distribution (Agent Co-worker) or Turn On Document Distribution (SmartFlow Skill).

It works with Workday, Oracle NetSuite, Coupa, Sage Intacct, the Universal Connector and Composite SOR sources.

Turning AP Invoices off on an agent archives its document rules rather than deleting them. They stop running while the product is off and come back when it is turned on again, so you do not have to rebuild them.

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