What Are Channels?
Understand channels — the building blocks of how Doculent processes your documents.
What Are Channels?
Channels are the heart of how Doculent organizes document processing. If you only learn one concept in Doculent, make it this one.
The Simple Explanation
A channel is a processing pipeline for your documents. Think of it like a mailbox with a brain — it receives documents, knows what to do with them, and delivers the results where you need them.
Here's an analogy: imagine you run an insurance office with two desks. One desk handles new business submissions, and another handles renewal applications. Each desk has its own intake tray, its own checklist of what to look for, and its own place to put the finished results.
That's exactly what channels do in Doculent. Each channel can have:
- Its own email address for receiving documents
- Its own rules for what to accept or reject
- Its own extraction settings for what data to pull out
- Its own delivery destination for where results go
Why Would I Need Multiple Channels?
Here are a few real-world examples:
| Scenario | Channel setup |
|---|---|
| One team handles auto, another handles property | A channel for each line of business |
| You process docs from multiple clients | A channel per client, each with their own delivery endpoint |
| Some documents need strict validation, others don't | A "high-touch" channel with tight rules and a "standard" channel with relaxed rules |
| You want to test new settings without affecting production | A "testing" channel alongside your live one |
You can also use just one channel if your workflow is straightforward — there's no requirement to have multiple.
How Documents Flow Through a Channel
When a document enters a channel, here's the journey it takes:
Document arrives (email or upload)
↓
Classification — "What type of document is this?"
↓
Extraction — "What information does it contain?"
↓
Validation — "Does the extracted data look right?"
↓
Delivery — "Send results to the configured destination"Each of these steps is configurable per channel. You decide what types of documents to accept, which fields to extract, what quality standards to enforce, and where to send the results.
Channel Settings at a Glance
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Name & description | How you identify this channel in the dashboard |
| Email intake | The email address that feeds documents into this channel |
| Classification rules | Which document types to accept, reject, or flag for review |
| Extraction template | What fields to pull out of each document |
| Validation rules | Quality checks on extracted data |
| Delivery method | Where results go (webhook, Google Sheets) |
Next Steps
Ready to set one up? Head to Creating a Channel.
Want to fine-tune an existing channel? See Channel Settings.