When someone manually force reprocesses a document and sets a different document type, that decision stands, it is remembered, and the documents that follow learn from it. A correction is not a one-off fix: it holds on the document itself, it is reapplied if the identical document is submitted again, and it teaches Docupath how to type near-identical documents exchanged between the same two trading parties.
For example, if a colleague corrects an order from a particular supplier to a particular customer from consignment order to purchase order, later orders on the same form between those two parties arrive typed as purchase orders, without anyone correcting them again.
How It Works
A Manual Force Reprocess Is Final
When you force reprocess a document and set the type, that type is what you get. Docupath's own automatic checks will not change it, and neither will your automatic instructions that change document types.
Many accounts have standing instructions of the form: "If a document is a purchase order and the items carry LOT numbers, process it as a consignment order." Instructions like this are written for documents in general. A force reprocess is a person's judgment about one document in particular, so the person wins.
This also closes a loop that instructions of that shape could create. Because the instruction begins with "if the document is a purchase order", force reprocessing a document to Purchase Order was exactly what satisfied the condition, so the instruction changed the type straight back. On a force reprocessed document, the instruction now stands down instead, and Docupath reports which instruction stood down.
The scope of the silencing is precise:
What | Behavior on a force reprocessed document |
Instructions that change the document type | Stand down, and Docupath reports which one did |
Field rules, formatting, catalog lookups, and everything else | Run exactly as before |
Other documents | Completely unaffected |
The Same Document Coming Back Is Remembered
If the identical document is submitted again later under a new reference, it arrives as the type your colleague chose. It is treated exactly as though the force reprocess had been repeated, which means type-changing instructions stand down for it too. Nobody makes the same correction twice.
Similar Documents Learn from the Correction
When a document arrives that Docupath has not seen before, it looks for a near-identical document between the same two trading parties that a person previously force reprocessed. If it finds one, it applies that decision as it reads the new document.
The comparison is on the printed shape of the document: the letterhead, the party block, and the column headings. It is deliberately not on the values, because order numbers, dates, and quantities are exactly what make two instances of one order form two documents rather than one.
Unlike the same-document case above, your type-changing instructions still get their say on similar documents after the learned type is applied (see the precedence table below).
Precedence
Strongest first:
# | Signal | Type-changing instructions |
1 | A manual force reprocess on the document in front of you | Stand down |
2 | A previous force reprocess of that very same document | Stand down |
3 | A previous force reprocess of a near-identical document between the same two parties | Still apply |
4 | Your automatic instructions | - |
5 | Docupath reading the document on its own | - |
The difference between 2 and 3 is intentional. When it is the same document, Docupath treats it exactly as if you had force reprocessed it again, so type-changing instructions stand down. When it is a similar but different document, the learned type is applied as the document is read, but your type-changing instructions still run afterwards. An instruction you wrote about a whole class of documents can still act on a document that no person has actually looked at; your configuration is not switched off by something a colleague did to a different document.
Example
A medical supplier sends orders to St. Mary's Hospital.
On Monday, an order arrives and Docupath reads it as a consignment order. Your colleague force reprocesses it as a purchase order. The document stays a purchase order: any instruction that would have changed the type stands down, and Docupath reports which one.
On Thursday, another order arrives from the same supplier to the same hospital, with a different order number, different dates, and different items. Docupath compares it against orders between those two parties that a person force reprocessed, finds Monday's document, and applies the purchase order decision. Because Thursday's document is similar but not identical, your type-changing instructions still get their say on it afterwards.
Supported Configurations and Options
The capability is active for all accounts. There is nothing to configure and nothing to switch on.
Force reprocesses your team made before the capability existed are already included, so past corrections apply from the start.
Changing Your Mind
Force reprocess a document again with a different type and the newest decision immediately replaces the previous one, both for that document and for the documents learning from it. There is nothing to reset and nothing to unlearn.
Other Technical Specifications
The limits on what is learned are deliberately tight, so you can predict what the system does:
It learns only from people, never from itself. Only documents a person force reprocessed teach the system. It never learns from its own earlier answers, so it cannot repeat its own mistakes.
It never crosses between organizations. A decision made on documents between Supplier A and St. Mary's Hospital applies only to documents between Supplier A and St. Mary's Hospital. It will never reach documents going to a different hospital, even if they look identical and come from the same supplier. Both trading parties must match.
It only applies to documents that genuinely look alike. The similarity bar is deliberately high. Two instances of the same order form qualify; a purchase order and a consignment order between the same supplier and hospital do not. A supplier who genuinely sends you both kinds will keep getting both kinds.
One person's decision cannot snowball. A document that received its type from a learned decision never becomes a teaching example itself. Only an explicit human force reprocess does, so a single judgment cannot propagate outwards through a chain of documents without anyone deciding it again.
Notes
Only instructions that change the document type stand down on force reprocessed documents. Field rules, formatting, catalog lookups, and everything else run exactly as before.
On similar but different documents, the learned type is applied first, but your type-changing instructions still run afterwards. If an instruction covers that class of documents, it can still change the type of a document no person has reviewed.
Learning is scoped to the exact pair of trading parties. The same supplier's documents to a different customer are typed independently.
To reverse or change a correction, force reprocess the document again with the new type. The newest decision replaces the previous one immediately, for that document and for the documents learning from it.