Process an Invitation to Bid

An Invitation to Bid starts a new project. A general contractor emails it to you. You need the project name, due date, and contact captured immediately. Building the capture template works on the Free and Lite plans. Free allows three templates and Lite allows fifteen. Mailbox routing requires the Pro plan.

Go to Templates. Click New template. Choose Upload document to attach a sample ITB PDF. The PDF appears as a document tab next to the Data tab.

Add an ID field named ITB Number. The ID routes future files with the same number to the exact same case. Add a text field for Project Name and a text field for Contact. Add a date field for Bid Due Date. The date type forces the AI to return a parseable date instead of a written phrase.

New fields start as static text. Open each field. Set its Value source to Extracted. Double-click the canvas to place a write zone for each field.

An ITB often buries the deadline in a paragraph. You can guide the app to the right sentence. Open the Bid Due Date field. Type a hint in the AI instructions box. Tell the app to look for "proposals due" instead of the project start date.

This field-level rule is the most reliable of the four AI instruction layers. It appears only when the app extracts that specific value. Click Save to save your changes.

Test the extraction against a real document. Click Run with your documents... to upload another ITB. If one vendor uses a strange format, open Special AI instructions on the run screen for a one-off hint. Free and Lite plans keep these runs as temporary showroom cases. The Pro plan saves them to your dashboard.

The Pro plan lets you route incoming ITBs directly into a mailbox. First, create the destination. Open the workspace sidebar, click New mailbox, and name it Bids.

Next, connect your email. Go to Settings > Account. Toggle Connect Gmail to grant access. Disconnecting Gmail later pauses your automations.

Open the Automations drawer from the bottom of the workspace sidebar. Click the plus button in the drawer header. Only one automation processes each email: when several match, the one with the most filters wins.

The template selection automatically determines the incoming document category. Forward a test ITB to your connected email. Open the automation and check the Activity run log. You will see the file land in the Bids mailbox.

Next: process a bid confirmation to close the loop on the documents you send back.

• Build a template
• AI extraction and instructions
• Automate document intake