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Data Types and Collection Options in Willow360

Willow360 provides flexible data collection capabilities through the Supply Information, Fill in a Form, and AI Data actions. Understanding the available data types and how to use them can significantly enhance your workflow design and automation.

Data Collection Actions Overview

There are three ways to collect structured data in a Willow360 workflow:

Supply Information: prompts a user to complete a form at a specific point in the workflow. Used when information needs to be gathered or confirmed during processing.

Fill in a Form: starts a workflow by having a user complete a form, which Willow360 converts into a PDF document that then continues through the workflow.

AI Data: reads information directly from the document content using OCR combined with AI, extracting values automatically without requiring any user input.

Each method produces typed metadata that can be used in subsequent workflow actions.

Supported Data Types

Supply Information and Fill in a Form support six input types:

1. Text

Accepts any character input.

Use cases: customer name, address, comments, reference numbers, notes.

2. Number

Accepts decimal numbers including those with thousands separators.

Use cases: invoice amount, quantity, employee ID, budget values.

3. Email

Validates that the input conforms to a standard email address format.

Use cases: customer email, notification recipient, support contact.

4. User

Presents a dropdown of all users in the organisation. The selected user's full name, first name, last name, and email are each available as separate metadata sub-options in downstream actions.

Use cases: task assignee, approver, project manager, document owner.

5. Date

Presents a calendar-based date picker. The selected date is available in multiple formats as metadata, including full date (long and short), day, month, year, and YYYY-MM-DD.

Use cases: due date, invoice date, meeting date, start date.

6. List

Presents a dropdown of predefined options configured by the workflow creator. The List type has its own item type, which determines how the selected value can be used as metadata. Supported item types are Text, Number, Email, User, and Date.

Simple mode: options are entered as plain tokens. Display text and value are the same.

Advanced mode: allows a different display text and underlying value for each option. For example, a dropdown could show "Support Team" as the display text while storing support@company.com as the actual value used in downstream actions.

Use cases: approval status, department routing, task priority, document category.

AI Data Types

The AI Data action uses a different set of types, reflecting that values are extracted from document content rather than entered by a user:

  • Text: extracted as a free-form string.
  • Number: extracted as a numeric value.
  • Email: extracted and validated as an email address.
  • Date: extracted and stored in a consistent format for use in downstream actions.
  • Yes/No: returns a boolean answer, useful for conditional routing (for example "Has this document been signed?").

Note that AI Data does not support User or List types, as these require a human selection rather than document reading.

Configuration Notes

Supply Information:

  • Requires an instructions field that is displayed to the user when they complete the form.
  • All inputs are required. Users cannot submit the form with blank fields.
  • Who supplies the information can be a specific user, a group of users, or determined dynamically from form data already collected earlier in the workflow.
  • Supply Information can be used as a bulk action from the To-Do List, allowing a user to supply the same data for multiple files at once.

Fill in a Form:

  • Must be the first action in the workflow. It cannot be combined with file uploads, email, or scan as a way to start that workflow.
  • Requires a Document Title, which is used as both the document heading and the generated file name.
  • An optional Document Text can be added, which appears in the generated PDF above the form data.
  • The generated PDF continues through the workflow as if it had been uploaded from outside Willow360.

Using Typed Data as Metadata

Once collected, typed values are available as metadata in all subsequent workflow actions. The type determines where they can be used:

  • User and Email types: can be used in the Emails To field of Secure Email and System Email actions, as the approver in Approve actions, or as the signer in Simple Sign.
  • Date types: can be used in file naming, stamping, watermarking, or any other action that accepts a metadata text variable.
  • List types: the underlying value of the selected option is what gets used as metadata. In Advanced mode, this means a user-friendly display label can map to a technical value, such as an email address or a reference code, without the form filler needing to know the underlying value.

Example: a List input labelled "Department" has three options in Advanced mode. Display text "Quality Assurance" maps to the value qa-lead@company.com. When a user selects "Quality Assurance", the workflow uses qa-lead@company.com as the recipient in a Secure Email action automatically, without the form filler needing to know the email address.

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