Bringing things in · Chapter 5

Bringing paper and files in

Whatever arrives lands in the inbox first and never straight in the archive. Whether you take a photo, forward a mail or the scanner in the hall drops a file, in the end the document waits there with its fields filled in until somebody looks at it. This chapter shows the ways in. Photographing with the phone is in the chapter On the phone.

Uploading in the browser

1. Choose files or drop them

   Click “Upload” in the bar and choose one file or several. Or drag them anywhere onto the page, and “Drop to upload” appears.

2. Watch the “Uploads” window

   Every file gets a line there with its progress. First the browser makes the checksum of the file. If you have exactly this file already, nexpaper transfers nothing and tells you under which title it is there. Large files go in pieces. If the connection breaks, the line says “Interrupted”, and “Resume” goes on from where it stopped.

3. Look in the inbox

   When the line says “Uploaded”, nexpaper reads the pages and the text. You do not have to wait. The document shows up in the inbox, where it first says “Being read …”.

If a file does not go through, the message says why for each one. Most often it is larger than allowed or of a kind nexpaper does not take.

Which files nexpaper takes

• PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF (several pages too), HEIC from the iPhone, WebP and AVIF.
• XML, but only as an e-invoice (XRechnung in the UBL or CII format). How nexpaper treats e-invoices is on the Features page.
• nexpaper recognises the kind from the content, never from the name or the ending. A picture is made into a PDF, and the picture stays beside it as the original.

nexpaper does not take Word, Excel or other office files, nor e-mails as documents. If you want to bring in something like that, make a PDF of it first. Out of the box a file may be 200 MB and a document may have 2,000 pages. The operator changes both under “Settings”, tab “Storage”, in the card “Uploading and limits”.

Invoices by mail

One mailbox for the whole server takes in mails that somebody forwards to it. nexpaper fetches it every 5 minutes and puts the attachments into the inbox of the person who sent them. The mail itself does not become a document.

Setting it up as the operator

1. Create a mailbox of its own

   Best one that exists only for nexpaper, at a provider or on a mail server of your own. nexpaper speaks IMAP. There is only one mailbox, and no POP3.

2. Fill in the card “Mailbox”

   Under “Settings”, tab “Inputs”, you switch on “Fetch the mailbox” and enter “Server”, “Port” (993 with TLS out of the box), “Address of the mailbox”, “User” and “Password”. nexpaper seals the password and never shows it again. If your mail server runs in your own network, you also need to tick “Allow a server in the own network”.

3. Choose what happens to the mail afterwards

   Under “Afterwards” you find “Mark as read” (out of the box), “Move to “nexpaper”” and “Delete”. It happens only once all attachments of the mail have arrived. If your server cannot do it, the card says what nexpaper does instead.

4. Try it

   “Save and try” connects and counts the new mails, “Fetch now” fetches them at once. Below it says when it was fetched last and with what result.

Forwarding as a person

Which mail belongs in which inbox, nexpaper recognises by the sender's address. Under “My account”, tab “Upload”, the card “By mail” shows the address of the mailbox you forward to. The address of your account counts as soon as you have confirmed it. You enter further sender addresses under “Another sender address”. Each one gets a mail with a confirmation link, so that nobody enters somebody else's address, and that works only if the server can send mail. From any other address it also works if you write to your own variant of the mailbox address, for example paper+lena@example.com.

Mails from senders nexpaper cannot match to an account land in the operator's inbox, marked “unknown”. If the operator prefers, they stay in the mailbox instead. Nothing is ever filed by itself. For mails nexpaper also checks that the sender is genuine: if the trusted mail server says the check failed, the mail counts as unknown.

The folder for the scanner

If your scanner has a share in the network that it puts files into, nexpaper can watch that folder.

1. Mount the folder

   The intake folder is at /data/eingang out of the box. If a scanner or a share is to write there, you mount that folder as a volume in the compose file, for example /path/to/scans:/data/eingang. Sharing it over SMB is your server's job, not nexpaper's.

2. Switch it on

   Under “Settings”, tab “Inputs”, in the card “Intake folder”, you switch on “Watch the intake folder”. It is off out of the box.

3. Use a subfolder per person

   Each person has a subfolder in it, named after their account name. What lands there goes into their inbox, and the card shows it as “→ inbox of Tom”. Files directly in the folder or in a subfolder without an account go to the operator and are marked “unknown”. Each person sees their subfolder under “My account”, tab “Upload”.

nexpaper picks up a file only once it has not grown for 10 seconds, so that a scanner that is still writing is not disturbed. After that the file is taken out of the folder. What nexpaper does not accept, a wrong kind of file or an empty one, for instance, waits in the subfolder “abgelehnt” afterwards, with the reason beside it. None of it is deleted.

Scanners or programs with a key

A scanner that can upload by itself, or a script, needs no folder. It gets a key that can only put documents into your inbox. It cannot read, change or delete anything.

1. Allow keys

   API keys are off out of the box. The operator allows them under “Settings”, tab “API”, with “Allow API keys”.

2. Make a key

   Under “My account”, tab “Devices and apps”, in the card “API keys”, tap “Key for uploading (for scanners and apps)”, give it a name such as “Scanner in the hall” and make it. It does not run out by itself, but you can choose a time.

3. Enter the key

   The key is shown only now, together with the “Header line for the program”. Both belong in the program. Limits apply per key: 120 requests a minute and 50 uploads an hour. The description of the interface is on your server at /api/v1/docs.