Build a document processing pipeline with Workflows

If you are using Document AI to build workflows that involve several steps to process documents, you might want to use serverless orchestration to manage your workflow.

Workflows links a series of tasks together in an order you define. It requires no infrastructure management and scales seamlessly on demand, including scaling down to zero. With its pay-per-use pricing model, you only pay for execution time.

Workflows provides a built-in connector for the Document AI API. Connectors don't require additional code aside from defining the steps using a config file. Connectors handle the formatting of requests, hiding the details of the API. Connectors also provide built-in behavior for authentication, handling retries and long-running operations.

For more information, see Understand connectors.

This guide processes a set of sample invoices using the Invoice Parser processor with batch processing

To follow step-by-step guidance for this task directly in the Google Cloud console, click Guide me:

Guide me

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  3. If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

  4. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  5. Enable the Document AI, Cloud Storage, Workflows APIs.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the APIs

  6. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  7. If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

  8. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  9. Enable the Document AI, Cloud Storage, Workflows APIs.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the APIs

    10.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create a custom classifier, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on your project:

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Create an Invoice Parser

Use the Google Cloud console to create a new Invoice Parser. Refer to the creating and managing processors page for more information.

  1. In the Google Cloud console navigation menu, click Document AI and select Processor Gallery.

    Processor Gallery

  2. In the Processor Gallery, search for Invoice Parser and select Create.

    Create invoice processor

  3. Enter a Processor name, such as workflows-invoice-processor.

  4. Select the region (location in the Document AI API) to host the processor.

  5. Click Create. The Processor Details tab appears.

  6. Copy your Processor ID. You must use this in your code later.

    Processor ID

Configure output bucket in Cloud Storage

When using batch (asynchronous) processing, the input and output files must be stored in Cloud Storage. The following bucket contains sample files to use as input for this guide: