Have you ever wished you could easily adapt existing document workflows to your specific needs—without the hassle of starting from scratch?
Whether it’s invoices, delivery notes, or contracts, document types often share a similar structure but differ in the details you need to extract. That’s exactly where DocuWare IDP’s new “Workflow Inheritance” feature comes in. It allows you to build upon existing extraction workflows, modify them to fit your requirements, and extend them with new fields—efficiently, flexibly, and intuitively.
What Is Workflow Inheritance?
Workflow Inheritance introduces a whole new way to make document extraction faster and more tailored to your needs.
Instead of training a new model from the ground up, users can now “inherit” an existing workflow—adapting and enhancing it with just a few clicks.
Here’s what that means in practice:
- Fine-tune existing fields: Benefit from a pre-trained model and improve recognition on your own data.
- Remove unnecessary fields: Save time and annotation effort by focusing only on what matters to you.
- Add new custom fields: Extend your workflow with specific fields—like custom cost categories on hotel bills.
In short: Workflow Inheritance takes model customization to the next level—with greater control and less effort.
The Challenges Without Workflow Inheritance
Before Workflow Inheritance, custom requirements often led to unnecessary complexity.
A user would need to fine-tune an existing model to improve accuracy for standard fields, and then train a separate custom model for additional ones.
The result? Two models, two datasets, and manual mapping between them—time-consuming and error-prone.
This approach came with clear downsides:
- Cumbersome processes: Combining outputs from multiple models was difficult to manage.
- High time investment: Double annotation and maintenance slowed everything down.
- Limited flexibility: Even small changes often required large reworks.
With Workflow Inheritance, those problems are a thing of the past.
How DocuWare IDP’s Workflow Inheritance Makes Life Easier
DocuWare IDP now makes model customization more intuitive than ever.
With Workflow Inheritance, you can choose to start from scratch or build upon an existing workflow—and immediately benefit from the parent model’s capabilities.
With Workflow Inheritance, getting started is remarkably simple. You can choose an existing workflow—such as a standard invoice model—and build upon it effortlessly. From there, it’s easy to add new fields or deactivate those you don’t need, while inherited fields remain instantly available and ready to use. Because these fields are already recognized by the parent model, annotation becomes significantly faster. Plus, the relationship between parent and child workflows stays transparent, ensuring full control and stability throughout the process. Customization has never been this straightforward.
Initially, this feature supports custom extraction workflows and new pre-built models created via the Custom Extraction feature.
Real-World Use Cases
Workflow Inheritance opens up new possibilities for a wide range of applications – from industry-specific solutions to flexible base workflows for recurring fields.
- Industry-Specific Variants of Existing Workflows
Companies can easily extend existing models, such as a standard invoice, and adapt them to their specific industry.
For example, a construction invoice might include additional fields for project or site numbers, while a textile invoice could capture sizes like S, M, or L. This saves development time and ensures precise extraction tailored to each use case.
- Reusable Base Workflows for Recurring Fields
Experts can create custom base models containing general information like sender, receiver, or document date.
These base workflows then serve as starting points for multiple specialized extractions, such as delivery notes, invoices, or order confirmations.
By defining recurring fields once and inheriting them in child workflows, new workflow development becomes much faster and more efficient.
Why Workflow Inheritance Is More Than Just a Feature
Workflow Inheritance isn’t just a technical improvement—it’s a new mindset for building smarter extraction systems.
Teams can now create base workflows for recurring fields (like sender, receiver, or document date) and develop specialized versions from them, such as construction invoices, hotel bills, or textile invoices.
The benefits are clear:
- Reduced setup effort
- Faster workflow development
- Greater consistency and reusability
With Workflow Inheritance, DocuWare IDP enables a modular and scalable approach to document extraction—perfect for organizations looking to continuously refine and accelerate their automation processes.
Unlocking the Next Level of Flexible, Efficient Data Extraction
Workflow Inheritance is a game-changer for anyone who wants to make document extraction more efficient, adaptable, and future-proof.
It simplifies model adjustments, minimizes training effort, and brings structure and transparency to workflow management.
Whether you’re a beginner adapting a pre-built model with minor tweaks or an expert managing complex, reusable base models—Workflow Inheritance gives you the flexibility and control to take your document extraction to the next level.