Unstructured Platform quickstart

This quickstart uses a no-code, point-and-click user interface in your web browser to get all of your data RAG-ready. Data is processed on Unstructured-hosted compute resources.

You will need:

• A compatible source (input) location in cloud storage that contains your documents for Unstructured to process. See the list of supported source types.
• Compatible files in your source location. See the list of supported file types. If you do not have any files available, you can download some from the example-docs folder in the Unstructured repo on GitHub.
• A compatible destination (output) location in cloud storage for Unstructured to put the processed data. See the list of supported destination types.

1

Sign in to your Unstructured account

1. Sign in to your Unstructured account, at https://app.unstructured.io.
2. Click Google or GitHub to sign in with your Google or GitHub account. Or, enter your email address and then click Sign In.
3. If you entered your email address, check your email inbox for a message from Unstructured. In that email, click the Sign In link.
4. The first time you sign in, read the terms and conditions, and then click Accept.

2

Open your Unstructured Platform dashboard

• From your Unstructured account dashboard, in the sidebar, click API > Platform.

The API > Platform sidebar option is visible only to users who signed up for an Unstructured API services account before October 23, 2024. To get access to the Unstructured Platform on or after this date, request access, and wait for an access enablement email from Unstructured.

3

Set the source (input) location

1. From your Unstructured Platform dashboard, in the sidebar, click Connectors.
2. Click Sources.
3. Click Add new.
4. For Name, enter some unique name for this connector.
5. In the Provider area, click the source location type that matches yours.
6. Click Continue.
7. Fill in the fields with the appropriate settings. Learn more.
8. If a Continue button appears, click it, and fill in any additional settings fields.
9. Click Save and Test.

4

Set the destination (output) location

1. In the sidebar, click Connectors.
2. Click Destinations.
3. Click Add new.
4. For Name, enter some unique name for this connector.
5. In the Provider area, click the destination location type that matches yours.
6. Click Continue.
7. Fill in the fields with the appropriate settings. Learn more.
8. If a Continue button appears, click it, and fill in any additional settings fields.
9. Click Save and Test.

5

Define the workflow

1. In the sidebar, click Workflows.

2. Click New Workflow.

3. Next to Build it with me, click Create Workflow.

   If a radio button appears instead of Build it with me, select it, and then click Continue.

4. For Workflow Name, enter some unique name for this workflow.

5. In the Sources dropdown list, select your source location from Step 3.

6. In the Destinations dropdown list, select your destination location from Step 4.

   You can select multiple source and destination locations. Files will be ingested from all of the selected source locations, and the processed data will be delivered to all of the selected destination locations.

7. Click Continue.

8. In the Optimize for section, select the option to choose one of these predefined workflow settings groups:

   • Basic: Ideal for simple, text-only documents.
   • Advanced: Best for PDFs, images, and complex file types.
   • Platinum: For your most challenging documents, including scanned and handwritten content. It uses vision language models (VLMs). During processing, files that are not PDFs or images are processed by using the Advanced strategy and are charged at the Advanced rate instead.

9. The Reprocess all box applies only to the Amazon S3 and Azure Blob Storage source connectors:

   • Checking this box reprocesses all documents in the source location on every workflow run.
   • Unchecking this box causes only new documents that are added to the source location since the last workflow run to be processed on future runs. Previously processed documents are not processed again, even if those documents’ contents change.

10. If you want to retry processing any documents that failed to process, check the Retry Failed Documents box.

11. Click Continue.

12. If you want this workflow to run on a schedule, in the Repeat Run dropdown list, select one of the scheduling options, and fill in the scheduling settings. Otherwise, select Don’t repeat.

13. Click Complete.

6

Process the documents

1. If you did not choose to run this workflow on a schedule in Step 5, you can run the workflow now: on the sidebar, click Workflows.
2. Next to your workflow from Step 5, click Run.

7

Monitor the processing job

1. In the sidebar, click Jobs.
2. In the list of jobs, wait for the job’s Status to change to Finished.
3. Click the row for the job.
4. If Overview displays Success, go to the next Step.

8

View the processed data

Go to your destination location to view the processed data.