Streamlining Document Sorting With AI

Revolutionizing how we upload and sort documents in a complex framework using artificial intelligence.

Forging Innovative Tools With AI

Uploading documents was a major workflow for nCino’s users. Many of nCino’s products included uploading documents as a part of their functionality. Document Manager, or DocMan, was one of their flagship products, allowing users to upload and sort documents to their appropriate locations.

The biggest problem with DocMan was their filing system. The framework for uploading documents was built early in nCino’s development, meaning it was over a decade old and required users to make placeholders before uploading documents in order to assign those documents to the right location. It was enormously frustrating to the majority of DocMan’s users, complicating their workflows and unnecessarily costing them time.

With the advent of assistive AI, we had the opportunity to build Locate & File, an AI tool that would eliminate that pesky placeholder step and sort the documents into their proper locations all in one go. But how could we implement AI in a way that made sense for our users?

Desired Outcome

  • Locate & File would allow users to offload a lot of the grunt work involved with bulk uploading documents and sorting them into the right locations.

  • Primary functionality would include locating available placeholders, generating new placeholders, versioning up existing documents, and suggesting further actions simply based on the content of the documents uploaded by the user.

  • A manual placeholder search and assign option needed to be available to the user in case Banking Advisor, nCino’s AI agent, failed to assign or generate an accurate placeholder.

Challenges

Hallucinations
AI can’t be 100% accurate by the very nature of the technology. Confusing file labels, content, formats, and even document quality could hinder the tool’s ability to locate or generate the correct placeholders.

Outdated Tech
This tool needed to be housed somewhere in DocMan, which had a severely outdated framework. We would need to find a way to access more modern technology from an outdated application.

Complicated Workflow
Despite being a fairly contained tool with a straightforward use case, the workflow would need to be relatively complicated to cover all the possibilities.

Final discovery stage post-it board with insights gathered from both internal and external user interviews.

User Research

To gather insights I met with the admin development team, various internal nCino product teams, and external admin users over 15 user interviews.

  • The admin development team directed an audit of the redundant or broken functionality in Feature Management and offered direction on the technical limitations of the SalesForce platform.

  • Internal product teams said they had no clear direction on where configurations should be housed. This roadblock often led to these teams tossing their configurations on the main admin page, cluttering it up.

  • External admin users brought to light the need for easy access points into feature documentation. They also expressed a need for more visibility into their implementations, including actions previously taken and available updates.

Competitor Analysis; Activity Log

One of the new proposed tools for Feature Management was an activity log to track user-initiated events. The desired outcome of this tool was to aid customers in identifying errors while implementing or configuring features.

I researched activity logs for other enterprise applications, making note of the similarities in the types of information they each displayed.

Side-by-side visual competitor analysis for the Activity Log

Ideation

Wireframes; Feature List & Activity Log

There were several iterations of the main feature list. A pattern using standard data tables to consolidate information was considered before I switched to a more graphically detailed list view with the toggle action.

Solution Proposal

  • Working together closely with my PM and engineering, we decided on workflows for the three major use cases; enabling a feature, implementing available updates, and accessing feature pages.

  • The experience would consist of the main Feature Management hub page with individual offshoot pages for each feature. Most of the major actions would only be accessible through the Feature Pages due to technical limitations.

  • The new Available Updates and Activity Log functionality would live in tabs alongside the main feature list for easy access.

User Flow; Main Feature List

The main feature list would be the hub of activity for Feature Management. When engaging with any of the major use cases users must first access the feature list.

User Flow; Enabling a Feature

Enabling a feature was more tricky than simply turning it on and off. Toggles were introduced for visual simplicity but the series of events they kicked off were complex and opened up a variety of potential issues.

User Flow; Implementing Updates

A separate workflow was necessary for implementing new updates as this functionality hadn’t been developed in the previous version.

Wireframes; Feature Overlay

The concept of the Feature Overlay was meant to streamline the user flow for implementing sub features and feature processes. However, technical limitations narrowed the scope to only display a read-only view, letting the user view feature details directly from the main list.

Wireframes; Feature Page

The early versions of the Feature Page were more like a Feature Hub, with a two-column card layout. Eventually it became apparent that the functionality was too dense to contain in cards and tabs were introduced.

Unifying Feature Management; Solution

  • The end result of Feature Management combined all the major use cases into one seamless experience.

  • Due to technical limitations users would still need to access individual pages for configuring features, however the new framework organized all future and available configurations. From then on developers would always know where to put new functionality.

  • The new Available Updates and Action Log features allowed users more visibility into the implementation of features and gave them more control over their processes.

Feature List

  • Adding a search functionality made locating a feature significantly faster.

  • New and deprecated features were now labeled for easy identification.

  • Users could access high level feature details from an overlay panel on the main feature list.

Available Updates & Activity Log

  • Users could now access newly updated features from a tab on the main feature list. The tab automatically filtered the list down to unimplemented updates.

  • The activity log was also added to a tab on the main feature list. New events would be added every time a user took an action in Feature Management.

Feature Page

  • Feature Pages were introduced to give each feature its own hub to house feature processes, sub features, feature configuration, and available documentation related to the feature.

  • Feature pages left plenty of room for future development based on individual feature needs as they came up.

Impact

  • The improved Feature Management experience was soon made available to users in beta, with the option to toggle between old and new versions. We solicited feedback from users via a survey and received overall positive feedback, praising the organization and clarity of the new experience.

  • With Feature Management set as the benchmark, the admin team was now able to shift focus to the admin experience as a whole. Feature Management’s success paved the way for a much larger overhaul of admin down the road.