The Four Essential Functions: Document Processing and Transformation

Document Events

FormKiQ's Document Events capability provides real-time notification of document lifecycle changes — creation, update, deletion, classification changes, workflow state transitions, and other document actions — enabling automated responses to document activity across your AWS environment and connected external systems.

Document Events are built on Amazon S3 event notifications and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), running entirely within your AWS account. Every document action that occurs within FormKiQ can generate an event that is immediately available to any downstream system, service, or workflow that subscribes to the relevant SNS topic — with no polling, no scheduled batch processing, and no delay between the document action and the event notification.

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How Document Events work

When a document action occurs in FormKiQ — a document is uploaded, a metadata attribute is updated, a classification schema is applied, a workflow state changes, or a document is deleted — FormKiQ publishes a structured event payload to an SNS topic within your AWS account. The event payload includes the document identifier, the action type, relevant metadata attributes, the timestamp of the action, and the site and user context — providing downstream consumers with everything they need to respond intelligently to the event without needing to query FormKiQ for additional context.

SNS's fan-out architecture means that a single document event can be delivered simultaneously to multiple subscribers — a Lambda function, an SQS queue, an EventBridge rule, and an external webhook endpoint can all receive the same event in parallel, each responding according to their own logic.

What can be triggered by Document Events

Document Events and FormKiQ Workflows

Document Events and FormKiQ's built-in workflow, queue, and ruleset architecture work together — Document Events can trigger FormKiQ workflows, and FormKiQ workflow state transitions generate Document Events that can trigger external actions. This bidirectional relationship allows document activity in FormKiQ to drive both internal workflow progression and external system notifications from the same event infrastructure, without requiring separate integration layers for internal and external event handling.

Document Events in compliance and audit programs

For regulated deployments, Document Events provide a real-time audit stream that complements FormKiQ's built-in audit trail. Every document action generates an event that can be captured, stored, and analyzed independently of FormKiQ's own audit log — supporting audit programs that require an immutable, independently maintained record of document activity, or compliance monitoring programs that need to detect and respond to specific document actions in real time.

Event payloads can be routed to Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and alerting, to Amazon Kinesis for high-volume event stream processing and analytics, or to a dedicated audit log store for long-term retention independent of the FormKiQ deployment.

Custom Application and Administration Development

FormKiQ's architecture is designed to be extended — not just configured. Because FormKiQ deploys into your own AWS account and exposes a complete, documented API surface alongside direct access to the underlying AWS resources, your development team has everything needed to build custom applications, administrative interfaces, and integration components that reflect the specific operational and compliance requirements of your deployment.

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What custom development enables

Development resources and support

FormKiQ provides complete API documentation, architectural guidance, and access to the FormKiQ engineering team through Advanced and Enterprise support channels. For organizations requiring hands-on development support, FormKiQ's Professional Services program provides custom development engagement for integrations, interface components, and platform extensions that benefit from direct involvement of the FormKiQ engineering team.

Document Digitization and Paper Document Intake

FormKiQ supports multiple methods for converting physical documents into governed digital records — from direct upload of scanned files through automated capture pipelines that connect scanning infrastructure directly to FormKiQ's intake and processing workflow. For organizations with ongoing paper document intake requirements or large historical paper collections requiring digitization, FormKiQ provides a flexible, scalable path from physical document to fully classified, searchable, governed digital record.

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Digitization methods

OCR and AI processing for digitized documents

Documents ingested through any digitization method are processed through FormKiQ's OCR pipeline — using Tesseract for standard text extraction in Core, and AWS Textract with custom mappings in Essentials, Advanced, and Enterprise for higher-accuracy extraction across a wider range of document formats and layouts. For organizations using the AI Processing and Analysis module, digitized documents can additionally be processed through classification, metadata extraction, sensitivity analysis, and vision processing pipelines — transforming scanned paper documents into richly attributed, searchable, governed digital records in a single automated workflow.

Document Import and Export

FormKiQ provides a comprehensive set of import and export capabilities — from direct API-based document exchange through automated gateway ingestion and workflow-orchestrated export — allowing document flows to be integrated into any operational architecture without custom middleware or proprietary connector requirements.

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Document import

Document export

Building custom import and export flows

For organizations with import or export requirements that go beyond the standard API, gateway, and action capabilities, FormKiQ's architecture supports custom transformation and routing services built within your AWS account — Lambda functions that transform incoming data before submission to the FormKiQ API, Step Functions workflows that orchestrate complex multi-step import or export processes, or EventBridge rules that route FormKiQ document events to external destinations based on document attributes.

The FormKiQ Document Events system provides the trigger layer for event-driven export flows — document events published to SNS can initiate export actions, notify external systems, or trigger transformation pipelines in response to specific document lifecycle events, without requiring scheduled polling or batch export jobs.

Document Actions and Workflows

FormKiQ provides two complementary automation layers: Document Actions, available in all editions, for attaching discrete processing steps to documents; and Document Workflows, available in commercial editions, for defining structured multi-step automation with condition sets, approval routing, and system integration.

Document Actions

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Document Actions are discrete, configurable processing steps that can be attached to a document at creation or at any later point. Each action sends a request to a FormKiQ module or an external service via Amazon SQS and executes independently — common uses include triggering OCR, invoking AI Processing and Analysis, sending outbound webhooks, and running post-processing transformations. Multiple actions can be assigned to a document and will run in sequence, but they operate without conditions, branching, or approval gates — those capabilities belong to Document Workflows.

Document Workflows

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Document Workflows are a distinct automation engine that defines structured sequences of processing steps — each step invoking Document Actions to perform its work — with full support for conditions, branching, and approval gates. Each workflow step can evaluate document attributes, classification results, or external data to determine which path to follow, and approval stages hold document progression until a designated reviewer acts. Every step produces a governed, traceable audit record, making workflows well-suited to compliance-sensitive processes where the full processing history of a document must be demonstrable.

Common workflow patterns include:

• Intake classification and routing — classify documents on arrival and direct them to the appropriate workspace, team queue, or processing step based on type, source, or extracted attributes
• Approval workflows — route documents to one or more reviewers, hold progression until approval is confirmed, and record the decision and timestamp against the document record
• Condition-based branching — define condition sets that evaluate document metadata and route processing to different steps depending on the result, supporting complex real-world intake and review scenarios
• System integration triggers — connect workflow steps to external systems via outbound webhooks or EventBridge, so document state changes in FormKiQ drive downstream actions in ERP, CRM, case management, or other connected platforms
• Post-processing automation — trigger OCR, AI Processing and Analysis, or document generation steps automatically as part of a defined workflow, reducing manual intervention in high-volume processing environments

Outbound Webhooks

FormKiQ's outbound webhook capability enables real-time notification of document activity to external systems, services, and automation platforms — delivering structured event payloads to any webhook-enabled endpoint in response to document lifecycle events and workflow actions.

Outbound webhooks in FormKiQ can be triggered from two sources: Document Events — the real-time notifications generated by document creation, update, and deletion — and Document Actions — the configurable workflow steps that can be attached to documents and triggered by workflow state transitions, classification changes, or other document lifecycle milestones. This dual trigger model gives you precise control over when external systems are notified and what information they receive.

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How outbound webhooks work

When a triggering event or action occurs, FormKiQ constructs a structured webhook payload containing the document identifier, event or action type, relevant metadata attributes, timestamp, and site and user context, and delivers it to the configured webhook endpoint via an HTTP POST request. The receiving endpoint can be any service that accepts inbound HTTP webhook delivery — external applications, workflow automation platforms, notification services, CRM and ERP systems, case management platforms, or custom services built within your own infrastructure.

Outbound webhooks support both internal and external delivery targets. Webhooks destined for services within your AWS environment can be routed through API Gateway or Lambda endpoints. Webhooks destined for external services — third-party SaaS platforms, partner systems, or public-facing APIs — are delivered directly to the configured external endpoint.

Common outbound webhook use cases

• Notifying a CRM or ERP system when a contract document reaches a specific workflow state
• Triggering a downstream processing pipeline when document OCR or AI analysis completes
• Delivering real-time document activity notifications to a compliance monitoring or audit system
• Notifying external parties when documents relevant to them have been updated or made available
• Connecting FormKiQ document workflows to automation platforms such as Microsoft Power Automate or Zapier
• Triggering notifications in communication platforms when documents require review or approval action
• Synchronizing document state changes with connected case management, grants management, or claims management systems

Document OCR Processing

FormKiQ's optical character recognition capability transforms document content from binary image data into structured, searchable, and processable text — making scanned documents, photographed pages, image-based PDFs, and other non-text-native document formats fully accessible to FormKiQ's search, classification, metadata extraction, and AI processing capabilities.

OCR processing in FormKiQ is available at two levels — a standard capability included across all editions, and an enhanced capability available from Essentials onward — reflecting the different accuracy, format support, and structured extraction requirements of different document programs.

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OCR and downstream processing

OCR processing workflow

OCR processing in FormKiQ can be triggered automatically on document upload through a configured workflow rule, on demand through a Document Action, or as part of a bulk processing operation applied to an existing document collection. Processing status and extracted content are available through the FormKiQ API and Document Console on completion, with a Document Event published to notify downstream subscribers that OCR processing has completed and results are available.

Amazon EventBridge Integration

FormKiQ supports integration with Amazon EventBridge — AWS's serverless event bus service — enabling FormKiQ document activity to participate in event-driven architectures across your AWS environment and connected external applications, at any scale and with the routing flexibility that EventBridge's rule-based delivery model provides.

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What EventBridge integration enables

Amazon EventBridge allows teams to build loosely coupled, event-driven architectures where services communicate through events rather than direct integrations. FormKiQ's integration with EventBridge brings document lifecycle events into this architecture, allowing document activity to trigger actions across any EventBridge-connected service without building point-to-point integrations from FormKiQ to each downstream system.

How FormKiQ publishes to EventBridge

FormKiQ integrates with EventBridge through three pathways:

Document Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware Scanning

FormKiQ's anti-virus and anti-malware scanning capability automatically inspects every document uploaded to FormKiQ for known viruses, malware, and other malicious content — protecting your document collection, your users, and your connected systems from documents that carry harmful payloads before they enter the governed document environment.

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How scanning works

Document scanning in FormKiQ is implemented using ClamAV — a widely deployed, actively maintained open source anti-virus engine — running within AWS Lambda functions in your own AWS account. Every document uploaded to FormKiQ is automatically submitted to the scanning pipeline on ingestion, with the scan completing before the document is made accessible to users or downstream systems.

Because scanning runs within your AWS account using Lambda's serverless execution model, there is no fixed scanning capacity to provision or manage — the scanning pipeline scales automatically with document ingestion volume, handling high-volume intake programs without performance degradation or queue buildup.

What is detected

ClamAV's signature database covers a broad range of known malicious content categories, including:

• Viruses and worms — self-replicating malicious code embedded in document files
• Trojan horses — malicious payloads disguised as legitimate document content
• Adware and spyware — software designed to compromise user systems or collect information without authorization
• Ransomware — encryption-based malicious payloads targeting document and file content
• Macro-based malware — malicious code embedded in document macros, particularly relevant for Word and Excel document intake
• Exploit documents — documents crafted to exploit vulnerabilities in document processing software

Signature updates

FormKiQ's anti-virus module includes automatic ClamAV signature updates — keeping the detection database current with newly identified threats without requiring manual intervention. Signature updates are applied on a scheduled basis within your AWS environment, ensuring that the scanning pipeline reflects the current threat landscape rather than a static snapshot of known threats at the time of deployment.

Scan results and document handling

Scan results are applied as document metadata attributes — making scan status searchable and available to workflow routing rules. Documents that pass scanning proceed through the standard intake workflow. Documents that fail scanning — where malicious content is detected — are quarantined and flagged for administrator review, with a Document Event published to notify connected systems and administrators of the detection. Quarantine behavior and administrator notification can be configured to reflect your organization's security incident response process.

For organizations with security monitoring programs, scan results and quarantine events are logged in FormKiQ's audit trail and can be routed through Document Events to connected SIEM platforms, security monitoring tools, or administrator notification channels.

Anti-virus scanning in regulated deployments

For regulated deployments where document intake security is a compliance requirement — healthcare organizations receiving external documents, financial services firms processing inbound correspondence and submissions, government agencies receiving public submissions — anti-virus scanning provides a documented, auditable security control at the document intake layer. Scan results stored as document metadata provide evidence that every ingested document was inspected, supporting compliance documentation and audit requirements that mandate security controls on document intake.

Document Control, Versioning, and Artifacts

FormKiQ provides two complementary approaches to document version management — linear versioning for tracking the full history of changes to a document over time, and document artifacts for managing designated versions of a document through a defined lifecycle. Both approaches are available within the same deployment and can be applied independently or together depending on the level of version control your program requires.

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Linear Versioning

FormKiQ's linear versioning capability tracks every change to a document's content and metadata over time — maintaining a complete, ordered version history that allows any previous version to be retrieved, reviewed, or restored. Linear versioning is built on Amazon S3 Versions for document content and Amazon DynamoDB for metadata versioning. Every time a document's content is updated, the new version is stored alongside all previous versions in S3 — the original is never overwritten or deleted.

What linear versioning provides:

• Complete version history for every document — content and metadata — from the point of ingestion
• Retrieval of any previous version of a document's content or metadata at any point in the document lifecycle
• The ability to set the current version to any previous version — restoring a document to an earlier state without losing the intervening history
• Version-specific metadata — metadata attributes can be created and tracked for specific versions, allowing the metadata record at each point in the document's history to be reconstructed independently
• Audit trail of all version changes including timestamp, user context, and change description
• Protection against accidental overwrites and deletions — previous versions remain accessible even when a document is updated or nominally deleted

Document Artifacts

Document artifacts provide a structured approach to managing designated versions of a document through a defined lifecycle — allowing specific versions to be intentionally promoted to lifecycle stages that represent meaningful milestones in the document's development, approval, and retirement. Where linear versioning tracks every change automatically, artifact management is intentional: a document artifact is a designated version explicitly promoted to a specific lifecycle stage, representing a significant state rather than an incremental edit.

Document artifacts are a new capability in FormKiQ, available from Essentials onward.

Lifecycle stages

FormKiQ's artifact lifecycle is built around a set of standard stages that reflect the common progression of controlled documents, while supporting additional stages and customized lifecycle definitions per document classification schema.

These stages are a starting point, not a fixed constraint. Additional stages can be defined per document classification — a legal review stage before publication, a regulatory submission stage, a superseded stage, or multi-level approval stages.

Customizable lifecycles by document classification

Because artifact lifecycle configuration is tied to FormKiQ's document classification schema model, each document type can have its own lifecycle definition with its own stages, transition rules, required approvals, and access controls per stage. A contract document classification might define Draft, Legal Review, Commercial Approval, Executed, and Archived. A policy document might define Draft, Internal Review, Compliance Review, Published, and Superseded. A regulatory submission might define Draft, Internal Sign-Off, Submitted, Accepted, and Archived.

Lifecycle stage transitions and workflow integration

• Stage transitions can be configured as formal workflow steps with defined approval requirements and role-based authorization — ensuring that only authorized users can advance a document to the next lifecycle stage
• Access controls can be applied per lifecycle stage — restricting who can view, edit, or download artifacts at each stage independently of the access controls on the document's linear version history
• Document Events are published on artifact stage transitions — notifying connected systems and triggering downstream actions such as distribution workflows, external system updates, or compliance notifications
• Outbound webhooks and Document Actions can be triggered by specific lifecycle stage transitions — connecting artifact lifecycle events to the broader operational and compliance architecture of your deployment

Linear versioning and artifacts compared

Document Generation

FormKiQ's Document Generation module produces structured, repeatable document output from templates and data — integrating with FormKiQ's metadata and workflow layers so that generated documents are stored, classified, and governed the same way as any other document in the platform. The module covers template-based document generation, PDF splitting and joining, and PDF certificate generation.

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AI-Powered Document Processing and Transformation

FormKiQ's AI Processing and Analysis module extends the platform's processing and transformation capabilities with intelligent summarization, structured analysis, content generation, and vision processing — all running within your AWS account through Amazon Bedrock. These capabilities apply to the processing and transformation layer of document management, automatically producing outputs from document content that support downstream review, decision-making, and workflow.

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View the full AI Processing and Analysis module →