Auto mode

What it does

Every table is either in auto mode or manual. The switch is the row trigger in the table’s Extraction settings, and the toolbar shows which one the table is in.

In auto mode, every new row added to the table is extracted against its current columns once its documents have been read — a file dropped onto the table, an email to its mailhook, or a document a connector syncs. Uploading to the workspace’s files without adding them to the table adds no row, so it runs nothing. That is what you want when documents arrive continuously and the table is meant to stay current — an intake pipeline, a monitored folder, an ongoing matter.

Tables created in the app start in auto mode. Manual is the right choice while you are still authoring columns, because it means nothing is spent until the questions are the ones you meant to ask.

What it costs

Every automatic run spends credits at the usual rates, against the organisation’s balance, without anyone present to approve it. A quiet week costs nothing. A colleague bulk-uploading two hundred documents onto three auto-mode tables costs quite a lot.

There is nothing wrong with that — it is the feature working — but it is worth setting the two controls first:

• A monthly spend cap. Stops runs once a set number of credits has been used in a calendar month, and is enforced at every debit, so topping up does not lift it. That is the point of it.
• A low-balance alert. An email when the balance dips below a level you choose, which arrives once per dip and re-arms when the balance recovers.

Both live on the billing page. The alert is off until you set it; the cap is not — every organisation has one from the start, scaled to its tier. Checking what yours is set to before turning auto mode on across an organisation is the sensible order. See how credits work.

The sharpest version of this is auto mode on a table with a mailhook, where the documents arrive by email from people who are not signed in and may not work for you. It is a good combination and the intended one — it is also the case where the cap stops being advice.

Turning it off

It is a table setting, reversible at any time, and switching to manual does not touch answers already extracted. Changing it needs Manage on the workspace — it is a spending decision as much as a behavioural one, which is why it sits with the settings rather than with the column tools. See sharing a workspace.

What it does not do

Auto mode reacts to documents arriving. It does not rerun existing rows, refresh answers on a schedule, or notice that a column’s prompt has changed — a prompt edit marks the old answers stale and waits for you, in an auto-mode table exactly as in a manual one.