User Guide

What is DocuLume

DocuLume is an AI-powered document intelligence and contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform. Upload virtually any document and DocuLume reads it, extracts the fields you care about, makes it searchable, and lets you ask questions in plain language — then carries contracts through review, approval, e-signature, and renewal.

Core capabilities covered in this guide:

• Universal document processing — OCR and parsing for PDFs, images, and office files.
• Custom field extraction — teach DocuLume the data points your business cares about.
• Document chat — ask questions of one document or many at once, with citations.
• Advanced search — keyword, semantic, and faceted search across your library.
• Bulk processing — ingest entire folders or cloud storage buckets at once.
• Contract lifecycle — intake, approval workflows, e-signature, and renewal tracking.

Signing in

Access DocuLume at app.doculume.com. You can sign in with:

• Email and password — for accounts created directly in DocuLume.
• Single sign-on (SAML 2.0) — if your organization has configured an identity provider. Enter your work email and you'll be redirected to your IdP.

If you were invited by a teammate, open the invitation link from your email, set a password (or sign in via SSO), and you'll join their workspace automatically. Forgot your password? Use Reset password on the login screen to receive a reset link.

Workspaces & roles

Your documents live inside a workspace. Larger organizations can have several workspaces (for example, by department or client) and switch between them from the workspace menu. Each workspace is isolated — documents and settings never leak across workspaces.

Access within a workspace is governed by role-based access control (RBAC). Typical roles:

Your administrator assigns roles and folder-level permissions. If you can't see a feature described here, you may not have the required permission — ask your workspace admin.

Uploading a document

To process a single document:

1. Click Upload from the documents view.
2. Select a file (PDF, image, or office document) or drag it into the upload area.
3. Optionally choose the destination folder and apply tags.
4. Click Upload. The document enters the processing pipeline immediately.

You'll see a live status indicator as the document moves through processing. You don't need to keep the tab open — processing continues on our servers and you'll be notified when it finishes.

How processing works

Every uploaded document runs through an automated pipeline:

1. OCR & text extraction — scanned pages and images are converted to machine-readable text.
2. Chunking — the text is split into passages so the AI can reason over long documents accurately.
3. Field extraction — your configured fields (and standard metadata) are pulled out.
4. Indexing — the document is added to the search index and made chat-ready.

Document status moves through states such as Queued → Processing → Extracted → Ready. Once a document is chat-ready, you can ask questions of it. You can monitor pipeline status from the document's detail view at any time.

Custom field extraction

Custom fields are the heart of DocuLume. Instead of generic extraction, you tell DocuLume exactly which data points to pull from your documents — effective date, counterparty, renewal term, payment amount, governing law, or anything specific to your business.

Creating a custom field

1. Go to Settings → Custom Fields.
2. Click New Field and give it a name (e.g. Renewal Date).
3. Choose a data type (text, date, number, currency, list, boolean).
4. Write an extraction prompt — a plain-language instruction describing what to find and how to format it.
5. Save. New uploads will populate this field automatically; existing documents can be re-evaluated.

Extraction prompts & versions

Extraction prompts are versioned. When you refine a prompt, DocuLume keeps the history so you can compare versions and roll back. You can activate a specific prompt version, and re-run extraction on documents to apply an improved prompt. See the knowledge base article on writing effective extraction prompts.

Document chat

Once a document is chat-ready, open it and use the Chat panel to ask questions in plain language:

• "What is the termination notice period?"
• "Summarize the payment obligations."
• "Does this contract auto-renew, and when?"

Answers are grounded in the document text and include citations back to the source passages, so you can verify every response. Chat history is saved per document in sessions — start a new session for a fresh line of questioning, or revisit a previous one. You can delete a session at any time.

Multi-document chat

Need to reason across several documents at once? Use multi-document chat to select a set of documents and ask questions spanning all of them — for example, "Which of these vendor contracts has the shortest termination notice?" Multi-chat sessions are saved separately so you can return to a comparison later.

Search & discovery

DocuLume offers several ways to find documents and data:

• Quick search — type-ahead results as you type, ideal for jumping to a known document.
• Comprehensive search — combines keyword and semantic (meaning-based) search so you find documents even when they don't contain your exact words.
• Faceted filtering — narrow by tags, folder, document type, dates, and any custom field.
• Find similar — from any document, surface others like it.

Search suggestions help you refine queries, and search analytics (for managers) show what your team is looking for. Results respect your permissions — you only ever see documents you're allowed to access.

Bulk processing

To ingest many documents at once — for example, migrating an existing contract archive — use Bulk Upload:

1. Go to Bulk Upload and choose a source: direct multi-file upload or a connected cloud storage location (e.g. an Azure Blob or S3 container).
2. For cloud storage, configure and validate the connection, then preview the files that will be imported.
3. Set the destination folder and any default tags or extraction settings.
4. Click Start. DocuLume creates a bulk job and processes documents in the background.
5. Track progress on the Jobs screen — you'll see per-document status and can cancel a job mid-run.

Contract lifecycle management

Beyond extraction, DocuLume manages contracts through their full lifecycle:

• Intake / request — submit a new contract request to kick off the process.
• Lifecycle states — each contract has a tracked state (e.g. Draft → In Review → Approved → Executed → Active → Renewing → Expired). View and advance the lifecycle from the contract detail page.
• Renewals — DocuLume scans for upcoming renewals and surfaces them on the CLM dashboard so deadlines never slip. Run a renewal scan on demand or rely on the automated schedule.

Approval workflows

Workflows route contracts to the right people for review and approval. Admins define workflow templates (the sequence of steps and approvers); when a contract enters a workflow, DocuLume creates tasks and assigns them.

• See work assigned to you under My Tasks.
• Take an action on a task (approve, reject, request changes) to advance the workflow.
• Admins can force-advance a stuck instance and review workflow history.

E-signature

Send a contract for signature without leaving DocuLume:

1. From a contract, choose Send for signature and add signer(s).
2. DocuLume creates an e-signature request through the connected e-signature provider.
3. Track status from the contract — sent, viewed, signed, or declined.
4. Send a reminder to pending signers, or cancel a request if needed.
5. When complete, download the signed document; signature status syncs back automatically.

Clause & template tools

For legal and procurement teams, DocuLume includes:

• Clause comparison — compare clauses across contracts to spot deviations from your standard language.
• Clause library — maintain approved clause definitions.
• Template evaluation — score a draft against your preferred template library.
• Redline export — generate a redlined .docx against your playbook for negotiation.

Notifications

DocuLume keeps you informed about uploads, job completion, workflow tasks, renewals, and security events. Manage how you're notified under Settings → Notifications:

• Choose channels: in-app, email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams.
• Set per-event preferences so you only get alerts that matter to you.
• View notification history and mark items as read.

Audit trail & history

Every change to a contract's fields and tags is recorded. Open a contract's History to see who changed what and when — useful for compliance, dispute resolution, and internal review. Combined with workspace-level audit logging, DocuLume gives you a complete, tamper-evident record of activity.

Getting help

If something isn't working as expected:

• Check the FAQ and Knowledge Base for quick answers.
• Check the system status page for any ongoing incidents.
• Email our support team at support@pspinsights.com.