How records arrive in Biosphere

Files, emails, connected services and API records all land in the Inbox first. Your catalog, contacts, inventory and orders change only after a mapping says what the rows mean and a person approves the changes.

Follow an arrival from start to finish

1. Something arrives: you upload a file, an email reaches your business address, or a Shopify store syncs. Each becomes one retained arrival in Inbox; its source identifies who issued it.
2. Biosphere checks each file for safety and keeps the original exactly as it arrived. You can download it at any time.
3. Biosphere reads it. CSV files and spreadsheets are read row by row. PDFs, images and documents are read page by page for supplier and product details.
4. You choose who issued the records, such as your supplier Alder Supply. This is the record’s source.
5. Review the record type and our fields. A known layout or connection can fill the meanings. Orders include lines and related records in the same review. Shared layouts remember meaning; a source can override individual fields.
6. You review the changes. Biosphere lists every record it would create or update, with current and proposed values side by side. Nothing has changed yet.
7. You approve. Biosphere saves the changes. The original, the mapping and every decision stay with the source.

Choose where records come in

• Files: drop files under the Inbox list, or open Configure → Connections → Files. See Upload files.
• Email: forward email to the address shown in Configure → Connections → Email. See Receive records by email.
• Shopify: connect a store in Configure → Connections → Shopify. See Connect a Shopify store.

All three end up in the same Inbox and follow the same mapping, review and approval steps.

Let later arrivals apply on their own

Approving a known source’s choices enables automatic processing after validation. Use Configure → Sources to choose Review each time instead. Later arrivals still need trusted attribution and approved meaning and must pass validation and ownership checks. Unassigned one-off imports always need review.

Anything that needs a decision still waits in Inbox: new columns, blocking issues, a name another item already uses, or a field a person changed by hand. See Map a source.

What to know

• Saving a mapping never changes records. Approval is always a separate step.
• Nothing is thrown away. Dismissing a review, replaying a source or reading a document again keeps the original and every earlier result.
• Scout can read your Inbox and propose record matches. A person approves imports and matches.
• Inbox is the one place to follow every arrival. The Files, Email and Shopify pages link back to it with Open in Inbox.