> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.glbnxt.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.glbnxt.com/tutorials/guides/docling-in-n8n.md).

# Using Docling in n8n

### Introduction

Docling is an advanced document parsing engine designed to convert complex, multi-format documents (such as PDFs, DOCX, and PPTX) into clean, LLM-ready Markdown or JSON structures. Integrating Docling into your n8n workflows within the GLBNXT ecosystem allows you to build highly accurate Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines and document processing agents.

***

### Prerequisites

Before configuring Docling within your n8n workflows, ensure you have the following:

* **n8n Environment:** An active instance of n8n running within your secure GLBNXT workspace.
* **Docling Credentials:** Use the url provided in **Configuration** to setup your Docling Account.

***

### Installation

#### Step 1: Add the Docling Serve Node

1. Create a new workflow or open an existing one
2. Open the nodes panel by selecting **+** or pressing **N**
3. Search for **Docling Serve**

<img src="/files/nxV5QhqStgbJPSMhsGj2" alt="" width="200">

4. Select one of the **Actions**

<img src="/files/DHH5ocLt0pwvLdkLJQmc" alt="" width="200">

#### Step 2: Add the Credentials

1. Create a new Docling Account
2. Use this **Base URL:**

```url
http://platform-docling.platform-docling
```

3. You can leave the **API Key** open
4. You are now able to use Docling in n8n

#### Step 3: Example

1. Create the following flow in n8n:

<img src="/files/TzOg1IGKQxSykNoT0ZRb" alt="" width="200">

* **Parser:** Search for 'Parser' in the `Search` bar, drag the node to the playground and select 'Stringify' for **Mode**.
* **Chat Output:** Search for 'Chat Output' in the `Search` bar and drag the node to the playground.

2. Select a file in the **Docling Serve** node
3. Click `Playground` at the right top corner of your screen
4. Press `Run Flow` at the bottom of your screen
5. You will get the following output:
6. The json "text" output displays the converted content of the selected document and can be used to build highly effective document processing agents.

***

### Configuration

This section covers all configuration options available in Docling. Use these parameters to customize extraction pipelines, adjust OCR models, tune table structure identification, and tweak Vision-Language Models (VLM).

#### 1. Document Format & Export Configurations

**`Resource`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Document`
* **Description**: Specifies the overarching asset type being targeted for the processing workflow.
* **Useful Scenario**: Primarily used to establish whether the incoming asset stream is a text/file asset versus other system resources.

**`Operation`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Convert From URL`
* **Description**: Defines the execution method applied to the resource.
* **Useful Scenario**: Select `Convert From URL` when documents are hosted on external cloud storage (like AWS S3 or a public web server) to fetch and process them on the fly.

**`Source URL`**

* **Type**: `string` (URL Input field)
* **Default**: Empty / Example placeholder (`[https://example.com/document.pdf](https://example.com/document.pdf)`)
* **Description**: The direct network path where the target document is located for remote processing.
* **Useful Scenario**: Point this directly to a shared corporate link or a cloud-hosted PDF file that needs to be imported into your system.

**`From Formats`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector / Multi-select)
* **Default**: `Select` (All/Auto)
* **Description**: Filters or explicitly defines the allowed incoming file formats for processing.
* **Useful Scenario**: If you want to ensure your pipeline ignores accidental spreadsheet uploads and strictly handles legal briefs, you can restrict this option to source formats like PDF or Word.

**`To Formats`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector / Multi-select)
* **Default**: Empty
* **Description**: Specifies the desired target output format(s) for the converted document (e.g., Markdown, JSON, HTML).
* **Useful Scenario**: Set this to Markdown if you are feeding the resulting text chunks straight into an LLM context window.

**`Image Export Mode`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Embedded`
* **Description**: Controls how extracted document images are packaged within the final export file.
* **Useful Scenario**: Set to `Embedded` if you require an autonomous single-file asset containing base64 images. Use alternative referenced paths if you prefer keeping file sizes lean.

**`Images Scale`**

* **Type**: `number` (Numeric input)
* **Default**: `2`
* **Description**: Adjusts the scaling multiplier or resolution modifier applied to images extracted from the document body.
* **Useful Scenario**: Increase the scaling value if you notice that embedded charts or handwritten notes require higher clarity for downstream human review or secondary inspection.

**`Include Images`**

* **Type**: `boolean` (Toggle switch)
* **Default**: `true` (Enabled)
* **Description**: Determines whether visual images, figures, and graphical assets should be preserved and extracted alongside the text.
* **Useful Scenario**: Turn this toggle off to speed up processing times and save storage if you only care about textual data extraction.

**`Markdown Page Break`**

* **Type**: `string` (Text input field)
* **Default**: Empty (`<!-- page-break -->` placeholder)
* **Description**: Appends a specific string boundary token between individual pages within Markdown generation tracks.
* **Useful Scenario**: Specifying a clear tag allows automated static site generators or page splitters downstream to isolate page-by-page rendering.

#### 2. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Controls

**`Do OCR`**

* **Type**: `boolean` (Toggle switch)
* **Default**: `true` (Enabled)
* **Description**: Activates or deactivates OCR parsing on bitmap, scanned, or non-selectable visual documents.
* **Useful Scenario**: Turn this off if you exclusively process raw digital-native text documents (like direct HTML or system-generated text files) to drastically decrease overall execution latency.

**`Force OCR`**

* **Type**: `boolean` (Toggle switch)
* **Default**: `false` (Disabled)
* **Description**: Replaces a PDF file's native underlying text layer entirely with freshly synthesized characters computed directly via the active OCR engine.
* **Useful Scenario**: Indispensable for handling legacy documents possessing corrupted or misaligned embedded text tracks where copy-pasted words manifest as gibberish.

**`OCR Engine`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Auto`
* **Description**: Selects the structural toolkit ecosystem deployed for running standard OCR extraction models.
* **Useful Scenario**: Switch from `Auto` to a specific engine framework if your hosting environment implements a highly optimized local engine binary.

**`OCR Languages`**

* **Type**: `string` (Comma-separated text input)
* **Default**: Empty (`en, de, fr` placeholder)
* **Description**: Feeds targeted explicit language code requirements down to the underlying active engine library instances.
* **Useful Scenario**: Explicitly supply regional language tags when parsing complex multi-lingual trade contracts containing specific localized character accents.

#### 3. Core Engine Pipelines & Table Management

**`PDF Backend`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Diparse V4 (Default)`
* **Description**: Adjusts the specific backend library framework engine targeted for decoding layout coordinates and structural features inside PDF binaries.
* **Useful Scenario**: Swap backends if a highly specialized PDF formatting layout fails to map correctly under the default parser.

**`Do Table Structure`**

* **Type**: `boolean` (Toggle switch)
* **Default**: `true` (Enabled)
* **Description**: Toggles whether advanced spatial structure extraction features should map grid blocks across document tables.
* **Useful Scenario**: Turn this off when digitizing narrative-heavy text novels or basic text logs to skip intensive spatial positioning passes.

**`Table Cell Matching`**

* **Type**: `boolean` (Toggle switch)
* **Default**: `true` (Enabled)
* **Description**: Ties visual engine bounding calculations directly back against low-level PDF structural layout lines.
* **Useful Scenario**: Disabling this helps avoid table generation failures if a document contains heavily merged columns or complex internal borders that cause structural bounding boxes to break.

**`Table Mode`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Accurate (Default)`
* **Description**: Adjusts the structural layout identification weight models toward high-speed or deep-accuracy parsing algorithms.
* **Useful Scenario**: Select a faster mode for rapid real-time screen indexing pipelines, or leave it on `Accurate` when transforming detailed multi-column financial reports.

**`Pipeline`**

* **Type**: `string` (Dropdown selector)
* **Default**: `Standard (Default)`
* **Description**: Instructs the system which core processing assembly pipeline template path executes your ingestion.
* **Useful Scenario**: Switch to specialized alternative pipelines if your specific document workflow requires custom model routing on intensive graphic structures.

#### 4. Layout, Enrichments, & Vision-Language Models (VLM)

**Enriched Data Extractors**

* **`Do Chart Extraction`**: Extracts and structures statistical or informational data charts into usable matrix values (`false` by default).
* **`Do Code Enrichment`**: Extracts, identifies, and formats inline source code or script blocks (`false` by default).
* **`Do Formula Enrichment`**: Evaluates complex mathematical structures and equations into rendered text or layout strings (`false` by default).
* **Useful Scenario**: Highly effective if you build educational workflows converting scanned scientific papers or engineering textbooks into clean, web-ready markdown materials.

**Image Descriptions and Classifications**

* **`Do Picture Classification`**: Automatically tags and catalogs the broad category type of pictures found within documents (`false` by default).
* **`Do Picture Description`**: Generates context-aware textual AI descriptions for visual elements found in documents (`false` by default).
* **`Picture Description Area Threshold`**: (Default: `0.05`) Minimum graphic area page share size required before firing AI evaluation passes.
* **Useful Scenario**: Enables accessibility compliance pipelines to auto-generate alt-text descriptions for charts inside corporate manuals.

**VLM Custom Ensembles (Presets)**

* **`Code/Formula Preset`**: Text input field allowing a custom preset configuration or model selection to optimize code and mathematical formulas.
* **`Picture Description Preset`**: Allows targeting a specific vision model variant optimized for generating text descriptions from images.
* **`VLM Pipeline Preset`**: Connects your document structure engine instance with pre-configured Vision-Language Models.
* **Useful Scenario**: Essential if your enterprise infrastructure mandates the pipeline to rely on highly specialized, fine-tuned, or offline VLM models.

#### 5. System Execution Constraints

**`Document Timeout`**

* **Type**: `number` (Numeric input field)
* **Default**: `300` (seconds)
* **Description**: Sets the maximum processing time allowed for a single document workflow before forcing a thread cancellation.
* **Useful Scenario**: Lower this value in user-facing synchronous web applications to prevent corrupted or excessively massive files from hanging server worker threads.

**`Abort on Error`**

* **Type**: `boolean` (Toggle switch)
* **Default**: `false` (Disabled)
* **Description**: Dictates whether the pipeline should immediately crash upon encountering an exception or log it and keep processing remaining pages.
* **Useful Scenario**: Turn this toggle on during strict automated validation testing, or leave it disabled in bulk-production setups so a single corrupted layout segment doesn't ruin a large batch import.

#### 6. Document Bounds Management

**`Page Range Start`**

* **Type**: `number` (Numeric input field)
* **Default**: `0` (Processes from the true start of the document)
* **Description**: Sets the initial page boundary index where processing, layout rendering, and text conversion begin.
* **Useful Scenario**: Set to a specific page number if you wish to skip introductory title pages, table of contents, or legal disclaimers.

**`Page Range End`**

* **Type**: `number` (Numeric input field)
* **Default**: `0` (Processes until the end of the document)
* **Description**: Caps the maximum page bounds. A value of `0` processes the entire asset through its final page.
* **Useful Scenario**: When parsing 500-page corporate financial filings but your analytics application only needs the introductory summary, set an ending bounds limit to save resources.

***

### Troubleshooting

**Issue: Timeout Errors on Large PDF Documents**

* **Cause:** Complex or multi-hundred-page PDFs can require significant processing time for layout and OCR analysis.
* **Solution:** Increase the **Timeout** parameter within the n8n HTTP Request node settings (under *Advanced Settings*) to `300000` ms (5 minutes) or split massive document streams into smaller chunks prior to parsing.

**Issue: Binary File Property Missing**

* **Cause:** The HTTP Request node is looking for a binary property that doesn't match the output name of the incoming source file.
* **Solution:** Verify the input scheme. Check the execution data from the preceding node and match the property name exactly (e.g., `attachment_0` vs `data`).

**Issue: Network Isolation / Connection Refused**

* **Cause:** GLBNXT’s default strict security compliance policy blocks unauthorized traffic between containers.
* **Solution:** Ensure that your n8n network policies explicitly allow outbound requests to the internal microservice endpoint hosting Docling.

***

*Need help? Contact the GLBNXT support team or ask a GLBNXT agent to walk you through the setup.*


---

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