There’s videos and screenshots of the “Workflows” feature in this thread, as well as web links to pages describing the feature with pictures. Look around the thread for the blue links and you’ll be able to see how great “Workflows” are and why they matter a lot.
Or just go to one of the posts with the most links, which also lays out what DEVONtechnologies stands to gain financially:
For those with a copy of Scanner Pro, I’d like to suggest that you play with it and test the Workflow feature to get a better understanding of what he’s outlined. If you do not have a copy, consider getting a copy as it really is top flight.
Of all the options available from my shortsighted perspective, integration with Scanner Pro appears to be the best short term option - unless DT are further along in developing their own integrated solution.
BTW, I do not doubt that DT has the skill to pull off such an option given their software skill in accomplishing what they have both on the Mac and now on mobile.
I agree that DTTG has distinguished itself pretty well as a total package. I was arguing in that post about specific features, though, which I think a lot of users focus on when comparing apps. In particular, the web clipping stuff seems to really get folks excited. I suggested that DT could add “clip to PDF” to distinguish itself from others. However, please scratch that. With iOS 10 (as Eric blogged about, and others have posted about in this forum), we’ve got a great feature. I finally updated and gave it a spin today. This is great. I’ve been sending tons of stuff to DTTG all day with it. This’ll make my life a lot easier. The only problem is the bug that strips file names and replaces them with the date. Fixed soon, I hope 
I think I’ll end up using the workflow feature, but it isn’t something that seems likely to be terribly useful to me. We’ll see. As for the DTTG integration, it does seem like an easy thing to implement, so I don’t think DT has anything to lose by getting in touch with the developers. I am not so optimistic about the flood of new users, but the more DTTG fits into the rest of the iOS world, the more likely folks are to consider it, so there doesn’t seem to be a downside here.
[EDIT]: In fact, with this print to PDF thing, I don’t even need a web clipper at all. I know it is one of those killer features for other folks, but as far as I am concerned, you can stop developing that aspect of DTTG
Appearances are often very deceiving, my friend. 
Well, as it was presented here. I have no knowledge about the technical details. In fact, if it is not easy to implement, don’t waste your time with it. I’m fine with how things work right now. There are (as I suggested about AI above) much more interesting / exciting / revolutionary things to do with your time
Yeah - there are definitely things to explore for future enhancements. All in good time. 
We have added your excellent idea to our to-do list and we will explore further when the most pressing issues are solved.
Thanks for considering the proposal, Eric. 
I had given up hope.
Good luck with the success of DEVONthink To Go 2 and keep up the great work! It’s like having an office on the go. The most technologically advanced pocket scanner app is the perfect complementary tool for DttG. In fact, next trip I will only bring my iPhone and these two apps. 
Thanks guys (both DEVONtechnologies and Readdle) for finally making it possible to leave my laptop behind. And maybe in the future there’ll be a collaboration which makes this portable office even better integrated, smoother and even more powerful. 
This workflow integration would be a dream come true for me as well. I’m an avid genealogist, and often have to resort to using scanner pro at libraries, etc. These documents later get added to DT.
This would certainly take my research to a whole new level!
At first I read that you’re an avid gynecologist… 
For me this all came down to a simple but serious requirement: I’m about to sell my desktop Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner and wanted the best possible quality from the pocket scanner I’m using as a replacement, since I am forever-archiving very important documents and throwing away the originals. Since this is for permanent archiving where I throw away the original paper document, the quality of the archived copy matters a lot. And there’s nothing that beats Scanner Pro’s final page quality. That’s what truly matters more than anything else: The quality of the resulting PDF.
I’m all for competition and clone apps, and if someone beats Scanner Pro’s excellent photo quality someday then I’ll switch instantly. So far none have in the 7 years since Scanner Pro created the first scanning app. There are now some “okay” quality clones, but why settle for “okay”?
Well, I’ve got a trip to prepare for, so I’ll take a bow from this forum. Take care everyone! 
First I need to set a few things straight. I’ve used (and actively use) both Scanner Pro and Scanbot. Each has their own strengths and faults and to say one is the best above the other is a bit of a stretch. There are times when I’ve managed better and more accurate results with Scanbot and other times Scanner Pro produces better results. Things stated as groundbreaking in Scanner Pro first appeared in Scanbot (if my memory serves me), namely auto-naming, workflows, auto-snap etc.
That however is beside the point and entirely off-topic (just a minor rant). More to the point… While I can’t entirely disagree with the suggestion, this is somewhat possible at the moment (albeit using a mac in the mix).
Allow me to offer a 1 step alternative using either scanbot or Scanner Pro…
Step 1: Scan document and using each app’s workflow feature, upload to a folder that is indexed via DTP… There, done
Yes! That’s exactly right. What I call the long fussy journey through DEVONland, just to get something from one place to another is frequently not needed.
That workaround requires an always-on, always-online computer. So it kills “on the go” living. Otherwise you’ll be on your iPhone, scan a document, and never see it appear in DEVONthink.
If you primarily (or only) use the Mac edition, then sure, sit in your computer chair, pick up your phone, scan to a dropbox folder, put down the phone again, and let that folder be indexed by DTP for Mac or organized via the Hazel app for Mac.
But when you don’t even have a Mac, or don’t want to sit at the desk, or don’t want to have a computer on 24/7 at home just for the ability to easily move documents, then unfortunately there’s only two options for working entirely on the iPhone: The clunky 9-step “Share” process (repeated for each file). Or better integration.
The clunky desktop workaround above made me think of a different mobile-only solution:
Easy 3rd Party Integration Solution!
On the contrary, quite on-topic. Because it helps demonstrate the fallacy that’s being set up here. Someone gets totally enamoured with a particular app or workflow that works for them. The first mistake there is to claim that there is one app that rules them all. Rarely, if ever, is there such a thing. Actually DTTG comes (to me!) closest in that respect.
I like Scanner Pro a lot. But, for example, if it does not find the shape of the boundary correctly, and you have to hand-adjust, I find FasterScan much better (for example, you can not only move corner points - whose move pads are much larger and less fiddly - but you can also parallel-displace sides of the boundary which I find quite important). Depending on what and how you scan, it is not clear at all to me that one is better than the other. Since “open in” is universal, it provides an avenue for all communication between these apps, albeit at a generic level.
Note that this is explicitly in the spirit of iOS: The way Apple set it up, it is nothing but a companion to the Mac. It is not a full-fledged system. And people, including Apple execs, who claim that the 12.9 iPad Pro is replacing the computer for good, are off the mark by a margin. This might be true for a few very specific occupations.
Android users always brag that they have a full filesystem, and Surface users have all of Windows and its power, including scripting, available. On those systems, people could presumably knock themselves out implementing these highly optimized schemes (just like we do on the Mac), but the funny thing is that generally I don’t see them operating at that level out there in the wild, and a LOT of the productivity seems to be achieved with iOS devices, which are locked down quite massively (that’s one reason for the skimpy inter-app communications) but so far have evaded any serious system breaches. So tentatively, I’d say that Apple’s approach of keeping iOS simple and clearly apart from OS X has been correct.
OK, now it’s me who’s gone off-topic.
I’m not enamored with Scanner Pro, and have said that I’d switch in a heartbeat if something consistently beats its photo algorithms, because the only thing that matters is the final PDF quality.
I’ve bought and tried Scanbot and the rest of the top 10 of popular scanning apps, until settling for the one and only original. This has been the experience of a lot of other people too.
The competitors’ GUIs can trick one into thinking “wow, Scanbot has a techy GUI and must therefore be very advanced”, but having an advanced-looking GUI doesn’t translate into having advanced photo DSP algorithms under the hood. Scanbot is okay. But the PDF results are most consistently the best in Scanner Pro - with the fastest edge detection, cleanest distortion correction, most accurate white balance, shadow removal, etc. And a very nice GUI too. I’ll switch if something ever beats it.
As for Scanbot being the first to come up with the workflows idea: That’s possibly true. Does it matter who came up with something? In that case I could correctly say that Scanner Pro came up with the whole idea of scanning via the phone on iOS (they were the first). Does that discredit all competitors cloning it? Of course not. All I care about is who does it best. Because once the scan is done, you’re no longer looking at some fancy app GUI. You’re looking at a PDF. And it better be perfect!
I absolutely agree, gg378.
Indirectly! It shows that any day, another app could come out with the next killer enhancement to the workflow. Our “golden app” might or might not adopt it. And that’s why it is not useful for the devs to consider chaining themselves to one particular scan app in terms of specific coding.
Something more realistic would be to licence an engine for a specific task, and incorporate it in your own app. Than you control how that works. That’s for example how ABBY OCR works in DT. But the flipside then clearly is that users start complaining that the latest ABBY standalone (or other products) can do this and that, which the DT OCR engine can’t (you can easily find threads on this). Plus it drives the cost of your app up (unless you make it in-app purchase).
As Bluefrog mentioned in the other thread, it would be for the same reason suicidal for DT to cater to Dropbox APIs, and even worse, Cloudme, Box, iCloud, Google Drive, whatever the MS things is called these days etc. Nevermind that this would require an active net connection.
Having said all that: If I had to choose three in-app “engines” in DTTG, I would probably suggest:
It all depends on what the typical user needs. That’s what matters. I scan maybe 3 or 4 things a week on the iPhone. Therefore, the new “import to DT” function is 100% good enough for me. I don’t know for sure, but I’d wager that the vast majority of users falls in the same camp, or scan even less. In a world where the devs already struggle to stay ahead with all the things that Apple breaks on new OS releases, that last bit that is fairly specific to a small group has to inevitably stay behind. If you’re a bulk scanner, there are many decent options, like scanning to Dropbox in your favourite app, and then bringing that material into DT on the Mac.
Again, Apple is a good example. There are very vocal complainers who claim that a phone without a swappable battery is useless, same with SD cards. Yet I’m sure, Apple has a very good idea of how many people actual do swap batteries: Close to none. So should the rest suffer through the constant popping off of the battery cover just for these self-appointed pro-users? I’d say “no”.
That’s your opinion about that app.
All I’m saying is:
Your argument hinges on the belief that this would be chaining DttG 2 to Scanner Pro. That’s not how it would work. All DttG 2 would do is to create an automatable, inter-app “inbox” API method (basically like a physical mailbox where any mailman can drop a package), which any iOS app can use to locally send one or more files directly into DEVONthink’s global inbox without requiring tedious multi-step user interaction. (It’s up to DttG what to do with those incoming files; it could for example require per-app authentication tokens which would only allow the user’s list of approved apps to send files directly to DttG).
So creating an avenue of direct integration in DEVONthink To Go 2 would enable many more apps - not just Scanner Pro - to integrate themselves in the future. And if another app overtakes Scanner Pro in the quality department, we can just ask that developer nicely if they want to implement DttG2’s automatable “send to inbox” API, with no further development required from DEVONtechnologies’ side since their incoming inbox-API is already finished by that point.
Look at what happened with the “Audiobus” (audiob.us) technique. It enables audio apps to send audio to each other. Now all audio apps use it and even Apple has embraced it.
Interoperability is a good thing. For document archiving apps, doubly so.