> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.unstructured.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Overview
To start using the Unstructured UI right away, skip ahead to the [quickstarts](/ui/quickstart) now!
## What is the Unstructured UI?
The Unstructured user interface (UI) is a no-code user interface, pay-as-you-go platform for transforming your unstructured data into data that is ready for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
This 90-second video provides a brief overview of the Unstructured UI:
[Read the announcement](https://unstructured.io/blog/introducing-unstructured-platform-the-enterprise-etl-platform-for-the-genai-tech-stackintroducing-unstructured-platform-beta-the-enterprise-etl-platform-for-the-genai-tech-stack).
## How does it work?
To get your data RAG-ready, Unstructured moves it through the following process:
```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
Connect-->Route-->Transform-->Chunk-->Enrich-->Embed-->Persist
```
Unstructured offers multiple [source connectors](/ui/sources/overview) to connect to your data in its existing location.
Routing determines which strategy Unstructured uses to transform your documents into Unstructured's canonical JSON schema. Unstructured provides four [partitioning](/ui/partitioning) strategies for document transformation, as follows.
Unstructured recommends that you choose the **Auto** partitioning strategy in most cases. With **Auto**, Unstructured does all
the heavy lifting, optimizing at runtime for the highest quality at the lowest cost page-by-page.
You should consider the following additional strategies only if you are absolutely sure that your documents are of the same
type. Each of the following strategies are best suited for specific situations. Choosing one of these
strategies other than **Auto** for sets of documents of different types could produce undesirable results,
including reduction in transformation quality.
* **VLM**: For the highest-quality transformation of these file types: `.bmp`, `.gif`, `.heic`, `.jpeg`, `.jpg`, `.pdf`, `.png`, `.tiff`, and `.webp`.
* **High Res**: For all other [supported file types](/ui/supported-file-types), and for the generation of bounding box coordinates.
* **Fast**: For text-only documents.
The **Auto** partitioning strategy routes each file as a complete unit to the appropriate partitioning strategy (**VLM**, **High Res**, or **Fast**)
based on the preceding file types. Additionally, for `.pdf` files, the **Auto** partitioning strategy routes these files' pages
on a page-by-page basis, as follows:
* A page is routed to **Fast** when it contains only embedded text and no images or tables are detected.
* All other kinds of pages are routed to **VLM** or **High Res**, depending on the complexity of a page's
content. Unstructured constantly optimizes its proprietary algorithm for routing to **VLM** or **High Res** in these cases.
Your source document is transformed into Unstructured's canonical JSON schema. Regardless of the input document, this JSON schema gives you a [standardized output](/ui/document-elements). It contains more than 20 elements, such as `Header`, `Footer`, `Title`, `NarrativeText`, `Table`, `Image`, and many more. Each document is wrapped in extensive metadata so you can understand languages, file types, sources, hierarchies, and much more.
Unstructured provides these [chunking](/ui/chunking) strategies:
* **Basic** combines sequential elements up to specified size limits. Oversized elements are split, while tables are isolated and divided if necessary. Overlap between chunks is optional.
* **By Title** uses semantic chunking, understands the layout of the document, and makes intelligent splits.
* **By Page** attempts to preserve page boundaries when determining the chunks' contents.
* **By Similarity** uses an embedding model to identify topically similar sequential elements and combines them into chunks.
Images and tables can be optionally summarized. This generates enriched content around the images or tables that were parsed during the transformation process.
Unstructured uses optional third-party [embedding](/ui/embedding) providers such as OpenAI.
Unstructured offers multiple [destination connectors](/ui/destinations/overview), including all major vector databases.
To simplify this process and provide it as a no-code solution, Unstructured brings together these key concepts:
```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
SC[Source Connectors]
DC[Destination Connectors]
W[Workflow]
J[Jobs]
SC --> W
DC --> W
W --> J
```
[Source connectors](/ui/sources/overview) to ingest your data into Unstructured for transformation.
[Destination connectors](/ui/destinations/overview) tell Unstructured where to write your transformed data to.
A [workflow](/ui/workflows) connects sources to destinations and provide chunking, embedding, and scheduling options.
[Jobs](/ui/jobs) enable you to monitor data transformation progress.
## What support is there for compliance?
The platform is designed to comply with SOC 2 Type 1, SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and CMMC 2.0 Level 2. It has support for over 50 languages.
For details, see the [Unstructured Trust Portal](https://trust.unstructured.io/).
## How am I billed?
To use the Unstructured UI, you must have an Unstructured account for billing purposes.
Unstructured offers different account types with different pricing plans:
* **Let's Go** and **Pay-As-You-Go** - A single user, with a single workspace, hosted alongside other accounts on Unstructured's cloud infrastructure.
* **Business** - Multiple users and workspaces, with three options:
* **Business SaaS** - Hosted alongside other accounts on Unstructured's cloud infrastructure.
* **Dedicated instance** - Hosted within a virtual private cloud (VPC) running inside Unstructured's cloud infrastructure. Dedicated instances are isolated from all other accounts, for additional security and control.
* **In-VPC** - Hosted within your own VPC on your own cloud infrastructure.
**Business** accounts also allow for robust customization of Unstructured's features for your unique needs.
For more details, see the [Unstructured Pricing](https://unstructured.io/pricing) page.
To upgrade your account from **Let's Go** or **Pay-As-You-Go** to **Business**,
email Unstructured Sales at [sales@unstructured.io](mailto:sales@unstructured.io).
Some of these plans have billing details that are determined on a per-page basis.
Unstructured calculates a page as follows:
* For these file types, a page is a page, slide, or image: `.pdf`, `.pptx`, and `.tiff`.
* For `.docx` files that have page metadata, Unstructured calculates the number of pages based on that metadata.
* For all other file types, Unstructured calculates the number of pages as the file's size divided by 100 KB.
* For non-file data, Unstructured calculates a page as 100 KB of incoming data to be processed.
## How do I get started?
Skip ahead to the [quickstart](/ui/quickstart).
## Questions? Need help?
* For general questions about Unstructured products and pricing, email Unstructured Sales at [sales@unstructured.io](mailto:sales@unstructured.io).
* For technical support for Unstructured accounts, email Unstructured Support at [support@unstructured.io](mailto:support@unstructured.io).
This 90-second video provides a brief overview of the Unstructured UI: