Scan a business card or event badge

The AI Scanner reads a photo of a paper business card or an event badge and saves the person as a lead on your card. It also gives you a contact file to save to your phone.

Before you start

• You need your own card in the organisation. The scanner saves leads to the card it was opened from.
• Your organisation needs the Pro or Premium plan. On other plans, the scanner page shows Upgrade to Pro with “Please upgrade to Pro to use the AI Paper Card Scanner.”
• Use a clear, well-lit photo. The scanner accepts PNG, JPG, JPEG and WebP images up to about 10 MB.

Open the scanner

Use either of these:

• In the dashboard’s left menu, open Leads and click AI Scanner.
• On your own card, while signed in, open the card menu and tap AI Scanner under Lead capture.

The page is headed AI Scanner: “Scan a business card or event badge to instantly digitise the contact details.”

Scan a card or badge

1. Click the Upload a photo to scan box.

2. If your browser can use your camera, the Scan with AI camera opens. Choose Card or Badge to change the outline, line the card or badge up inside it, then tap Capture. To pick a photo you’ve already taken, tap Upload instead.

   If the camera can’t open, your device’s file picker opens so you can choose a photo.

3. Wait while “Processing photo…” shows. This usually takes a few seconds.

Finish the contact

After the scan, a short numbered series of steps appears. You only see the steps that apply.

1. Complete contact details. If something wasn’t found on the card, you’re asked to fill it in. Email is required here so CloudCard can send your card to the contact. Click Next.
2. Notes & Tags. Type a note in Note and add tags in Tags (type a tag and press Enter or a comma). Click Next, or Save if this is the last step. You can go back with Previous.
3. Share your card. Click Send card to email the contact your contact details, card link and QR code. You’ll see “Card shared!”. Click Skip if you don’t want to send it.

When you’re done, the contact file downloads and you see Contact saved!: “Lead created. If download did not start, tap Download again.” Click Done, or Download again if the file didn’t arrive.

The new lead is in View My Leads. Its note starts as “Scanned card”, and any note you typed is added to its Activities tab.

Good to know

• Scan one card at a time. If you try to scan while a scan is still processing, you’ll see “Scan in progress”.
• If you lose signal, the scanner keeps your latest photo and tries again when you’re back online. Only the latest photo is kept.
• If you leave the page mid-scan, the scanner picks the scan up again next time you open it (“Resuming scan…”).

If the scan fails

If you see “We could not process that image. Please retake the photo and try again.”, see The AI Scanner can’t read my image.

Related

• What is lead capture?
• Lead score, status and tags
• Enrich a lead with AI