Working with Isabel Business Suite 5.0 - General
In 1996 Isabel was launched as a multi-bank platform for electronic banking between banks and companies. However, since then Isabel has also been developed to become a platform for electronic invoicing (eInvoice), electronic commerce (eCommerce), and electronic message exchange with the government (eGovernment). Whether you send transfers, invoices, order sheets or forms, in Isabel the data of these transactions or messages is always placed in virtual envelopes you can close, sign and send, just as in real life. Envelopes are a means of representing your work in Isabel graphically, and of sorting it logically.

1. Envelopes always contain data of one particular type. For instance, you cannot save an e-mail and a transfer in the same envelope.
2. If you create a payment, you need to choose in which envelope you want to save the payment. You can choose an existing (standard) envelope or create an new one by entering a name for the envelope (e.g. Transfer to Supplier X). You do not need to select an envelope for e-mail. E-mail is automatically saved in an envelope with the subject of the e-mail as its name.
3. Envelopes are (initially) saved in your workspace. When you are ready and you do not want to add any more payments to an envelope, you need to prepare envelopes for signature. Isabel dispatches the content of your (work) envelope across several envelopes with the same recipient (for instance, not all transfers are for the same bank). Afterwards you can sign these envelopes with your digital signature.

You can also put an envelope directly in the outbox without first preparing it for signature. The Prepare and Sign steps then follow each other automatically

4. You move the envelopes you consider as completed from your workspace to your outbox – which is like the box of outgoing mail on your desk. To actually send them to the recipients (your banks, clients, the government, …) you must click on Send . Isabel then connects up with IsaServer to send the envelopes in your outbox to their recipients.
5. You can check the reception and processing of envelopes sent in the Sent messages folder. A copy of each envelope you send is kept in this folder. For instance, for envelopes with payments your bank sends you a confirmation message, which you can consult in this folder.