Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with automatic smart extraction and workflow assignment of action items are described. In one embodiment, a method includes extracting a set of candidate action items from text of a construction project manual; applying static rules to the candidate action items to distinguish valid and invalid candidate action items; evaluating each valid candidate action item with a first machine learning model to label the valid candidate action item either (i) a true action item or (ii) not a true action item; evaluating each true action item with a second machine learning model to allocate each of the true action items to a construction workflow class; and transmitting the set of true action items to a submittal exchange system to populate one or more workflows.