Automate emails and integrate applications

This post explores how to extract data from emails, automate backend processes and hence reduce repetitive tasks. It also provides an overview of how to integrate LOB applications using some of the solutions provided on this site.

Automate email with attachments

What options do you have when it comes to automating emails?

Mail Attachment Downloader PRO versions offer a cost-effective solution to automating emails within your enterprise running as a service on a server or in the cloud through Windows Azure (PRO Server version required).

The way this is achieved is using rules for emails. You can setup many rules for the software based on your needs via the UI. These rules can be run for a single email account or across many accounts simultaneously.

Scheduled processing

Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server lets you process incoming email on a scheduled frequency in the background 24×7 unattended as a Windows service.

It can recover from system restarts automatically, runs in the background even when no user is logged on and can also data center failure if a hot-standby is used to do so.

It can also be run in the cloud using Windows Azure if needed.

Ordering of rules

The rules defined in the program are run top-down for each email and attachment. The first matching rule is used to download any emails or attachments within the email. If no rules are defined, then all emails will be downloaded.

Phases of rule processing

The software breaks down processing emails into the following phases for each rule as shown.

email processing

 

  • Search and Filter phase: For each rule, you can specify which emails or attachments need to be processed by including search filters using the Add button -> Filters
  • Save files: Specify the format and location of where you want any files to be processed to be saved. This could be a temporary location if you do not want this data permanently stored. This could also include a file share (use UNC path).
  • Process email and files: This last phase is used to run the automatic processing and includes many different actions as shown below. These can include nested actions for example, unzip a file, decrypt a PDF, extract data and save the information to a database.

email actions

Multiple email accounts and filters

Once these are setup for a rule, you can enter many such rules. If you have multiple email accounts to process, you can restrict a rule to apply to only one email account if needed by using an account filter (Add -> Filters -> Account email in the rule).

SDK or API for email integration and processing

We now offer an SDK or plugin API to integrate with your backend systems in a more seamless manner. Contact us for more.

Common uses

  • Archive emails for further processing
  • Receive invoice data via email and need to save data for invoice processing
  • Save emails and integrate with ERP, EDI, eDMS, eCMS, document management systems or content management systems, eInvoicing invoicing software, Salesforce or medical systems
  • Use our PRO SDK (Software Development Kit) to integrate directly with your LOB applications.
  • Save emails or Excel or CSV attachments sent via email to an in-house or cloud database for further processing
  • Convert emails to PDFs or multi-page TIFF or over 50+ formats or merge/split PDFs including attachments to hand-off to other document management systems or medical software
  • Run custom in-house scripts after extracting attachments
  • Auto-respond or send email notifications when certain types of emails or attachments arrive and then take other actions

Conclusion: Automate emails, process and integrate applications

We have provided a brief overview of how to automate data from emails within your enterprise using an on-prem service or a cloud-based self-hosted service using Windows Azure using Mail Attachment Downloader PRO.

If you have a specific use-case that is not covered let us know or if you need help integrating your backend systems we may be able to offer consultation services to do so.

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.

Bulk download emails, attachments and save

Mail Attachment Downloader lets you bulk download attachments,  bulk download emails and archive or save them as eml, pdf, docx, tiff and more.

Saving emails and email attachments has never been easier. We offer a FREE version available on our website and also a PRO version that has additional capabilities that the FREE version does not.

Mail Attachment Downloader is NOT dependent on any installed email client such as Outlook and can work independently on a server if need be.

The FREE version lets you bulk download email attachments. The PRO version lets you bulk download both email attachments and emails (in .eml format or .txt or .html formats or .pdf or .docx or a .tiff multipage image).

If you want to save emails and attachments into a SINGLE PDF, you can do so as described in this blog post.

Bulk download emails as .eml and save

We will explore how to set this up using the  Mail Attachment Downloader PRO version.

  • Create a new rule filter by going to the Global Filters tab and clicking on Add a new filter.
  • Type in the rule name for the new filter.
  • In the Save area, check the Save as .eml checkbox as shown

    madpro3_saveemailbody
    Bulk download emails

This will bulk download emails as .eml files to the save folder.

In addition to the above, you can create many rules to only save certain .eml files like those that match a certain FROM email or a certain SUBJECT each out to different folders by creating a rule per save location.

Save emails and email attachments as PDF, DOCX or TIFF

If you want to have this .eml saved to a different format like PDF or DOCX or a multipage TIFF (the PRO Server supports over 50+ file formats), do the following:

  • In the Actions after save section, click on Add action -> Document conversion
  • Select the Document conversion entry if not already selected and click the Add conversion button

    convert to pdf
    archive emails
  • Select the From type as Any doc and the To type as PDF or TIFF or DOCX.

That’s it!

Now you have emails being saved to PDF or any other format as desired.

If you want only the .eml to be saved without the attachments, you can add a Filename filter and specify ‘.eml’ in the filter text box. This will only download the .eml’s without downloading the attachments separately.

If you want to save emails and attachments into a SINGLE PDF, you can do so as described in this blog post.

Automate bulk downloads

With the PRO Server version you can run the above setup 24×7 as a Windows Service and not have to worry about opening up the program every time you need to bulk download emails.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.

Nested email actions: unzip, convert or decrypt PDF and run a script

Setup email actions such as unzipping an email attachment, converting the email attachment to pdf and running a script easily with Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server.

This post will show you how to setup a rule to Unzip a file, then convert the unzipped .docx or decrypt a .pdf and then run a script.

In the Actions section, do the following:

  1. Select ‘After saving attachment‘ from the tree view on the left. Note that even though this says ‘After saving attachment‘, you can run actions on the body of the email as well which will be downloaded as an attachment when you click on the ‘Save email text’ checkbox.
  2. Click on Add button -> After saving attachment -> Unzip files and select any options as shown below. You can enter which specific files you want to unzip in the box which can also include wildcards or regular expressions. If you have multiple, separate each file or wildcard by a new line.automate email actions: unzip_files
  3. Select Unzip files from the tree view on the left. This is necessary to create a sub action under unzip files so every unzipped file runs the remaining action. You can also specify which files to unzip in the previous step. Now click on Add -> After saving attachment ->  Document conversion. Fill in the conversion details by clicking on the Add Conversion button. Note: You can also choose to decrypt the unzipped file if the source file was a PDF by providing the password to decrypt the file.automate email actions: madpro3_convert
  4. Select Document conversion from the tree view on the left. Then Add -> After saving attachment -> Run command line. Enter details to run a command line. In this case we are running a .bat file with the filename of the converted file – {FILENAMEEXT} in the screenshot below now represents the converted filename now from the previous step and not the original saved filename. automate email actions: madpro3_pda_runbat

That’s it.

If you have questions or need additional actions, please contact us and we can help assess feasibility.

 

PDF to DOCX conversion and more

Convert PDF to DOCX easily with Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server

When you run the server version you can run the program as a Windows Service that runs 24×7 unattended. Then just email the PDF as an attachment to your email and have Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server pick it up and automatically download/convert the file and save it in the way you want it.

  1. Open Global filters tab and either click the Add new filter or Edit selected filter button
  2. If you are creating a new rule, just enter a meaningful filter name.
  3. Under Actions, click Add action and choose  Document conversion. This will add a new action in the list to the left. Click on the Document conversion list item under After saving file. You will see the conversions that are configured on the right side. convert to pdf
  4. Click on the Add conversion button.
  5. In the From Type select Any doc and the To Type specify docx. Click OK.PDF to DOCX
  6. Save the rule and that’s it!

Any email that you receive that has a PDF attachment (including some other related formats like LaTeX etc.) will be converted to DOCX.

If you receive encrypted PDF files, you can provide the decryption password in the PDF Decryption Password text box as can be seen in the screenshot in Step-5. You will need to do this before you can convert it to DOCX.

With the Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server version, you can use it to convert emails (.eml or .msg or .txt or .html) and email attachments (text, html, word, excel, powerpoint and more) to over 50+ formats (bmp, csv, dif, doc, docm, docx, dot, dotm, dotx, emf, epub, excel, flatopc, flatopcmacroenabled, flatopctemplate, flatopctemplatemacroenabled, html, htmlfixed, jpeg, mhtml, mobixml, odp, ods, odt, openxps, ott, pdf, pdfnotes, png, potm, potx, pps, ppsm, ppsx, ppt, pptm, pptx, ps, rtf, spreadsheetml, svg, swf, tabdelimited, tex, text, tiff, tiffnotes, wordml, xamlfixed, xamlflow, xamlflowpack, xlam, xlsb, xlsm, xlsx, xltm, xltx, xml, xps)!

You can use this to convert from the following popular formats:

  • DOCX to PDF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • PDF to DOCX, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • CSV, XLSX to PDF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • PPTX to PDF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • EML to PDF, DOCX, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • JPEG, BMP, TIFF, images to PDF, DOCX, HTML and more

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact support.

Convert emails to PDF or TIFF including email attachments

Save emails as PDF or TIFF

It is really easy to save emails to PDF or convert email attachments to PDF with the Mail Attachment Downloader PRO and Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server.

Converting document attachments to PDF or TIFF

  1. Create a new filter or edit an existing one in the Global Rule tab
  2. Under Actions, click Add action and choose  Document conversion. This will add a new action in the list to the left. Click on the Document conversion list item under After saving file. You will see the conversions that are configured on the right side. convert to pdf
  3. Add a new document conversion by clicking the ‘Add conversion‘ button.
  4. Pick the source format (From Type) and the destination format (To Type).  If you are using the PRO Server, then you can pick any format in the To. Otherwise, you will be limited to just PDF.
    convert to pdf
  5. Click OK

That’s it!

Now each document attachment (doc, docx, txt, html, rtf, eml etc.)  will be converted to PDF or TIFF or any To Type you selected above.

If you want to also save the email body in addition to the attachments as PDF or TIFF, check the Save as .eml checkbox in the rule and the document conversion action (from Doc -> PDF or TIFF) will also convert the .eml file to PDF or TIFF. The .eml extension is considered a document for conversion purposes.

If you want to convert other types such as cells (xlsx etc.), slides (ppt etc.) or images (jpgs etc), you can repeat Step-3 to add the different From’s if you would like.

This will save each attachment as a separate PDF or TIFF files. Further below we show how you can save emails and attachments as a single PDF. You can also save emails and attachments to a multi-page TIFF if required by following the same instructions except select tiff as the To type.

You may also choose to encrypt the PDF file by checking the ‘Encrypt PDF‘ checkbox if needed.

Save emails and attachments to a single PDF

To save emails and attachments as a single PDF, you will need the PRO Server version and the following setup:

  • Make sure Save as .eml is checked, this will save the email body.save as email
  • Ensure Document Conversion action is added and includes conversions from various types to PDF as shown below. Check the delete source files after conversion checkbox.Convert to PDF
  • The above will save the body and attachments all separately as PDF files. You can skip the next step if that’s all you want to do (save as separate files).
  • To merge them into a single PDF: Right click on Document Conversion and then add Merge PDF files action. Check the delete all source PDFs checkbox.

    Merge PDFs
    Merge PDFs

Now emails along with attachments will end up being a single PDF where the email is the first few pages and subsequent pages are the attachments rendered as PDFs.

Over 50+ Formats

If you get the Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server version, you can use it to convert emails (.eml or .msg or .txt or .html) and email attachments (text, html, word, excel, powerpoint and more) to over 50+ formats (bmp, csv, dif, doc, docm, docx, dot, dotm, dotx, emf, epub, excel, flatopc, flatopcmacroenabled, flatopctemplate, flatopctemplatemacroenabled, html, htmlfixed, jpeg, mhtml, mobixml, odp, ods, odt, openxps, ott, pdf, pdfnotes, png, potm, potx, pps, ppsm, ppsx, ppt, pptm, pptx, ps, rtf, spreadsheetml, svg, swf, tabdelimited, tex, text, tiff, tiffnotes, wordml, xamlfixed, xamlflow, xamlflowpack, xlam, xlsb, xlsm, xlsx, xltm, xltx, xml, xps)!

You can use this to convert from the following popular formats:

  • DOCX to PDF, multi-page TIFF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • PDF to DOCX, multi-page TIFF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • CSV, XLSX to PDF, multi-page TIFF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • PPTX to PDF, multi-page TIFF, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • EML to PDF, multi-page TIFF,  DOCX, PNG, JPEG, HTML and more
  • JPEG, BMP, TIFF, images to PDF, DOCX, HTML and more

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.

Save emails and attachments to a database

Save emails and attachments to a database (SQL Server)

In this post, we will explore saving emails and attachments to a database server like SQL Server by setting up an ODBC data source and using a post download Action to save contents of the email and/or attachments to a database.

The program supports and works with any compatible ODBC data source such as MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and more. This post only explores setting up to save the data in SQL Server but also has information on how to tweak it for other database types.

An overview — emails to databases

The feature of saving emails to databases is just one of the features available with the Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Server version.

Each rule can be setup to save emails to databases using either generated SQL (to one or more tables) or a custom SQL.

You do not need to know SQL to save emails or attachments to a database. And if you do know SQL, it offers the flexibility and customizability to modify the SQL statements to suit your needs.

You can even include extracted data from emails or attachments using custom variables in your SQL statement and save them to a database!

Each rule has several phases — first, search and filter through emails or attachments, then extract data from emails or attachments, saving email bodies or attachments to a customizable file or folder format if needed and lastly post-process the emails or attachments by saving them to a database of your choice.

email processing

Used by many Fortune 500 companies today to save emails and attachments to databases.  Runs 24×7 in the cloud or on-premise as a Windows Service.

You get a versatile tool that provides flexibility in storing emails to databases in just the way you want to.


Step-by-step tutorial — emails to databases

Setting up a datasource

  1. Let’s start off by adding a new data source —  click on the Database tab -> Add ODBC source buttonDatabase Source
  2. Provide a name for the source first. Then pick either the 32-bit ODBC driver or 62-bit ODBC driver (depending on whether you installed the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Client or PRO Server).In our case, the driver “SQL Server” from the drop down indicates the 32-bit driver.  Then enter the Connection string that specifies how to connect to the server:Server=<computer name>\<SQL Server name>;Database=<DB name>;Trusted_Connection=yes;

    The above connection string is specific to SQL Server that is using a trusted connection. To connect in any other way to SQL Server OR to another database like Oracle, you can find ODBC connection strings here (make sure you select ODBC connection string and not any other on the site).

    An example of these filled in is shown below:
    Server=TESTPC\GEARMAGE;Database=TestDB;Trusted_Connection=yes;

    DBDetails2

  3. Click Test Connection button to make sure this succeeds. Then click OK.
  4. At this point a data source has been setup.

Rule configuration to save the email to a database

  1. Then create a new rule or edit an existing rule from the Global filters tab.
  2. Under Actions after save click Add action and then choose Save to database. This will add an action under After saving file in the list to the left.
    NOTE: The screenshot below shows other actions as well, if you have other actions you can chain or nest the save to database action after those actions have taken place as shown below.

    Save to DB

  3. Pick the Source as the one you provided in Step-2.
  4. Specify a new table name (or an existing one) and then click “Create Table” if this is a new table and follow the prompts.  At this point a new table schema would be created and the SQL would be automatically filled in based on the questions you answered.
  5. Click “Test SQL” to test connectivity and table row creation, this will add a new row to the table to make sure everything is setup correctly.
  6. Click the Save button to save the new rule with the Save to DB action.
  7. Now you can click the Connect And Download button to test out the ability to save to DB.

That’s it!

You have setup the program to automatically save emails and attachments to a database.

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

  1. Make sure you select either the 32-bit ODBC driver or the 64-bit ODBC driver in the dropdown depending on which installation of Mail Attachment Downloader PRO Client or PRO Server you installed (license email has links to both versions of the install). This is supported in all Windows versions including Windows 10. In some cases default installations may only install the 64-bit driver and you may need to manually download and install the 32-bit ODBC driver for your database. Please consult the database documentation and Google on how to do this.
  2. Your specific connection string can vary depending on the type of database (for example, Oracle has different connection strings than MySQL). A useful site to help you with the ODBC connection string is https://www.connectionstrings.comMake sure you only choose the ODBC connection string in the site  for your database type (like Oracle). You may need to play around with the different strings and test connections to find the one that works. If your connection string includes a Driver name, make sure it matches exactly (space for space) the one you have picked in the dropdown.
  3. Depending on the type of DB you use, the automatic creation of table/sql may fail. In that case, you might have to provision the schema for the table in the DB manually and then specify the SQL to insert records into the table in the program.
  4. You can save the attachment content using the following variable in your SQL
    {RAW_CONTENT}

Further reading

Some interesting how-to links and posts for further exploration:

Contact us

Contact us if you have any questions, suggestions about the functionality described in this article.

v3.1 PRO packs many new features

Extract emails and attachments, save to database, save email as PDF and more

We have introduced many new compelling features with the Mail Attachment Downloader PRO v3.1 release. Here is a quick overview of those features. We will have more detailed information about how to use these features in upcoming blog posts so stay tuned.

Before we begin, a quick note about the key differences between PRO Server and PRO licenses:

  • Our PRO Server versions let you perform automated tasks 24×7 on an unlimited number of email accounts and can run on Windows Server (and Windows Client).
  • Our PRO and PRO Limited versions cannot run on Windows Server and requires a user to be logged in when processing email attachments.

With v3.1 we have started to introduce more powerful email automation and processing features. Some of these are detailed below:

  • Convert email attachments after download to PDF
  • Encrypt or decrypt PDF email attachments automatically
  • Automatically print email attachments
  • Upload email attachments to Sharepoint online or on-prem

If you get the PRO Server, you get some even more powerful features and support for unlimited email accounts.

  • Automatically unzip email attachments and run rules (for example, unzip PDF file, then decrypt PDF and print it automatically!)
  • Automatically save email headers and optionally attachments to a database (which fields you save and how you want it saved are completely customizable).
  • Convert email attachments (text, html, word, excel, powerpoint and more) to over 50+ formats (bmp, csv, dif, doc, docm, docx, dot, dotm, dotx, emf, epub, excel, flatopc, flatopcmacroenabled, flatopctemplate, flatopctemplatemacroenabled, html, htmlfixed, jpeg, mhtml, mobixml, odp, ods, odt, openxps, ott, pdf, pdfnotes, png, potm, potx, pps, ppsm, ppsx, ppt, pptm, pptx, ps, rtf, spreadsheetml, svg, swf, tabdelimited, tex, text, tiff, tiffnotes, wordml, xamlfixed, xamlflow, xamlflowpack, xlam, xlsb, xlsm, xlsx, xltm, xltx, xml, xps)

For a full feature breakdown by PRO license type go here.

Have questions about these features or found an issue? Contact us at support@gearmage.com (this is the fastest way to receive support).

As always, we enjoy hearing your feature requests, send them to features@gearmage.com.