Tag: archive emails

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.

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.