Using an Email Parser, you can automatically fetch data from the emails you receive and add them as records in your Vertical Solution. Consider a situation where you obtain job applications through your website. When an applicant submits a job application through a form in the website, an email with details of the application will be sent to a person in the recruitment team. Using an email parser, the details in the email can be directly added as a record in the Vertical Solution, eliminating the need to add the details manually. Email parsers can be created for Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and Custom modules. Up to 20 email parsers can be created for a Vertical Solution, of which no more than 10 parsers can be active at a time.

Create an Email Parser

The various steps comprising the creation and configuration of an Email parser are described in the sections below. The example used will be that of the submission of job applications through the company website.

1. Naming and Module selection

In the first step, assign a name to the parser and select the module that you want to create the parser for.

1. Log in to Zoho Developer Console and click Vertical Solutions.
2. Select the application you'd like to modify and click Edit.
3. Click Components in the left pane and select Email Parser.
4. Click Create your first parser if you are creating for the first time. Otherwise, click Create New Parser.
5. In the Create New Parser pop-up, provide the following details:
   • A Parser Name.
   • Select the Module in which you want the records with the data parsed from the emails to be created.
   • Click Next.
     

A Parser Email Address will be generated when a parser is created. This is the address that the email to be parsed has to be sent to. The Parser Email Address can be viewed in Sandbox (refer to the screenshot in the next section) as well as in your Vertical Solution.

2. Prepare Template for parsing

For the content of the emails to be parsed, it should be in a specific type of template. In this step, you will provide a sample email content that will be used as the template for parsing all the emails. There are two types of templates that you can use to parse your data:

• Key-value pair
• Paragraph format

Key-value pair: A pair consisting of a Key and a Value, which are separated by a delimiter. The Key is a unique identifier for some item of data. For example, First name or Email. These keys will have values associated with them. For example Sam for First name, sam.neil@gmail.com for Email, etc. The delimiter could be a colon (:), equal sign (=), or hyphen (-).

Sample
First name: Cody
Last name: James
Email: codyj@gmail.com
Phone: 8980765639
Position: Senior Manager

Paragraph format: A whole sentence or paragraph will be considered a single value, and will be mapped to a Vertical Solution field. This format does not use any delimiters.

Sample
Autogenerated for the vacancy posted on 25th Nov.

The steps to add these templates are as below:

1. In the Give us the email content to be used as template for parsing by dropdown, select the Copy and pasting email content option.
   
2. Paste the sample email content in the pop-up and click Parse.
   
   Key-Value pair
   
   The key in the key-value pair is mapped to the fields in the selected module. If the field mapping is not done automatically, then you can select the needed field.
   
   
   Paragraph format
   To use the paragraph format, paste the sample text in the Paste the content to be parsed pop-up and click Parse. Click the parsed text and in the popup, then select the field you want to map the value to. Click Save.
   
3. Choose the Add attachments present in email to the record created option if you want to send attachments from your email. Click Next.
   
   Clicking Change Content enables you to edit the sample email content that is being used as the template for the parser.
   Click How it works? to learn more about parsing. You can also change the delimiter used in the email content to another one, provided it is already being used in the content.
   

3. Select Fields to be updated

While adding a record, you can mention a value that a particular field in the module should be updated with. Use the / symbol to add or remove the entries.

4. Assign Record Owner

You can select the owner of the record. In the Assign based on, choose either a User or a Role and click Next. If more than one users are added, then the round-robin method of assignment will be used.

5. Add Approved Email Addresses

1. Provide the email address that you will be sending the emails from to the parser email address.
2. Click Add.
3. Click Save.
   

Manage Email Parsers

You can edit, delete, and deactivate the email parsers that you have created.

1. Click Components in the left pane, then select Email Parser.
2. Click the name of the parser you want to edit.
3. Make the necessary changes and click Update.
4. Click the delete icon [] next to the name of the parser.
   In the confirmation message, click Yes, delete to confirm deletion.
5. You can activate or deactivate a parser using the toggle switch.
6. Under the Email Details column, you can view the statistics regarding the emails which were received by the parser.

Use the parser in Vertical Solution

The end user of the Vertical solution can obtain the details of the email parser from the Setup page.

1. Log in to the Vertical Solution.
2. Go to Setup > Channels > Email and select the Email Parser tab. The Parser Email Address will be displayed under the name of the email parser. It can be copied by clicking the copy [] icon.
   
   Add the required email addresses in the Enter the approved email addresses field.

The end user can also prepare the template for parsing using the Sending an Email option. The steps involved are mentioned below:

1. Log in to the Vertical Solution.
2. Go to Setup > Channels > Email and select the Email Parser tab. Click Create your first parser if you are creating for the first time. Otherwise, click Create New Parser.
3. In the Create New Parser pop-up, provide the following details and click Next:
   • A Parser Name.
   • Select the Module in which you want the records with the data parsed from the emails to be created.
   A Parser Email Address will be generated when a parser is created. This is the address to which the email to be parsed is to be sent.
4. In the Give us the email content to be used as template for parsing by dropdown, select the Sending an email option.
5. Send an email to the pre-parser address (highlighted in the screenshot below) with the content to be used as the template for parsing. Then click click here. The pre-parser address is a temporary email address. Its value will keep changing. Two types of templates can be used for parsing.
   
6. The text in the email will be parsed and displayed as shown below. The key in the key-value pair will be mapped to the fields in the selected module. If the field mapping is not done automatically, then you can select the needed field. Click here to learn more about the paragraph format.
   Choose the Add attachments present in email to the record created option if you want to send attachments from your email. Click Next.
   
7. Refer to sections 3, 4 and 5 for the remaining steps.