Email Parsing Pipeline

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When to Use This Pattern

Use email parsing when:

Business processes are triggered by incoming emails (invoices, orders, support requests)

The emails follow a predictable format (system-generated, templated, or form-based)

You want to eliminate manual copy-paste from emails into business systems

External parties can't or won't use your web forms or portal

How It Works

Stage	Action	Output
1. Monitor	Watch a shared mailbox or specific inbox	New email detected
2. Classify	Determine the email type (invoice, request, notification)	Email category
3. Extract	Pull structured data from subject, body, and attachments	Key-value pairs
4. Validate	Check extracted data for completeness and correctness	Validated data
5. Route	Feed the data into the appropriate workflow	Business process started
6. Archive	Move the processed email to a "Processed" folder	Clean inbox

Implementation Guide

Step 1: Set Up the Monitoring

Shared mailbox approach:

Create a dedicated mailbox: [email protected] or [email protected]
Configure the workflow to check for new emails every 5–15 minutes
Process only unread emails in the Inbox folder

Folder-based approach:

External systems drop emails/files into a monitored SharePoint folder or SFTP
The workflow triggers on new items in the folder

Step 2: Classify the Email

Before parsing, determine what type of email you're dealing with:

Signal	Classification Rule
Subject contains "INV-"	Invoice
From address is `[email protected]`	Automated vendor notification
Has PDF attachment	Likely an invoice or report
Subject contains "RE:" or "FW:"	Reply/forward — may need different handling
Body contains "unsubscribe"	Marketing — skip

Step 3: Extract Data

From the email itself:

Subject line parsing — regex for order numbers, reference IDs, amounts
Body parsing — look for labeled fields ("Order Number: 12345") or HTML table structures
Sender info — email address, display name, domain

From attachments:

PDF invoices — use OCR (Nintex AI, Azure Form Recognizer) to extract fields
Excel files — parse rows and columns programmatically
CSV files — straightforward column mapping
Images — OCR for receipts, business cards

Step 4: Validate and Enrich

Validation	Action if Failed
Required fields present	Flag for manual review
Amount is a valid number	Attempt cleanup, flag if ambiguous
Vendor exists in system	Create new vendor or flag
No duplicates (same invoice#)	Skip and log
Date is reasonable	Flag future dates or >90 days old

Step 5: Route to Downstream Workflow

Based on the classification and extracted data:

Invoice → Invoice Processing workflow (match to PO, route for approval)
Support request → IT Help Desk (create ticket, assign to team)
Customer enquiry → CRM (create lead or case)
Report → Archive to document library with metadata

Step 6: Handle Failures

Failure Type	Action
Can't classify	Move to "Manual Review" folder, notify team
Extraction confidence low	Route to Human-in-the-Loop Review
Validation errors	Reply to sender with specific issues (if appropriate)
Duplicate detected	Log and archive — don't process twice

Tips & Best Practices

Important

Never process emails from the Sent or Deleted folders. Only process from Inbox, and move processed emails to an "Archive" or "Processed" subfolder immediately to prevent re-processing.

Use AI for unstructured emails. For free-text emails that don't follow a template, use Nintex AI or OpenAI to classify and extract intent, entities, and urgency.

Set up a "poison pill" handler. Some emails will crash your parser (huge attachments, malformed HTML, password-protected PDFs). Catch these errors and quarantine the email.

Log everything. Keep a processing log: email received at, classified as, fields extracted, routed to, processing time. This is essential for debugging and compliance.

Reply with confirmation. For externally-submitted emails, send an auto-reply confirming receipt with a reference number. Senders need to know their email was received.

Visual Flow

When to Use This Pattern

How It Works

Implementation Guide

Tips & Best Practices

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