[Early Access] — Presenting a new and improved email parser in Zoho CRM!

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Latest update: As on 20th Feb, 2023

Old Email Parser will reach end-of-life on June 1, 2023. After EOL, old email parser will not be available in your CRM account. In the spirit of preparing for this deprecation, we encourage all of you to try the all-new email parser at the earliest.

Learn more: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/introducing-the-all-new-email-parser

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Dear Customers,

We are thrilled to present to you, a refreshingly new set of enhancements and flows for email parser. Email parsing is now much easier, more contextual and powerful than ever before.

As part of this "early-access" release, we'd be delighted to enable the new version of email parser if you are interested to try it out. In that case, please submit your request using this Early Access Request Form.

Please note:

Once you submit a request, the new version of email parser will be enabled in the requested email account.
You will also get an invitation to join our exclusive CRM Early Access (EA) Community.
Since this is a Beta version, we would like to keep our discussions on this restricted, until the feature is made available to all.
Therefore we request you to join the EA Community to post your questions and suggestions regarding this Beta version. For the same reason, comments on this particular post will be disabled.

What's email parser — a quick overview:

Email parser is a data extraction tool in Zoho CRM that helps an organization in various business functions such as lead generation and information updates. It is designed to automate the process of adding records to Zoho CRM by extracting information from incoming emails.

For instance, a real estate company may want to add all email enquiries they receive via a property portal as CRM leads. Doing this manually for hundreds of enquiries may become tiring, so here is where they can use email parser. By simply getting the emails sent to a "parser ID" generated in CRM and, they can automatically extract information from the enquiry emails and add them as records in CRM with desired field values. All it requires is a few minutes of initial setup and then you are good to go.

What's new and what's changed

While email parser has been largely functional, a few areas of this feature needed to be ironed out, which is what this post is all about. We are thrilled to present the following enhancements, which you can now see when you switch to the new version of email parser.

1) Single parser email ID for all parser rules

Earlier, for each parser rule, there was a different parser address. It could have been tedious to assign a new parser ID for different vendors and also keep a track of it. The logistics involved in the tracking and maintenance of these parser IDs could be time-consuming in itself. However, in the new version of email parser, there's only a single, common parser email ID for all rules. Regardless of how many vendors you are working with or how many rules you create, you can use this single parser ID for all. This makes working with email parser much easier and cuts down your setup and maintenance time significantly.

Also, a maximum of 5 approved parser addresses can be set up in common for all rules, early on during the configuration.

2) Configuration Interface Made More Powerful and Intuitive

In the latest version of email parser, the entire configuration interface allows free parsing and is highly intuitive, powerful and most importantly, user-friendly, unlike the previous version which involved rigid adherence to delimiters.

The email parser interface —automatically gives you a preview of the parsed data on the same screen where the field mapping occurs, so it is easier for you to get a snapshot of all the fields that are being parsed.

There's also an advanced configuration tab which involves options for filtering emails applicable for the parser based on criteria and associating automated actions such as sending for approval, field update and record assignment to chosen users based on assignment rules.

You can also parse HTML emails directly, as opposed to converting them to plain text emails which was the case previously with the old parser. You can also create email parser rules for each layout in a module.

3) Custom Functions — Configure email parser without associating a module

Email parser now supports execution of custom functions based on parsed data. In this case, the parser rule is not attributed to a particular module. Using custom functions helps you with extensibility and interoperability in Zoho CRM. You can extend the email parser function to more than one module within Zoho CRM, and even to connect with other Zoho services. You can also perform ad-hoc actions in third party applications based on the parsed data.

For example, based on an incoming email enquiry, a property management company called Zylker wishes to update both Contact and Account records in CRM. The name of the email sender, their phone number and address will go to the Contacts module, whereas their company information should go to the Accounts module.
The same company has another requirement — based on an incoming email from customer regarding the status of their property, they want to update corresponding information on a third party listing website automatically. They can achieve this via email parser using custom functions.

Once you have the required custom functions written, you can associate them to the parser rule and have the action executed for subsequent incoming emails.

4) Update Record and Send for Approval

Update Record is a function using which you can update the latest information on a record from an incoming parsed email.

For example, say you receive an incoming email from a prospect called Jane Evans. Normally, a new lead record would be created for a new enquiry email but, if Jane is already in the CRM system, you want the CRM to update Jane's information on the same record as opposed to creating a duplicate record. If this is your expectation, you may check the Update Record option in the Advanced Configuration settings of the parser rule.

Note:

CRM will use the email field to detect duplicate records. For the Update Record option to show up, you must have first mapped the "Email" field from the email content, which serves as the primary identifier or a "unique field" for a record.

You can also choose the Send for Approval option, in which case, records parsed via email parser need to be reviewed and approved from the Waiting for Approval tab in the selected module in order to become a part of the CRM system.

5) Informative parser reports

In the new version of email parser, you are presented with accurate, detailed insights on the number of emails being parsed per rule, the fields extracted and a list of customized actions associated to the records created via the parser. This summary of details gives you a clear picture of how effective your rules have been and indicates the revisions you may need to make to those rules based on the insights.

Detailed weekly performance reports can be sent to the creator of these rules or a custom email ID. Email reports are also sent on record creation failure, so that immediate action can be taken by the users.

6) Reorder and filter

You now have an option to reorder the list of parser rules based on order of preference. This is important because, the email parser system is designed to execute only the very first rule whose criteria is met by an incoming email. Therefore the order of the parser rules becomes essential for effective performance email parser.

You can also filter rules by status (active/inactive) and also by module.

7) Contextual access to parsed emails

While on the one hand, you can view Configuration Info for each parser rule, on the other hand, you can also view insights based on emails that are parsed.

This way, both from the angle of parser rules and parsed emails, you are presented with useful insights.

An "Email" tab, lists the most recent email in your parser inbox, where you can check properties like parsing status, rule parsed with, and more. If the email has not met any rule, you may also create a new parser rule contextually from this email page.

You can also re-run an email in the event of parser failure if there's no match found.You can also parse emails in bulk. (Note that this is applicable only for the emails that have a template match and the parsing was unsuccessful.)

These are some of the key highlights of the new and improved email parser. We encourage you to try this and offer your feedback. We'd also like to reassure you that upon switching to the new parser, your old parser rules will be intact, there will be no hassles. There will be no data loss— your old parser rules will continue to bring in emails and corresponding data to CRM.

Please note:

While this new version of email parser will become the default version over a period of time, as of now, the old and new versions will co-exist.
This is an early-access release. In a few more weeks, as we get closer to public launch of the new version, we will keep you posted regarding details about EOL of the old version. Watch this space for updates.