Email trigger - Help & tutorials | Zoho Flow

Email trigger

The email trigger lets you parse data from formatted emails to automate workflows. This is ideal for automating workflows that involve emails that follow templates, such as invoices, cab receipts, payslips, and more. 

What is email parsing?

Email parsing allows you to extract data from incoming emails. The parsing can be configured to extract specific data fields from incoming emails. Doing so allows you to convert the contents of an email into easy-to-handle pieces of data.

How email trigger works

The Email Trigger lets you start your flow when an email with a predefined template reaches a pre mailbox. Once you configure the trigger with a sample email template, you can choose to send similarly templated emails any time you wish to trigger the flow. Our email parser will extract the data based on the sample template you have provided. This will be helpful to utilize the data in your emails as variables in your flow. 

How to configure email trigger

  1. In the My Flows section of Zoho Flow, click +Create, then Create flow.
  2. Enter the flow name, and optionally a description.
  3. Click Create.
  4. Select Email as the trigger.



  5. Click +Template to create a new template. 
  6. Send a sample email with the desired format to the provided mailbox address for parsing.
  7. Once the email is received, you are ready to configure the template. 
  8. In the template, highlight the positions of words or group of words where new data is likely to appear in subsequent emails.



    Note: These positions will be recorded as variables and the next time an email lands in your template's mailbox address. The values present in those positions will be available for execution.
  9. Provide labels for the variables.
  10. Take note of the mailbox address for the template you've configured. Send or forward similarly-formatted emails to this address to trigger your flow.



  11. After configuring, click Proceed and add actions to your workflow.
Tip: You can automate the sending of your preferred emails to Zoho Flow's mailbox by setting up Automatic forwarding of emails from your email service provider settings.