Email input actions

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Email input actions scan an email inbox for incoming mail messages and place selected messages and attachments into a new Datacap batch for processing.

Datacap supports two methods of accessing a mail server to obtain the image attachments.
  • The actions in IMail.RRX use the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for Microsoft Exchange Server, Novell GroupWise, and other mail servers that support IMAP.
  • The actions in EWSMail.RRX use Exchange Web Services (EWS) for Microsoft Exchange Server. This service is a SOAP-based method of communication.

The input actions are typically assigned to a Datacap task that is run by an unattended Rulerunner Service station. These input actions scan one or more inboxes and defines the type of attachments to include in the batch. For example, you can specify only TIFF images or only PDF files, which helps eliminate input of improper files.

The batch is created when the maximum number of documents is received from the email servers or a specified time interval elapsed. At the batch level, the EmailCount is captured. Each document in the batch is associated with one email message. The document contains a page for each attachment file and variables with the email Subject, From, To, DateSent, Priority, and Body. In addition, the IMail actions capture User, and the EWSMail actions capture DateReceived.

After an email is successfully processed and the attachment is input into the Datacap batch, the email is moved from the inbox to a specified email done folder. If the attachment is not one of the expected types such as a TIFF file, or there is a processing problem. The email, and attachment does not become part of the batch and are moved to a specified email problem folder.

Note: You can further process of the body of an email, or an attachment other than TIFF after it was added to a Datacap batch by using the Email actions. You might have to construct more rules and to license other Datacap options.

To capture MS Office document attachments and turn them into images that can be processed by using the Datacap standard Recognition or Verify tasks. You can license the eDocument Conversion actions and put them in the processing rules of your application.

If you capture non-image files by using the Email input actions, the pages that are created have non-image files that are attached to them. If you capture only the email body, the page might not have any files that are attached. In either of these cases, your application must handle these documents and pages. If you use the standard recognition actions or the verify task, a batch that contains pages with no attached images might yield unexpected results.