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Email triggers

Learn how to use email triggers in your workflows.


Email triggers in Actioner

Overview

Email triggers in Actioner empower you to seamlessly integrate your email communication with automated workflows in Slack. This feature is designed to enhance your automation capabilities, providing you with the flexibility to trigger workflows based on incoming emails. Additionally, the Send email action complements this by enabling you to compose and send emails directly within Slack.

Key features

  • Automated workflow initiation: Automatically start workflows based on incoming emails, allowing for timely and efficient responses.
  • Email routing to Slack: Receive email notifications as direct messages or notifications in specific channels within Slack, ensuring important information is easily accessible.
  • External event integration: Bridge the gap for tools that communicate solely through email, allowing their events to kickstart automated flows in Actioner.

Real-world scenarios

1. Sales lead management

  • Trigger: Receive an email from a potential lead (e.g., contact form submission).
  • Actions: Add the lead to your CRM, notify a dedicated Slack channel, and send a response email within Slack using the Send email action.

2. Inventory management

  • Trigger: Email notification from a supplier about shipped items.
  • Actions: Update inventory levels in the database and send an email to the logistics team to prepare for incoming stock.

3. HR recruitment

  • Trigger: Receive a job application via email.
  • Actions: Initiate a workflow that notifies a #job-applicants channel for recruiters to review and sends a confirmation email to the applicant within Slack.

4. Knowledge worker updates

  • Trigger: Subscribe to newsletters about industry trends and personal growth opportunities.
  • Actions: Use email trigger, configure conditions, and utilize the Send direct message action to streamline staying updated with the latest information without leaving Slack

How to create workflows with an email trigger

Email triggers in Actioner enable you to initiate workflows based on incoming emails and provides a powerful tool to automate responses and streamline communication within Slack.

Step 1. Create a workflow

To create a new workflow and open your workflow in canvas mode:

  • Navigate to your app's Wokflows tab and create a new workflow.

  • Give your workflow a name, provide a description and add tags optionally.

Create a workflow with an email trigger

Step 2. Create your trigger

  • Select Email from trigger options.

Select email trigger

  • On the opening panel, you can give a new name to your trigger and update the suffix of the email address. Actioner generates a unique email address that you can forward your emails to. The generated address looks like below:

    actionerworkspace.obxsnh@mail.actioner.com

    *actionerworkspace is the name of your Actioner workspace and obxsnh is the suffix. You can update the suffix.

Change email trigger

Step 3. Configuration in your email service

You can forward your emails to the Actioner email address manually or you can set up an email integration in your system to automatically forward emails whenever something is created or updated or an event happens.

Also, you can set up forwarding rules in your inbox to forward your new emails. Below are general steps for common email services:

Gmail: Visit here.

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Select See all settings.
  3. Go to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
  4. Click on Add a forwarding address and enter the generated Actioner email address.
  5. Confirm the verification email sent to the Actioner address.

Outlook: Visit here.

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Click on View all Outlook settings.
  3. Go to Mail > Rules > Add a new rule.
  4. Set up a rule to forward emails to the generated Actioner email address.

Step 4. Capture an email event

If you've set up forwarding rules or an email integration, your tool that's sending email to the Actioner will send data to it whenever a new email is received or an event happens. To test your trigger, you can send an email from your inbox also.

  • Once an email is sent, click Capture event to use the email while designing your workflow.

Capture email event

Step 5. Configure your trigger's conditions

  • Configure your triggers's conditions. You can add conditions for specific a subject or the body of the email containing a specific keyword or the sender email.

Configure conditions of an email trigger

Step 6. Add your action(s)

  • Add a new node. Select Actions option and then select your integration from the opening list.

  • Select your action from the actions list and configure your action's parameters to run the workflow.

Add action to workflow with an email trigger

→ Learn how to use actions in your workflows.

Step 7. Save your workflow

  • Once all is set, apply changes to your workflow.