Cloud based email processing automation

[ebendl]

Hi all

I was wondering if anybody can suggest some cloud services for me.

I'm looking for something to process email (from GMail) as soon as it comes in. Either by forwarding email to an address, or by doing IMAP (with IDLE) into specific GMail folders.

It should then process the mail by looking for certain keywords, and if it pass, send it on to a chat service such as Slack or Telegram.

Preferably all cloud based.

Background:

I receive bank notifications via email from ABSA (wife's account) and FNB (mine). The normal InContact and NotifyMe stuff. For my personal budgeting / cashflow, there's certain transactions that I'd like to flag immediately once they come through. This is typically for general stores, such as:
- Purchases from Builders Warehouse can be for DIY, house maintenance or even my kids' school projects
- Purchases from Westpack can be Groceries (e.g. cleaning, toilet paper), stationery (kids), stationery for her job (she's a teacher and buys her own stuff, which she then claims back) or even sometimes toys.
- Purchases from a local shop which sells toys, stationery and homeware is a favorite - sometimes stationery, sometimes toys for my kids (often they loan money from my wife) or often enough gifts for other kids' birthday parties.
- Woolworths: some Woolworths branches are pretty much only woolies food, but some are also clothing stores. So I'd like to know clothes for me, clothes for her, clothes for the kids or groceries.

So I'd like to send these emails through a filter, look for certain words and if it passes, then forward it onto our shared (free) Slack instance, or a Telegram group immediately, so that I can jot down a note on what it was. Otherwise we tend to forget and after a month, with multiple purchases to the same place, it is a pain to try and remember.

I had a look at IFTTT (which I have a grandfathered Pro account for) and the Email trigger + filter + Slack integration looks perfect, but IFTTT doesn't forward the Gmail email-forwarding email to slack (since I'm guessing GMail doesn't send that one from my personal email address). And then I'd need to up my IFTTT to Pro+ to get the filter.s
Zapier or MS Flow are options, but I'd prefer not to pay for it, or not pay too much
GMail + GMail filters + Slack + Slack email integration by itself looks good, but then I'd need to pay for Slack to get the email integration.
Even started looking at AWS SES and Lambda functions, or moving over to Investec to get access to the programmable bank account.

Thoughts / suggestions welcome!

 

[WAslayer]

SES inbound to lambda to slack is probably the most versatile and configurable option.. should also be able to remain within free tier for lambda, but pay for incoming mail chunks on the SES side..

 

[SauRoNZA]

Slack supports email addresses as an input to channels.

I would imagine you could do this with nothing but Gmail and it’s built-in filter rules to just forward it on to the Slack email addresses.

Very rudimentary and you can’t really edit it on the fly but maybe you could process it inside Slack with a workflow or something.

****

My bad I see you actually got the above in your post I didn’t read all the way to the bottom.

Quite honestly it sounds like you are trying to do what 22Seven can already just do for you by connecting to your bank account directly in a much nicer and more functional way.

 

[ebendl]

Slack supports email addresses as an input to channels.

I would imagine you could do this with nothing but Gmail and it’s built-in filter rules to just forward it on to the Slack email addresses.

Very rudimentary and you can’t really edit it on the fly but maybe you could process it inside Slack with a workflow or something.

****

My bad I see you actually got the above in your post I didn’t read all the way to the bottom.

Quite honestly it sounds like you are trying to do what 22Seven can already just do for you by connecting to your bank account directly in a much nicer and more functional way.

Yeah sorry, I did quite the braindump last night.

I've checked out 22Seven before, but never quite "gelled" with it. I think my own cashflow / budgeting system is too complicated (I have a spreadsheet with 13 years of data in it).

We use Slack at work and it is great - and the email functionality as well. I agree it its probably the easiest, but I'm not sure if my family's free Slack account limits the email functionality, as I literally can't add the app:

 

[ebendl]

SES inbound to lambda to slack is probably the most versatile and configurable option.. should also be able to remain within free tier for lambda, but pay for incoming mail chunks on the SES side..

With SES, do I need a custom domain, and does it then handle ALL the incoming mail?
I don't think it has an option to just pull down emails from my personal GMail, right?

I have one or two domains, currently connected to the grandfathered Google App Suites (with 100 users each). But I like that GMail mostly handles the email there - do not really want to switch over everything.

 

[WAslayer]

With SES, do I need a custom domain, and does it then handle ALL the incoming mail?
I don't think it has an option to just pull down emails from my personal GMail, right?

I have one or two domains, currently connected to the grandfathered Google App Suites (with 100 users each). But I like that GMail mostly handles the email there - do not really want to switch over everything.

Yes, you need a custom domain, to allow SES to receive email for it.. not a train smash, just means you create a filter to forward the email you are interested in processing to your custom domain and SES, from Gmail..

As a point of clarification, SES is not a replacement for Gmail or other email hosting services, but is well suited for your use case for processing email in some fashion..

 

[Barbarian Conan]

I assume you want it to be free?

It shouldn't be all that difficult in MS Powerapps or UIPath, but I don't think it will be free unless you run it as a desktop app.

 

[ebendl]

I assume you want it to be free?

It shouldn't be all that difficult in MS Powerapps or UIPath, but I don't think it will be free unless you run it as a desktop app.

Preferable, or not break the bank. I had a look at Power Automate (new name for Microsoft Flow) - but $15 / month seems too much for what I want to do with it.

Pricing | Microsoft Power Automate

Compare Microsoft Power Automate costs and find detailed pricing information as well as licensing guides

powerautomate.microsoft.com

Something like Zapier could work - but at R372 / month? No thanks.

Hence I'm leaning to a lean coding solution.

 

[ebendl]

OK so I found mailparser.io - basically allows me to forward mails from GMail and then process the results and execute a webhook (in this case a basic Slack incoming webhook to post messages to a channel).

Mailparser.io comes with 30 mails per month on the free tier - so if I filter it out carefully in GMail I"ll probably be fine with the free version.

Words well enough - the text/table/field extraction it comes with is quite flexible!