Pull from email attachment
The Pull from email attachment step gives you the ability to receive an attachment (CSV and XLS) from an incoming email and pass it to the next step. The step also gives you the ability to pull an email subject and body into a Parabola flow. Use this unique step to trigger flows, using content from the email itself.
Default attachment settings
To begin, take note of the generated email address that is unique to this specific flow. Click "Copy Email Address to Clipboard" to start using this dedicated email address yourself or to share with others.
The File Type is set to CSV / TSV, though you can also received XLS / XLSX files.
The Delimiter is set to comma (,), but can also be adjusted to tab (\t) and semicolon (;). If needed, the default of Quote Character set to Double quote ( " " ) can be changed to single quote ( ' ' ).
Custom settings
This step contains optional Advanced settings, where you can tell Parabola to skip a certain number of rows or columns when receiving the attached file.
Auto-forwarding to a Parabola flow
To auto-forward a CSV attachment to an email outside of your domain, you may need to verify the @inbound.parabola.io email address. The below example shows how to set this up in Gmail.
- Start by copying the email address provided in the step configuration settings to your clipboard.
- In Gmail, head to your settings and select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab at the top of the page. Select Add a forwarding address and paste the email address into the form.
- A new modal will pop up letting you know a confirmation code has been sent to the @inbound.parabola.io email address. Click OK.
- Check your inbox to see a new email with the subject line Sorry we were unable to process your email attachment. The body of the email will contain a confirmation code and a verification link—both of which can verify the email address.
- Click the link and a new window will appear. Click Confirm to start forwarding mail.
- Once complete, a Confirmation Success! page will confirm that the @inbound.parabola.io email is verified.
- Next, head to your settings and create a filter to target the emails you want to auto-forward. Select Create filter once complete.
- Lastly, select Forward it to: and choose the @inbound.parabola.io email address that was recently verified.
Auto-forwarding is now set up to trigger your flow! Please note, you will need to do this each time you create a new flow using this step.
Pull subject and body
We also support the ability to pull in additional information about an email, including:
- Email Body
- Subject Line
- Sender email address
- CC'd Emails
- File Attachment Name
To access these fields, you can toggle the "Pull data from" field to pull in Email subject and body. If you'd like to pull both an attachment and the subject and body, you can use two separate steps to pull in both of these datasets.
To pull in a subject and body, the email must also include an attachment. Emails without attachments will not be pulled in by this step.
Helpful tips
- This step will run every time the dedicated email address receives a new attached file. This is useful for triggering your flow to run automatically, outside of a dedicated schedule or webhook.
- If your XLS file has multiple sheets, this step auto-selects the first sheet but can be set to look for a specific sheet.
- This step can handle attached files that are up to 5MB.
- Please note that one flow can only be tied to one CSV/XLS file with this step. You can use multiple Pull from email attachment steps in a single flow, but all of those steps will always pull from the same source CSV/XLS file.
- What happens when multiple emails are received by your flow: If your flow is processing and another email (or multiple) comes in, then they will queue up to be pulled into your flow in the order they were received. All emails sent to a flow, up to 200 at a time, will be queued up and processed.
