Remove text from Imported email

[Sam P]

Is there any functionality that would enable me to automatically remove text from an incoming email that is logged via a Rule?  Essentially I am wanting to remove text that is not needed in the request and only include the good stuff.  In this example of a standard recurring email I think it would be the same number of leading characters each time.  Alternatively, can the system look for keywords (an email address in this example) and strip it from the email to insert in the Description?   Thanks

[Steve Giller]

17 minutes ago, Sam P said:

Alternatively, can the system look for keywords (an email address in this example) and strip it from the email to insert in the Description?

"The System" cannot, but there are BPM Workflow nodes that can achieve this - however a strong knowledge of REGEX would be required.

If you have that knowledge in house you should be able to use the String Utilities to extract what you need, if not then Expert Services would be able to assist.

[Jeremy]

@Sam P with the bits that you want to keep or remove...are they consistent? If so then you should be able to use regex to extract. 

[Sam P]

Thank you @Steve Giller and @Jeremy my Regex knowledge just about extends to [a-zA-Z]{2}[0-9]{8} for Request ID and that was copied from someone else!   I will investigate a bit further, thank you both

 

[Gerry]

@Sam P

The problem here is, how would the system determine what constitutes "the good stuff" vs whats "not needed", I know there is a lot of talk of smart AI and stuff like that nowadays, but computers are just not that clever.  This is one of the biggest problems with email, the unstructured format, the propensity for every organisation to have their own appended disclaimer statements further polluting the already messy replied and forwarded emails in a mix of plain text, HTML, random images, signatures and all sorts of other stuff, as well as the speed at which senders/forwarders/repliers respond to messages without any consideration to format, content relevance and so on, I am afraid you are doomed when it comes to email to *always* have to manually intervene, strip out just the good stuff using human intelligence to keep your system of record clean.   

The best solution here is to move away from accepting requests or updates via email and move your users/customers to a point where you are using self-service. 

Gerry

[Sam P]

Thanks @Gerry this particular example and a couple of others I was hoping to route are system generated emails that cant go via self service (under 1% of our total volume is logged by email, and these are them).  The good stuff in this one is the email address slap bang in the middle - we dont need the before and after to know how to action it.  In my simple (non-Regex/code) mind I was hoping that the BP could remove x number of characters before the email address.

Now I know what I'm looking for, I have found a couple of other threads that may help