How to parse E-Mail Data for several variables

[toklatt]

Hi there,

I need to set up a flow for parsing information from the SAP Fiori e-mail notification for further workflow operations.

The Ui5 is sending an e-mail to me of which contains every-time the same Item groups but with different languages (German/english).

Looks like:

subject mail: version 1: Neue Meldung 2: New Notification

body mail: version 1: Meldender version 2: Reported by, etc…

First I set up the „when a new mail arrives (v3)“ with send by“ (e-mail of notifier) which then goes to a apply to each on subject and another for the body.

I thought to do a content conversion and then use the item function in compose action to the get variables for each German/English Mailform informations - but I can‘t get any information with that - it still crashes.

So could anybody give me a hint or how to to get this Information parsing me the data?

Most times notifier is sending me German information for which I have a working flow - but things getting more different with additional notifications in English and I just get stucked.

Thanks in advance 

[schwibach]

Hey,

if you post screenshots of the flow that you have and of the errors you're encountering, we can give you pointers.

Parsing the string is a good idea.

What you can do is string split if the email has a specific structure. Then put the different elements into compose actions and then use the content as you see fit.
You can use longer strings as condiction where to split. Just take it one step at a time and don't try to do everything at once.

[eliotcole]

What @schwibach said on the screenshots, and if you ensure to embed the screen shots of the design view of your flow so that they are visible on the screen using the photo button, then more people will see them, too. Because some folks cannot download attached files. 👍

Thinking Aloud

You may wish to see if the HTML has 'data' attributes for the information that you are after.

Any software / developer worth their salt will encode values into the HTML code, so that people can more easily sift it for actual data. It's possible (but not probable) that this is happening with your mails. 🙂

[toklatt]

So for the Mail Form of the UI5 the letter direction is same on both languages.

From: ui5notif@onmicrosoft.gor

to: my@mailboxcompany.com

Subject: 1. Neue Meldung: 12345678 (mem) Wasserleitung verstopft

              2. New Notification: 12345678 (mem) PRIO Alarm Pump M01

Body: Meldender:

          UserID:

 ...

or

          Reported by:

          UserID

...

For "..." the following names before ":" are same in every notification, content behind ":" is dynamic

Basically the UI5 notifies in both languages, but not for each Alert e.g. each notification represents 1 alarm and this could be presented in german OR english. So the flow should respect the given language in which the alert is notified and operate the data according to language because for the split patterns german/english has different spaces in between the data. 

So with the data from the mail, the given information then goes to a sharepoint table or excel sheet with add a new row.

For some cases if the priority of the notification is High, the data will also be send by e-mail to my alerting service.

In the given Data of body are two to three dynamiclay addable information.

I startet the flow with "when a new mail arrives (v3)"

then I do a html2text for further proceeding. But I thought how about if it would be possible to directly array the body of the Subject & Mail and then fill the dynamic content but I guess I miss something, to do this correctly. 

[schwibach]

The html2text is the right way to go if the data isn't encoded as @eliotcole suggested it might.

Then I would recommend you do a condition on whether the body contains "Neue Meldung"... Then you know whether it's in German or in English.

Then you deal with the English version and the string splits and in the other path of the condition with the German version.

You could initialise variables for each field that you need directly after the trigger and then set the variables in each path of the condition. Initially set the variables to some string that you will recognise as not having been changed such as "TestUserID" 

[toklatt]

I have tried the way with condition and switch - but I can´t get the Information proceeded.

My Flow is actual:

Trigger: When a new Mail arrives (V3):

The confusing thing on that is also, that if I apply the html2text conversation with the body of the E-Mail Data will automatically do the loop and from that loop I don´t get the information further in this flow nor it will trigger an condition or switch.

In an other try I had done the Conversations in the main path, but don´t know, why this happen and the Data would not proceed.

Was thinking of a possibility to write the Data each in an Variable for use it different in the following flow, but I really get stucked right at the Moment for that I can´t see the point, why the flow has this behaviour.

Because of the trigger in the subject the flow should decide if it should proceed in german or to switch in english and then parse the mail accordingly. Parsed Innformation the get stored in a sharepoint and for Priority will send via E-Mail to the alarm Provider too.

But what do I missing?

[schwibach]

You don't need all these loops.

Start with a simple compose action for you subject and an html2text for the body.

You can copy this into the compose action

@{triggerOutputs()?['body/subject']}

and this into the html2text

@{triggerOutputs()?['body/body']}

Once you have the text, we'll do the next step.

[toklatt]

I have tried build the flow as shown:

 Added the time stamp for later data in the workflow, and then the next step:

and when I hit the apply/OK button, I get this error:

 it will not apply the trigger out... and I don´t see, why this will happen. Looks like the trigger won´t output anything, but it does. So why this error occour - I don´t know 

[toklatt]

Now the steps Compose = MailSubject:

Test -> successful & then the htm2ltext for the mail body:

With that, I get no Data so I reduced body/ in the conversation as followed:

Tested the flow and the subject is right in the compose action and the notification mailtext is in the html2text conversation with the correct data.

So for so far as I see, the data must be first processed to gather information this Notification is in english or german - most notifications are in german, but some don´t. So the spaces for further split actions e.g. space inbetween "Neue Meldung" and "New Notification" so that in the following part of the flow first condition check hit the right path of the flow to reduce the possibility of incorrect data I was also asking myself, if by using it in a condition und with only two languages in possibility, a switch could do the job instead of a condition better?

In a condition I will do the german part in the "NO" Path and in the "YES" path I do the english part.

But in the first run I had done the conditions in the Order german and english and only go to YES do the Data parse in this step - this by know had has collided painfully and have not worked.

So far as I see the description the Switch is same like condition, so I thought I do the activation of english by the subject and go there the path... but also don´t work 😞 

Any Suggestions? 

[toklatt]

Now the flow with further Proceeding and parse Mail Information for the next Step of gather the information is it german or english:

Until this step, all information was parsed in the flow from the hited trigger and for the decision of the provided language: use a condition here or a switch for fast and smooth data parsing? 

[schwibach]

Can you post the results of a successful run?

It's important to see the content of the flow steps and then design the following steps accordingly.

What you'll want as a next step is Condition (in German: Bedingung) where we will check if the Subject contains (enthält) "Neue Meldung:"
Put a Compose action in both paths and run the flow to see if that part works.... Then you're ready to take the next step. 

[toklatt]

The Successful flow until now:

Then Save & do a test Run:

with the provided parse:

In the "MailSubject" action:

Then in the html2text action:

 

 So as you see, in a german Notification from the Monitoring the Subject parsed is: "Neue Meldung" followed by ":" 1 space - then 8 Digits (Number in the System) with follow "," as Deliminiter. 

The Notification (Mail Body) parsed Informations accordingly - First Block "Meldender" followed by ":" which is same in every german notification and in english the correspondenting word accordingly, the 1 space and the dynamic part of each notification begins.

Let´s say at "Neue Meldung" it is: Neue Meldung: 14 Spaces to compose the Number itself I guess and in english New Notification: and 34 Spaces to calculate the provided Number by itself.

The Entitities are same in every body such a e.g. "Meldender:", "Arbeitsplatz", then spaces are filled by power automate slash r slash n. A nice optimization would be to drop the empfy spaces to receive the detailed information.

but to do a filter for a condition I need to have an array, am I right?

From this Part on I guess the condition should set in or?

[schwibach]

The content you get in your compose actions is a bit strange.

In the mail subject and in the mail text you are getting an object with an array, named value.

Can you show us the outputs of the trigger?
It should look like this:

Also, can you click the three dots on the trigger, click "peek code" and take a screenshot like this:

It seems to me that your trigger outputs are very different from mine even though the action seems to be the same.

[toklatt]

On the Trigger Peek Code - 2 Screenshots because of the lines:

I thought if it would ne possible to initialize Variable for the mail so that I could have the variables "Subject" to process in the first place the language path and with the body of the mail for that every line most begin with the same words before ":" each, except for those notifications provides by a different alarm provider which has additional. "word" with dynamic information boyond but not every time so there has to be additional condition filters to only parse those information if the expected word is in the mail.

[schwibach]

Can you please also provide a screenshot of the trigger outputs?

The trigger action seems to be the same, but I'll need the ouputs to tell you what the dynamic reference needs to be.

[toklatt]

On the Trigger (First Step in Flow) the inputs in peek code are:

 And the peek code of outputs are:

If there is a better way to show data please let me know, I will become better by doing code stuff.

[schwibach]

OK, so it seems to give you an array in your trigger.

This is what you should use to extract the subject:

triggerBody()['value'][0]['subject']

This for the email body:
triggerBody()['value'][0]['body']

[toklatt]

So with this both set in different compose actions, first the flow overview:

Then we come to the compose action:

the flow runs successfully and give the following information back:

this is for the subject of the mail and the body of the mail is:

 so in the next step I could set a condition for select german/english but it won´t hit ...

in the german path I will select the data and according in english if the notification is in english. Also there are sometimes the phone numbers of the ticket owners so the whole entitities of the notification mail could get parsed in an sharepoint with add a new row... 

[schwibach]

Can you show the condition?

Put a compose action in each path with the content of the email body.

[toklatt]

I have now striped the flow first:

This will show all data from the mail and so I have made two conditions to go in the german or the english path.

Could you say, that a switch would be better for that?

Condition German is:

and in the test with the normal german notification:

and for the english notification:

so with the test it gave back:

So I would think, the path´s are recognised as german so the condition is true and it contains not "New Notification" so the condition is not met as the notification is in german.

Then the further steps should be in the conditions - am I right? If so: Is it a good Idea to have a failsave in the No section to securely parse every notification?

And for variables to use later, how to process?