An Email Parser is designed to automate the process of adding records to Zoho CRM by extracting information from incoming emails. The leads' details can be extracted by the email parser and added directly to your CRM records.

For example, imagine you run a real estate business and have put your property details on a real estate portal. The potential buyers or tenants submit their details through the portal's website and user details are sent to you in an email. Instead of you manually entering the details in to the CRM, an email parser can retrieve the information from the email and add it as a record under any module in your CRM account.

Create and Configure Email Parser

Creating and configuring an Email Parser consists of the following steps:

Step 1. Create your email parser, select a parser name, and associate a module

You can create an email parser for leads, contacts, accounts and custom modules. In Zoho CRM, you can create up to 20 email parsers, but only 10 parsers can be active at any one time. Once you enter the parser name and choose the module to associate the parser to, a parser email address is generated.

Step 2. Configure parsing details

A template is an email in which you mention the data fields to be mapped to the respective CRM fields, if required you can change the data fields manually. Only the incoming emails that follow the provided template will be parsed.

There are two ways to create a template:

1. Sending an email to the pre-parser address - You can send any email that you want to use as a template, to a pre-parser address. The email must contain the information about the data fields.
2. Copying and pasting email content - You can copy and paste the content of any email that you want to be used as a template.

Learn more about types of parsing templates:

There are two types of template that you can use to parse your data. You can use any of the templates as a parser but best practice is to use key-value pairs as this makes fetching data easier and simpler.

• Key-value pair - A single detail like first name or email is the key and a reference to this key is called the value. In this type of template the key and the value are separated by a delimiter.

For example:

First name: Nicholas

Last name: Woods

Country: Canada

Email: nicholas.wood@gmail.com

Here, the key is First name, Country and the value is Nicholas, Canada.

• Paragraph format - A paragraph format does not contain any delimiter* or separator between the key and value format. Each sentence or paragraph that you enter is a data field that should be mapped with the corresponding CRM field.

For example: An apartment with 1,200 sqft area.  

This is a sentence without any delimiter. During parsing, this entire sentence will be treated as the data that needs to be mapped with a corresponding CRM field such as, Property Area.

*Delimiter - A delimiter is a character used to specify the beginning or the end of your data. A delimiter can be a colon, hyphen, or similar.

How a parser email addressis generated

The parser email address is auto generated by Zoho CRM once you configure a parser. All the emails that you want to be parsed must be sent to the parser email address.

Step 3. Send email to the parser email address

The email address from which forward the lead emails to the parser email address must be approved. You can either forward the emails from your email address or the vendor or real estate portal can add the parser email address in cc, when sending the lead emails to you. In both cases, the email addresses must first be approved to avoid errors.

Step 4. Update a CRM field

You can choose to update fields for the records that will be created in the CRM using the parsing method. For example, you have set that all the records created via the parsing method are for a particular apartment. In this case, you can choose the apartment name be automatically updated once the records are added into the CRM.

Step 5. Assign record owner

Choose and assign a record owner for each record that is created by the email parsing method. You can select more than one user for these records and the user assignment will follow the round-robin method. You can also choose to assign these records to a particular role in your organization.

Please note that assigning a record owner is a mandatory step in configuring an email parser.

Step 6. Enter approved email address

Specify the email address(es) from which the emails will be sent to the parser email address. There are two options to send an email:

• You can send the emails directly from your email address to the parser email address.
• The real-estate portal can add the parser email address to the carbon copy column when sending the emails to you.

Please note that you can not use the mail forward option when sending the emails to the parser email address. 

Create Your Email Parser, Enter a Parser Name and Associate a Module

To create your email parser, add a parser name and associate a module

1. Go to Setup > Channels > Email.
2. In the Email page, click Email Parser > Create Your First Email Parser.
   
   In the Create Your First Email Parser page, enter the Parser Name and choose a Module from the drop-down list.
3. Click Next to continue.
   Next, you will have to create an email template for the parser either by sending an email or copying and pasting the content.
   

Configure Parsing Details

To configure by sending an email to the pre-parser address

1. In the Give us the email contact to be used as template for parsing by section, select Sending an email from the drop-down list.
   A pre-parser email address will be generated (For example: m6orzlr@preparser.zohocrm.com)
2. Send an email to the pre-parser email address.
   You can send the content either in paragraph or key-value format.
3. Click Click Here to generate the content inside CRM.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Next to continue.
   In the next step, you will update the CRM field.
   

To configure by copying and pasting email content

1. In the Give us the email contact to be used as template for parsing by section, select Copy and pasting email content from the drop-down list.
2. Paste the content to be used as the parsing template.
   You can paste the content either in paragraph or key-value format.
3. Click Parse.
4. Click on the content and choose the CRM data fields from the drop-down list to map the content to.
5. Click Save.
6. Click Next to continue.
   In the next step, you will update the CRM field.
   

Update Field

To update a field

1. In the Update Field option, select a CRM field from the drop-down list.
2. Enter the corresponding data field value to be updated.
3. Click the Add icon to add more fields.
   

Assign Record Owner

To assign the record owner

1. In the Assign Record Owner option, go to Assign Based On and select either Users, Roles, or Assignment Rules from the drop-down list.
2. Select the User from the drop-down list.
3. Click Next to continue.
   In the next step, you need to enter the approved email addresses.
   

Enter Approved Email Address

To enter the email address

1. In the Approved Email address field, specify the email address.
2. Click the Add icon, to add more email address.
3. Click Save.