Email Collect

For more general information on data collection in Redbird, check out: Getting Started With Data Collection

If you cannot see the Email Collect app in the left-side panel on the workflow canvas, refer to: Enabling Collection Apps Guide

This guide explains how to use our email collect app to automate the ingestion of email attachments as part of a Redbird workflow.

You can ingest a wide range of file types from multiple emails simultaneously, including multiple attachments per email. In addition to attachments, the Email Collect app also supports extracting files from clickable links within the email body.

Creating a Collection and Configuring the Collection

1. Double-click the node to enter configuration mode
2. Name your data collection by clicking the gray pencil at the top of your screen

Email Setup

1. Forward a test email with one or more example files you plan to use for your initial collection run. You’ll find the unique email address linked to this configuration in the grey box. Use the copy icon to copy it easily.

2. Once you send the email, it will appear in the Inbox view (note it may take a few moments to arrive in the inbox then be processed and displayed in the box). If multiple emails are received, they will be listed in chronological order by the date received. You’ll be able to see the sender, subject, date and time received, and the names of any attachments. You can download each attachment individually by clicking its attachment name, or download all of them at once using the Download All button..

Advanced Settings

There are several settings in the Advanced Settings Section you can configure to customize how your email collection works:

General Settings:

• Toggle between having future emails collected to be appended to the dataset or to replace the previous dataset collected by toggling the Append/Replace options.
• Update collection only if new data is detected - when this is on and no new data is in the inbox, if the collection runs the collection dataset will not be marked as updated

Output Handling:

• Include Filename In Output - Adds a new column to the output with the filename populated for every row.
• Include Email Subject In Output - Adds a new column to the output with the email subject line populated for every row

Ingestion Handling:

• Ingest all emails
  • If toggled on, all emails in the inbox will be ingested.
  • If toggled off, only the latest email will be ingested during each run, and all others will be deleted.
• Ingest all attachments
  • If toggled on, all attachments in each email will be ingested.
  • If toggled off, only the first attachment will be ingested during each run; the rest will be ignored.

Once everything is configured, click Done to save and exit the configuration.

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Note on Dataset Types (Regular Dataset vs. File Collection)

If you upload a CSV, Google Sheet, or Excel file containing a single sheet, and Redbird recognizes it as a well-defined structured dataset (i.e., a clear tabular table), it will automatically generate a standard Redbird tabular dataset. This dataset can, for example, be connected directly to a dashboard.

If you upload multiple files, or if the uploaded file is unstructured, Redbird will instead create a File Collection node. In this context, an unstructured file is one that does not contain a single clean tabular dataset in standard cell format (e.g. a CSV file, or a single-sheet Excel document). In these scenarios, Redbird uses AI agents and computer vision to scan the documents, extract relevant information, and convert it into structured tabular format when needed.

From a File Collection node, you can preview the collected documents by double-clicking the node, or by selecting the node and clicking Explore in the right-hand side panel. Within the Explore view, click the eye icon next to each document or its subcomponents (e.g. individual Excel tabs, PDF pages, or PowerPoint slides).

These extracted components can then be referenced or transformed into structured datasets using nodes such as the AI Data Tool (see documentation here).

Note: When a File Collection node is created, only the Replace upload method is supported — Append is not available.

Running a Configuration

At this point, the data will not be ingested automatically. To run the node and ingest the data:

1. Click on the node.
2. Click Run in the right-side panel.

Once the run is complete, the data will be processed, a dataset node will be generated and available to use within the rest of the Redbird platform.