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Posted by Jerry Stuckle on 09/22/07 22:39
Shelly wrote:
> Here is a situation that I have to think out for a potential customer.
> Currently he receives about 150 emails a day with pdf attachments for
> orders. The format of the pdfs are all the same. Now he has to:
>
> 1 - look at his email
> 2 - open the pdf
> 3 - manually take the data from the pdf and enter it into an order
> processing mode and a database.
>
> This is taking so much of his time that he is considering hiring someone to
> do it.
>
> What I would like to be able to present him with is the following:
>
> 1 - Have all those emails go to a specified folder in his email
> 2 - Without opening the email, upload the attachment to a server
> 3 - Have an application that extracts the information from the pdf and then
> does what it has to do.
> 4 - Move the email to a second email folder (processed)
>
> I would like to have all this initiated with either a cron type job or via a
> "Go" button.
>
> Short of this ideal, I would have him look at an email in his reader and
> save the attachments to a directory. The "Go" button would upload button
> would then do the rest.
>
> There are also other compromises I can and probably will have to make. I
> posted the ideal.
> The main point is to cut the hyman time down considerably.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Shelly
>
>
Why is it coming in in a PDF? I would think this would be the place to
make the change - into something that's easily machine readable.
I suppose you could extract info from a pdf - I've never tried it, but
don't see why it wouldn't be possible. But it will be much harder.
It wouldn't be that hard to fetch the email or mail it to another email
address. It's the parsing that would be difficult.
Personally, I think xml would be perfect for this.
--
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Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
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