Posted by Shelly on 09/22/07 21:03

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

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