# How to automate email in Global Shop Solutions

> Source: https://netray.co/integrations/global-shop-email-automation
> Publisher: Netray (netray.co), AI and integration engineering for ERP and manufacturing systems.
> Section: Integrations

## Short answer

Read shared inboxes through Microsoft Graph or IMAP, classify and parse customer POs, RFQs and vendor acknowledgements, validate them against Global Shop master data, and stage them for a person to approve. Write to the ERP only through a supported import path.

## System

Global Shop Solutions

## Capability

email-automation

## Intro

In a job shop, the ERP is the system of record but email is the system of entry. Customer POs arrive as PDFs, RFQs arrive with drawing attachments, vendors reply with 'confirmed for next Friday'. Someone re-keys each one into Sales Order Entry, the quoting module or the purchase order screen.

That re-keying is where wrong part revisions, missed line items and delayed quotes come from. Automating the reading and staging, while leaving the posting decision to a human, removes most of the effort without most of the risk.

Global Shop does not need to be modified for this. The work lives in a mailbox reader, a parser, a validation layer against ERP data and a staging queue.

## Use Cases

### Customer PO intake

**Description:** Extract PO number, lines, quantities, prices and dates from emailed POs, match to open quotes, and stage a sales order draft.

### RFQ capture for estimating

**Description:** Create a quote request record with customer, part numbers, quantities and attachments filed against it, and notify the estimator.

### Vendor acknowledgement parsing

**Description:** Read order acknowledgements, compare dates to the PO, and flag differences to the buyer.

### Invoice inbox triage

**Description:** Separate vendor invoices from statements and noise, and route invoices to the capture workflow.

### Cert and shipping document routing

**Description:** File certificates of conformance, mill certs and packing lists against the right PO or job as attachments.

### Customer status replies

**Description:** Draft answers to 'where is my order' emails from live job status, queued for approval before sending.

## System Surface

- ODBC read access for validating customers, part numbers, open quotes, open orders and vendors before anything is staged.
- Import utilities and any supported interface in your release for creating sales orders, quotes or purchase receipts from a structured file. Confirm what is licensed.
- Document management in Global Shop for attaching files to records; check which attachment method your version supports.
- Email notification features in the ERP can send outbound mail, but inbound mail needs an external reader.
- Customer-specific EDI or portal feeds, where present, should stay the primary channel; email automation covers the customers who do not use them.

## How It Works

### Connect the mailbox

**Detail:** Use Microsoft Graph with application permissions limited to specific shared mailboxes, or IMAP with an app password. Process by message ID so reruns are safe.

### Classify the message

**Detail:** Decide PO, RFQ, acknowledgement, invoice, certificate or other. Keep an Unknown bucket that routes to a person.

### Extract fields

**Detail:** Combine PDF text extraction, table parsing and a language model for varied layouts. Return values with confidence and the source page.

### Validate against the ERP

**Detail:** Check customer, part number and revision, unit of measure, price against the quote, and delivery date plausibility using read-only queries.

### Stage for review

**Detail:** Present a side-by-side of the email and the proposed record. The reviewer corrects and approves.

### Post through the supported path

**Detail:** Create the order or note through the import or interface your ERP admin approves, and file the original email to the record.

## Example Flows

### Emailed PO to draft sales order

**Trigger:** A PO PDF arrives in the orders mailbox.

**Steps:**

- Reader classifies it as a PO and extracts header and lines.
- Validator matches the customer and each part and revision, and compares price to the quote.
- Mismatches are highlighted in a review screen.
- A CSR approves, and the order is created through the import path with the PDF attached.

**Result:** Typing is replaced by a two-minute review, and price mismatches are caught before release.

### Vendor date change

**Trigger:** A supplier replies that a delivery will slip.

**Steps:**

- Reader links the message to the PO by number.
- It extracts the new date and compares it to the job needs.
- It creates a task for the buyer with the impacted jobs listed.

**Result:** The buyer sees the schedule impact immediately.

## On Prem

Parsing can run entirely inside the plant. Run the mailbox reader, OCR and an open-weight model on a local GPU server, and use Graph or IMAP outbound only to fetch mail. Extracted text and attachments stay local, and the model never sees the ERP database except through the validation queries you allow. For defense customers whose POs carry controlled drawings or technical notes, keep the pipeline on infrastructure that meets your marking and storage obligations, and avoid forwarding such mail to external services. A mailbox hosted in a government cloud tenant needs the matching Graph endpoint.

## Security

- Scope mailbox access to named shared mailboxes only, not tenant-wide mail.
- Quarantine and scan attachments before parsing; treat PDFs as untrusted input.
- Beware of prompt injection in email text; the model must never be able to trigger writes or send mail on its own.
- Verify sender domains and flag lookalikes before staging a PO or bank-detail change.
- Log source message ID, extracted values, reviewer and posted document for audit.

## Options

### Rules-based mailbox flows with templates

**Fit:** A few customers who send consistent, structured POs.

**Effort:** Days, but brittle when layouts change.

### In-house parser with an LLM and review UI

**Fit:** Teams with development capacity and a clear target document type.

**Effort:** Several weeks, plus ongoing tuning.

### Partner build with Netray

**Fit:** You want mixed document types, ERP validation and on-prem models in one flow.

**Effort:** Pilot on one mailbox and document type first.

## Pitfalls

- Auto-posting orders with no review, which can book a wrong price or revision.
- Ignoring revision letters on part numbers; match on revision, not only part.
- Treating the email body as truth when the attachment says otherwise.
- Missing duplicates when a customer resends the same PO.
- Forgetting that a PO change is not a new PO; detect amendments.

## Faq

### Can Global Shop Solutions read emails itself?

**Answer:** Global Shop can send email from the system, but we are not aware of native parsing of inbound POs into orders. Check your release. The usual approach is an external reader that stages data for review and then posts through an import.

### How accurate is automatic PO extraction?

**Answer:** It depends on layout variety and scan quality. Clean text PDFs from repeat customers extract reliably; scans and unusual formats need more review. Use confidence scores and start with human approval on every document.

### Where should the model run?

**Answer:** For most shops with sensitive drawings, locally on a GPU server with an open-weight model is preferred. Cloud models can be fine for non-sensitive mail if your policy allows it.

### Can it also reply to customers?

**Answer:** It can draft replies from live status, such as promise dates, but we recommend a person approves outbound mail at first. Drafts should include only data the recipient is entitled to see.

### Do we have to change Global Shop?

**Answer:** No customisation is required. The automation sits beside the ERP and only needs read access for validation and a supported route for creating records.

## Search terms

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