How to automate email in Global Shop Solutions
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.
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.
What teams use it for
Customer PO intake
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
Create a quote request record with customer, part numbers, quantities and attachments filed against it, and notify the estimator.
Vendor acknowledgement parsing
Read order acknowledgements, compare dates to the PO, and flag differences to the buyer.
Invoice inbox triage
Separate vendor invoices from statements and noise, and route invoices to the capture workflow.
Cert and shipping document routing
File certificates of conformance, mill certs and packing lists against the right PO or job as attachments.
Customer status replies
Draft answers to 'where is my order' emails from live job status, queued for approval before sending.
Global Shop Solutions integration 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
- 1
Connect the mailbox
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.
- 2
Classify the message
Decide PO, RFQ, acknowledgement, invoice, certificate or other. Keep an Unknown bucket that routes to a person.
- 3
Extract fields
Combine PDF text extraction, table parsing and a language model for varied layouts. Return values with confidence and the source page.
- 4
Validate against the ERP
Check customer, part number and revision, unit of measure, price against the quote, and delivery date plausibility using read-only queries.
- 5
Stage for review
Present a side-by-side of the email and the proposed record. The reviewer corrects and approves.
- 6
Post through the supported path
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Keeping data 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 checklist
- 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.
Ways to get it done
Rules-based mailbox flows with templates
Effort: Days, but brittle when layouts change.
A few customers who send consistent, structured POs.
In-house parser with an LLM and review UI
Effort: Several weeks, plus ongoing tuning.
Teams with development capacity and a clear target document type.
Partner build with Netray
Effort: Pilot on one mailbox and document type first.
You want mixed document types, ERP validation and on-prem models in one flow.
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.
Frequently asked questions
Can Global Shop Solutions read emails itself?
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?
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?
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?
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?
No customisation is required. The automation sits beside the ERP and only needs read access for validation and a supported route for creating records.
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