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Overview

The Email Received trigger runs an automation every time an email arrives at a dedicated AffZero forwarding address — whether you forwarded it manually from your inbox or it was delivered automatically via a rule or provider forwarding. This is ideal for capturing invoices, receipts, reports, or any document sent by email — without granting AffZero access to your inbox. Forwarding addresses look like auto-7gk2p9xr@inbox.affzero.com. You create and manage them in Providers → Email Forwarding, then assign one to any automation that uses the Email Received trigger.

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How it works

  1. Go to Providers → Email Forwarding in the AffZero dashboard and create one or more forwarding addresses (within your plan limit).
  2. Create (or edit) an automation and set its trigger to Email Received. If you have multiple addresses, pick the one you want from the dropdown.
  3. Either forward messages manually (open an email and use Forward to your AffZero address) or set up automatic forwarding or filters in your provider so matching mail is sent without extra steps.
  4. When AffZero receives an email at that address, it runs the automation — extracting data, saving attachments, writing to Google Sheets, and so on.
Multiple automations can share the same address. When an email arrives, every enabled automation that references that address will run independently. This lets you, for example, extract invoice data and archive the PDF in separate automations from a single forwarded email.

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Managing your forwarding addresses

All forwarding addresses for your account are listed in Providers → Email Forwarding in the AffZero dashboard. From there you can:
  • Create new addresses (up to your plan limit: Starter 1, Pro 2, Scale 5).
  • Label each address with a friendly name (e.g. “Vendor invoices”, “Personal receipts”).
  • Copy any address to the clipboard.
  • See which automations use each address.
  • Delete an address (after removing it from any linked automations first).

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Setting up forwarding in Gmail

1

Open Gmail Settings

Click the gear icon → See all settings → go to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
2

Add a forwarding address

Click Add a forwarding address and paste your AffZero forwarding address (e.g. auto-7gk2p9xr@inbox.affzero.com).
3

Confirm

Gmail will send a verification email to the address. AffZero auto-confirms it for you — just reload the Gmail settings page after a few seconds and the address will show as verified.
4

Optional: create filters

Instead of forwarding all email, use Filters and Blocked Addresses — the easiest place to manage many rules. In Gmail: Settings → See all settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses → Create a new filter. Or open Gmail filter settings directly.Set criteria (e.g. From, Subject, Has attachment) → Create filter → check Forward it to and choose your AffZero address. You can add multiple filters, edit them later, and use Import / Export on that page.
Using a Gmail filter is recommended so only relevant emails (invoices, receipts) are forwarded, rather than everything in your inbox.

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Setting up forwarding in Outlook

1

Open Outlook Settings

Click the gear icon → View all Outlook settings → Mail → Rules.
2

Create a new rule

Click Add new rule. Name it (e.g. “Forward invoices to AffZero”).
3

Set conditions

Add a condition such as From contains billing@vendor.com — or leave it broad to forward all email.
4

Add action

Choose Forward to and paste your AffZero forwarding address.
5

Save

Click Save. Matching emails will now be forwarded automatically.

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Setting up in other providers

Most email providers support forwarding or rules. Look for:
  • Settings → Forwarding — add the AffZero address as the destination.
  • Settings → Rules / Filters — create a rule that forwards matching emails.

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Trigger filters

Inside the automation builder, you can optionally restrict which emails are processed:
FilterDescription
Only accept emails fromOnly process emails where the sender matches (e.g. billing@vendor.com or @vendor.com).
Subject containsOnly process emails whose subject includes a keyword (e.g. Invoice).
Emails that don’t match the filters are silently skipped.

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Variables available in steps

When the trigger fires, the following variables are populated and can be used in any subsequent step:
VariableDescription
{email_from}Sender email address
{email_subject}Email subject line
{email_body_text}Plain-text body of the email
{email_received_at}Timestamp when the email was received
{attachment_count}Number of attachments
{attachment_filename}Full filename of the first attachment (alias: {attachment_name})
{attachment_basename}First attachment name without extension (alias: {attachment_stem}); use in templates like {invoice_vendor}_{attachment_basename}.pdf
{attachment_extension}Extension of the first attachment without a dot (e.g. pdf)
{attachment_1_filename}Full filename of the first attachment (alias: {attachment_1_name})
{attachment_1_basename}First attachment name without extension
{attachment_1_extension}First attachment extension
{attachment_1_mime}MIME type of the first attachment (e.g. application/pdf)
{attachment_2_filename}Second attachment full name (also {attachment_2_name}, {attachment_2_basename}, …)
Attachment variables are numbered starting from 1. If the email has 3 attachments, you’ll have attachment_1_*, attachment_2_*, and attachment_3_* variants (_filename, _name, _basename, _stem, _extension, _mime, _size, _path).
In the Save PDF to Drive step filename template, {attachment_filename}, {attachment_basename}, and related aliases refer to the attachment index you chose for that step (not always the first attachment).

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FAQ

Yes! Multiple automations can share the same forwarding address. When an email arrives, all enabled automations that reference that address will run independently. This is useful when you want to process the same email in different ways (e.g. extract data and archive the file separately).
It depends on your plan: Starter allows 1, Pro allows 2, and Scale allows 5 addresses. You can manage your plan in Settings → Billing.
No. AffZero only sees emails that you explicitly forward to the generated address. No inbox access or Gmail read permissions are required.
It is silently skipped. You can see filtered events in the automation’s execution logs.
The AI Extract step currently works best with digital (text-based) PDFs. Scanned or image-based PDFs may return empty text. Multimodal support is planned for a future release.