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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.affzero.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Overview

The Email Received trigger runs an automation every time an email is forwarded to a dedicated AffZero forwarding address. 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. Configure your email provider (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) to forward specific emails to that address.
  4. When AffZero receives a forwarded email, 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 confirmation email to the address. AffZero will automatically accept it — this may take a few seconds. Click OK and the address will show as confirmed.
4

Optional: create a filter

Instead of forwarding all email, you can create a filter:
  • Click Search options (the small arrow in the Gmail search bar).
  • Set From to billing@vendor.com (or whatever sender you want).
  • Click Create filter → check Forward it to and select your AffZero address.
This way only matching emails get forwarded.
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_1_filename}Filename of the first attachment
{attachment_1_mime}MIME type of the first attachment (e.g. application/pdf)
{attachment_2_filename}Filename of the second attachment (if any)
Attachment variables are numbered starting from 1. If the email has 3 attachments, you’ll have attachment_1_*, attachment_2_*, and attachment_3_*.

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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.