Email Automation in AACFlow: IMAP Triggers, SMTP, SendGrid, and Gmail Connector

All three triggers emit a normalised email object downstream, so the rest of your workflow is trigger-agnostic.

Building an AI-Powered Support Inbox

The most requested email automation is intelligent support triage. Here is how it works in AACFlow:

The AI Agent block receives the full email body and runs a classification prompt. You define the urgency criteria in plain language — no regex, no rule engines. The agent extracts the customer name, product mentioned, and issue summary, then writes all three into Jira ticket fields automatically.

The acknowledgment email goes out through the SMTP tool. You point it at your business SMTP server (custom domain, no shared sending pool), and AACFlow composes a reply that references the ticket number. The customer sees a human-looking confirmation within seconds of sending their email.

For high-volume inboxes, combine the IMAP trigger's subject filter with a pre-filter agent step that discards newsletters and auto-replies before the main classification runs. This keeps your LLM costs lean.

Automating Invoice Processing from Email

Finance teams spend hours per week opening invoices, reading amounts and due dates, and entering them into spreadsheets. AACFlow eliminates that entirely:

The Gmail connector's Get Attachment operation retrieves the PDF or image file from the email. The AI Agent then reads the attachment content using the built-in vision capability, extracting structured fields even from scanned documents. No OCR service subscription required.

SendGrid handles the outgoing notification. You configure a transactional template with the extracted fields pre-filled: vendor name, amount, due date, and a link to the spreadsheet row. The tool supports tracking opens and clicks, so the finance manager can see at a glance which notifications have been acted on.

The same pattern works for purchase orders, delivery confirmations, and contract approval emails — any document that arrives predictably via email and requires structured data extraction.

Advanced: Multi-Step Email Nurturing Sequences

AACFlow is not limited to reactive triggers. You can build proactive outbound sequences that combine AI personalisation with SendGrid's deliverability infrastructure:

The AI Agent uses the signup email domain to look up company size, industry, and technology stack. That context feeds into the welcome email template, making it feel hand-written. The Wait block pauses execution for exactly three days, then the Condition block checks activation status via your product API.

For regulated industries or high-stakes accounts, insert a Human-in-the-loop block between the AI draft and the send step. A team member reviews and approves the draft in AACFlow's approval UI — or edits it inline — before SendGrid dispatches it. The workflow resumes automatically once approved.

Combining Gmail, AI Drafting, and Human Review

Customer complaint emails deserve a careful response. AACFlow's Human-in-the-loop pattern handles this elegantly:

The reviewer edits the draft directly in AACFlow's approval interface and clicks Approve. The Gmail connector then sends the reply using the same thread, so it appears as a natural conversation in the customer's inbox. No copy-pasting between tools. No switching to a separate email client.

Russian Market: Yandex 360 and Mail.ru Business

AACFlow includes dedicated IMAP connectors for Yandex 360 and Mail.ru Business — the two dominant corporate email providers in Russia. They authenticate with app-specific passwords and respect each provider's folder naming conventions (INBOX, Sent, Входящие). You can mix a Yandex 360 trigger with an SMTP tool configured for a Mail.ru Business relay, or use the generic IMAP trigger with any Cyrillic-named folder.

Conclusion

Email is no longer a passive inbox. With AACFlow's IMAP trigger, Gmail connector, SMTP tool, and SendGrid integration, every incoming message can trigger an intelligent, multi-step workflow — classify, extract, route, respond, and notify — without a single line of custom backend code. Start with one inbox and one workflow. The pattern scales to every team in your organisation.