When an email with a PDF attachment is received in Outlook, use OCR to extract the text and send it to Slack

■Overview

Do you manually transcribe the contents of emails with PDF attachments, such as invoices and purchase orders, every time you receive them? This task is time-consuming and can also lead to human errors, such as data entry mistakes.
With this workflow, you can automatically read text from PDF files received in Outlook (convert PDF to machine-readable text) and send the extracted content to Slack. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and improves operational accuracy.

■Who This Template Is For

• Anyone who spends too much time reviewing or transcribing PDF content received in Outlook
• Anyone who manually creates text data from PDFs and struggles with issues such as data entry errors
• Anyone who wants to automate the processing of PDFs, such as invoices, and improve team efficiency

■Benefits of Using This Template

• Automatically handles everything from converting PDFs to text to sending notifications as soon as a PDF is received in Outlook, reducing the time spent on manual tasks
• Eliminates the need for manual data transcription, preventing human errors such as input mistakes and missed checks while improving operational accuracy

■Flowbot Steps

1. First, connect Outlook and Slack to Yoom
2. Next, select Outlook as the trigger and set the action to “When an email with a specific subject is received”
3. Next, configure the Outlook actions “Get email attachment information” and “Download email attachment” in that order under Operations
4. Next, select the OCR feature under Operations and configure it to extract text from the downloaded PDF file
5. Finally, configure Slack’s “Send a message to a channel” action under Operations to notify the specified channel of the extracted text

※“Trigger”: An action that starts the flow. “Operation”: An action that processes data within the flow after the trigger starts.

■Customizable Points in This Workflow

• When configuring the OCR feature, you can customize which fields to extract based on the type of PDF you want to read
• When configuring Slack notifications, you can specify any channel as the destination. You can also customize the message by embedding the text extracted by OCR as a variable

■Notes

• Connect both Outlook and Slack to Yoom.
• Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) offers plans for home users and businesses (Microsoft 365 Business). Authentication may fail if you are not subscribed to a business plan.
• AI Operations for OCR and audio transcription are available only on the Team and Success Plans. On the Free and Mini Plans, the configured Flowbot operations will result in errors.
• Paid plans, such as the Team and Success Plans, include a two-week free trial. During the free trial, you can use apps and AI features (Operations) that are subject to plan restrictions.
• Please note that OCR may not be able to read data containing 6,500 characters or more, or data with small text.
• The maximum downloadable file size is 300 MB. Depending on the app specifications, the limit may be less than 300 MB.
• For details on the file size limits for triggers and individual operations, see below.
  See the file size limits