Edit Parsing Set Dialog

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When you Edit, add New or Insert a parsing set from the Setup Parsing Sets dialog, the Edit Parsing Set dialog is used.

This dialog defines one parsing set, which consists of 4 items:


Set name

This is for your use to identify the set when listed in the Setup Parsing Sets dialog, so just make sure it's different for each set you define.


Identifying Text

This field is important for the parsing to be successful. This is particularly important for E-mail requests, since other types of E-mail need to be filtered out from processing.

Each parsing set should have a different identifying text value so that the parsing engine can determine which parsing set to use for any given E-mail. Furthermore, it should be something unique that not only identifies an E-mail as being a request (as opposed to some other junk E-mail), but also distinguishes requests that need to use this parsing set from requests that need to use a different parsing set. Remember that it will look at the E-mail header in addition to the text of the E-mail, so it's common to use the "from" E-mail address or the subject of the message to identify it. Some simple examples are below:

·

"request@reservationservice.com" -- This parsing set would only be used for an E-mail with that address in it, which presumably would only be E-mail requests from that online service.

·

"Form: Cabin Rental Request" -- This parsing set would only be used for and E-mail with that text in it, which would presumably be the subject of messages sent from the cabin rental form on your web site.

·

"RIG_LENGTH_REQUIRED" -- This parsing set would only be used for and E-mail with that text in it, which is one of the field headers in messages sent from the RV space rental form on your web site (and presumably not present in the cabin rental form, for instance).

·

(empty) -- If you're using an E-mail mailbox that's dedicated to requests (so the mailbox doesn't get any other junk E-mail), and you only expect one type of request, then you can leave the identifying text blank (don't actually put the word "empty" in it). You could also have a default set with blank identifying text, but make sure it's the last one in the list so any others are checked first.

Try to use something as unique as possible, but don't worry if some other E-mail happens to come in with that text in it by accident. The program will try to parse it, but will simply show an error if the E-mail message doesn't have all of the other fields defined by the parsing rules.

Note that the identifying text is case sensitive! Make sure you have any capital letters exactly as they will appear in the E-mail.


Parsing Rules

This is a list of all parsing rules defined for the set. As with the Setup Parsing Sets dialog, the standard Edit/Add/Insert/Copy/Delete/Move functions are available.

The list of rules is a little different than other lists. The "Rule Details" listed will be shown in a format determined by the type of rule and the basic settings for it. This can take some time to get used to, but basically it just shows the type of rule, and the main parameters of the rule (begin/end text, etc.). For instance, rules that have a before and after text and presumably extract some data between them will be shown like "Before___After", where the underline is assumed to be where the extracted text will be. Rules that have the "Append" flag set will have a "+" at the beginning of the rule details. Rules that use the "After previous field" location will have a "..." in them to indicate this.


Notes

You can add notes to the set if you like, which will just be shown in the list of sets in the Setup Parsing Sets dialog.


Importing Rules

If we have a pre-defined set of parsing rules for a particular type of online service, you can import them from a file that we send you instead of adding them all yourself. The format of this import must be precisely as expected, so this should only be used with files provided by us.