Background

Collaboration between data teams and business teams is hard with all the different data tools out there. With so many places data can be, from data warehouses, tools, and FTP servers to databases and APIs, getting data into the right place usually takes specialized knowledge or training. When you add in external teams from partners and customers, the complexity grows with every data tool and place.

Challenge

Getting data where you need it every day is tricky to set up, and building one-off integrations is costly and timely. On top of that, non-technical data users find it challenging to access and use obscure and technical data tools. What if there was an easier way to set up data pipelines that are easy for anyone to access, highly configurable and customizable, and go to every data system you use?

Solution

Everyone knows how to send an email. Nexla’s email source makes it easy to ingest data. Business teams find this functionality extremely powerful. Ingesting data becomes as simple as sharing an email address to send data to, and sharing an email address is much safer than usernames, passwords, and server IP addresses with open ports. Combine that with powerful drag-and-drop transformations and limitless destination connectivity and you can build flows in minutes. Move data from an email address to cloud storage like BigQuery, Google Drive, S3, and Azure, or any other connector across file systems, SaaS apps, APIs, or even streaming.

1. Create Email Source in Nexla

Select the Email Connector in Nexla, and Nexla will generate a unique email ID to send your files and data to. Set the email connector type to file attachments, email content, or even image or PDF attachments for Nexla to perform OCR and convert to text. Nexla supports any file type including Avro, Parquet, EDI, text, and more. 

2. Optional: Set Validation, Transformation, and Filter Rules

If needed, easily configure any transformations in Nexla with the transformation editor. Select from hundreds of powerful transformations out of the box, or inject custom code for complicated operations. For example, if sensitive customer information is included in the dataset, simply select and apply an MD5 hashing transformation to just that attribute to encrypt social security numbers, addresses, and credit card information. Apply validation rules to get personalized alerts if data is missing or invalid. Finally, filter and slice the data as needed to keep junk out of your destination.

3. Set Your Destination

Finally, set your destination from any of Nexla’s connectors. Simply select and add credentials to your destination of choice or use single sign-on if it’s available. File destinations like Google Drive and Snowflake make it easy to automate upload and transformation from the email attachment source.

Outcome

In minutes this flow can be set up, configured, and start accepting emails.This is a powerful use case to enable collaboration between data and business teams inside and outside the organization. New partners can be onboarded in hours and simply given an email to send data to that integrates perfectly with the systems you already use. Non-technical users within the organization can simply send or forward emails to load the data into the warehouse or CRM system they need without worrying about queries, credentials, or servers. Nexla makes it easy to create as many email flows as are needed for every situation.

Interested in learning more? Contact us to get a custom tailored demo and free trial.