This article is part of our Product Feature series. Click here to read the first article.
What if I need data from someone who can’t use Dropzone?
You probably have a variety of data sources. Apps like Shopify, POS data, flat files you create, and email. Although extremely common, sending data over email has plenty of issues.
- Repetition: Every time you download the file from your inbox, you have to clean, aggregate, and load to your reports and dashboards. It’s definitely not convenient and after each round of cleaning, the file sits in your inbox without any use.
- Human errors: The data sender has to ensure they’re sending the most up-to-date file, you have to keep an eye on your inbox, and transform the file correctly each time. Every step of the way, something could go wrong and that’s wasted time.
When sending/receiving sensitive information, you want to ensure maximum productivity and minimum chances for human error to prop up. And it wouldn’t hurt to have all of the cleaning steps automated as well. This is why you need Dropmail.
The Solution: Dropmail
Dropmail is the tool to automate email-based data pipelines. The data sender just sends an email with the data attached to your dedicated pipeline’s email and is a one-click approval away from being added to your database. The times when you have to download and manually clean files are over.
Dropmail creates a unique email address for a pre-created pipeline that you can share to your data source business partners. All they have to do is send the data to that email and the it’ll be automatically added to your pipeline after you approve it.
Dropmail works best if the data sender has to send data over email or can’t sign up for Dropzone. If they instead source their data from other software apps, or the files are too large to be attached in an email, consider setting up a Dropzone Data Request instead.
Let’s see a quick preview of Dropmail:
In this really short video, we see how easy it is to add data to your pipeline once you’ve set up a Dropmail pipeline. The data sender sends over an email, you get the notification, click Allow, and that’s it. Here’s how to set up Dropmail.
- Head over to a Table you’d like to create a Dropmail for and click on Pipelines
2. Click Create New Pipeline and click on the Dropmail tab
3. Here, you can give your Dropmail a meaningful name. For example, if this is a monthly occurring sales file from Douglas Adams, you can call it “Monthly Sales from Douglas”. You can also select which pre-made cleaning steps you’d like to apply to it
4. Click on Create Dropmail and you now have an email address that anyone can use to send data to your pipeline!
Why is Dropmail amazing?
- The data sender can send multiple attachments in one go. These attachments go to the same pipeline and will be loaded in after you approve them.
- The sender doesn’t have to change their workflow significantly. It’s just changing the recipient email address to the Dropmail one. No programs to install, no accounts to make.
- You can pass the email to as many data senders as you like. If you get the same type of file from a bunch of senders, simply send them the same Dropmail. You’ll get all the notification right inside Dropbase and not have to worry managing data in your email inbox.
Can’t wait to try out Dropmail for your data workflow? Sign up here.
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