Auto email print and attached PDF files

Here comes another example from a real use case.

Our customer has an e-commerce site and when a visitor checkouts and pays a new email with the confirmation of the purchase is generated and sent to the visitor email address (this is done by PHP not Email Parser in this case). This is the usual process when someone buys something online as you know.  A copy of this email goes to a warehouse where the orders are delivered. This email also contains PDF files attached containing the labels that must be sticked to the box.

The worker at the warehouse checks from time to time the inbox and when a new email pops up he prints the email body in normal paper and the attached PDFs in label paper. Then he takes a box and fill it with the goods specified in the printed paper (email body). At last he closes the box and sticks the labels (attached PDFs) on it.

Part of this process can be with Email Parser. We can free the warehouse worker to stare at the front of the screen checking the inbox. What we did here is to configure Email Parser to automatically check the email source every 30 seconds and if a new email arrives automatically print the email body in one printer and the attached PDFs in another printer filled with label paper. Now the worker can concentrate in other tasks and just a peek at the printers tray is enough to know if there are new delivery orders.

The key here is the processes “Run command under Windows command prompt” and “Run external program“.

To print a pdf in the label printer we used Foxit reader as this. Note that the widely used Adobe reader also has a command line way to directly print pdfs:

Printing the email body is a bit more complex as we generate a plain text file and then use notepad.exe to print. Before any of these steps we delete any previous txt file (from a previously printed email)