Build with AI
Open the AI Chat in your table’s right sidebar and describe what you want. AI handles everything: it chooses the right trigger, maps the relevant fields, and sets up all actions automatically. Describe the goal once, and the workflow is ready — no manual setup needed. Example: “When I receive a support email, create a ticket and classify it.”Configuration
Connect the mailbox
The trigger connects over IMAP, which works with any provider that supports the protocol, Gmail and Outlook included once IMAP is enabled on the account.
For the password, click Select a secret to pick one of the secrets granted to this automation, or Add secret to create one (default variable name
IMAP_PASSWORD). Store the app password or authorization code there, not your mailbox login password; the trigger keeps a reference to the secret rather than the value.
What email data is available to next steps
When the trigger fires, the following data from the email is available as variables in your action steps:
You can reference any of these by clicking + in your action fields.
How to set it up (IMAP example)
- Open your automation and add a new trigger.
- Select When email received.
- Choose IMAP as the connection type.
- Enter your IMAP server details: host, port, and username, then select or add the secret that holds the password.
- (Optional) Change the Mailbox if you want to monitor a folder other than INBOX.
- Set the Poll Interval — how often to check for new emails. A shorter interval means faster responses but more frequent server checks.
- Click Test to verify the connection. Teable will attempt to connect to your mailbox and report success or failure.
- Save and activate the automation.
- Add your action steps, using the email data (From, Subject, Body, etc.) as variables.
When to use
- Create a record for each incoming support email. Parse the subject and body to populate fields in a support tickets table automatically.
- Extract invoice data from emails with AI. Use the AI Generate action to read the email body or attachment and pull out amounts, dates, and vendor names.
- Route customer inquiries to the right team. Based on keywords in the subject or body, update a “Team” field or send notifications to specific people.
- Archive important emails as records. Automatically log emails from specific senders or with specific subjects into a Teable table for easy searching and tracking.
- Process order confirmations. When an order confirmation email arrives, extract the order number and details to update your orders table.
Troubleshooting
- Connection failed (IMAP): Double-check your host, port, username, and password. Make sure your email provider allows IMAP access — some providers disable it by default.
- Gmail: “Less secure app” error: Gmail does not allow plain password login. Store an App Password as the secret instead. See Set up Gmail IMAP for instructions.
- Emails not being picked up: Check the poll interval. Also confirm that the emails are arriving in the monitored folder. Emails in subfolders may be missed if the wrong mailbox is selected.
- Duplicate processing: The trigger tracks which emails it has already processed. However, if you deactivate and reactivate the automation, it may reprocess recent emails. Mark emails as read in your inbox if needed.
Tips
- A shorter poll interval means faster response to emails but does not guarantee real-time delivery. For true real-time processing, consider using a webhook-based approach if your email provider supports it.
- Use filters in your email client to route relevant emails to a specific label or folder, then have Teable monitor only that label. This reduces noise.
- For high-volume mailboxes, consider increasing the poll interval and processing in batches to avoid overwhelming your workflow.
- A trigger that still holds a typed password keeps running, and the password field reads Password set. Select a secret to replace it. The next change to that password has to be a secret.
Related
- Set up Gmail IMAP — detailed instructions for connecting Gmail
- AI generate action — useful for extracting structured data from email content
- Create record action — commonly paired with email triggers to log emails as records
- Send email
- Credentials and integrations — manage secrets and grant them to an automation