The Email assistant functionality allows you to create opportunities directly from your emails. It uses artificial intelligence to identify which email contains an order, and extracts some information from these emails, allowing you to add the remaining information.
The Email assistant helps you categorize three types of emails:
- orders which are based on an email template,
- orders which are free text, and
- other emails (non-orders).
When an email arrives, the Email assistant first runs a check whether it can fit any pattern that matches a template-based email. If not, it uses the artificial intelligence to establish whether the email is likely an order or not. The more emails are correctly categorized, the better this AI gets, so if the system is mistaken, please change this categorization manually. If it is an order, the data extraction AI retrieves data such as deadline and end customer.
Navigating orders and non-orders
The buttons All, Orders, Others allow you to list emails by type. If you select an email from the list, you can toggle between Order and Other by using the This is an order and the This is not an order buttons. You can also toggle an order to other and vice versa by clicking on the little icon next to the email in the list of emails on the left.
Creating an opportunity from an order
If the system identified an email as an order, or the user has toggled an Other email to an Order, the opportunity creation panel appears above the email's text on the right. While most of these fields are familiar for a BeLazy user, here is a short description:
- The email's subject is by default the opportunity's name. You can edit this on the top, using the pencil icon.
- The deadline can automatically be extracted from the email using the lightbulb icon, or entered manually using the calendar icon or simply typing it - you can see the required format in the tooltip.
- Select a single source language and one or more target languages.
- If there are files to upload, drag and drop them into the files area.
- Select a workflow. This is where you'd put values like Translation, TEP (Translation, Editing, Proofreading), MTPE (Machine Translation Post-Editing), PDF (if you received a PDF that requires pre-editing), etc.
- Select a specialization. This helps establish the right translator for the job. Put Legal, Financial, etc. into this.
- Volume. Enter the number of words. If you don't know the number of words, no problem. If you work with a business management system that is connected to a CAT tool, it can supply you this information.
- Enter a currency, like EUR or USD.
- The end customer can automatically be extracted from the email using the lightbulb icon, or entered manually. The end customer is usually a company's name.
- Finally, click Create opportunity to indicate that you have finished the form, and the opportunity is ready to be created, accepted and then created in your business management system.
What are workspaces about?
A Workspace is a connection that manages the settings for the Email Assistant and the BMS configured in Belazy. When you create the first opportunity, you can create a new Workspace or use the default Email handling workspace. Once you configure the first order in the Email Assistant, click the Create Opportunity button, and the workspace you selected will appear under Connections in the dashboard.
Click Automate to set up the configuration in the Workspace that will then send the information into your BMS. You can set up instructions, languages, workflows, clients, and more.
Once you automate the workflow, you can create opportunities from the Email Assistant and approve them in the Approval Pendings section of the dashboard. Moreover, you can set up Auto-Approval rules so once an opportunity is created, Belazy will automatically approve the opportunity and create a project following the workflow set up in the Workspace.
Unless you have a special need, we usually recommend sticking with one workspace for all emails, to avoid complications later.
Prefill templates
With some of your customers you probably have service-level agreements about different services, languages, specializations, etc. Using the prefill templates, you are able to set up additional automation based on the incoming email's domain. You can edit such templates using the template editor button. To create or edit a prefill template, you first need to enter the email domain, such as my-customer.com. Every email that arrives from this domain first gets the values extracted, but in case something is not visible in the email, the prefill defaults will apply. This speeds up the work of the project manager even further.
Ask for missing info
It may happen that your customer did not specify all the information necessary, and there are no preliminary agreements either. In this case, you can click on the Ask for missing info button. BeLazy sends out an email on your behalf (from a central BeLazy address, though), which includes a little table that allows your customer to simply fill out the table and then reply the email.
Creating the opportunity
Once you click the Create opportunity button, the opportunity will be available in the list of Projects and connections, like a traditional project, which you can accept. You can set up an auto-approve rule if you want the system to automatically create such projects in your business management system. Clicking on the source link at the opportunity, BeLazy takes you back to the right email in the Email assistant, so you can always see which email this opportunity was created from.