Oloid Certify is a QR-code based contactless wellness attestation solution, which is helping workplaces stay safe during this pandemic by administering a health questionnaire. Employees and visitors can respond to screening questions regarding their whereabouts and health from their personal mobile devices and/or computers to generate a QR code. This code is then scanned at the entry points of the workplace to provide health attestations. This has enabled our customers to eliminate manual entry systems saving them time and money.
Oloid ensures 100% data privacy by allowing the captured data to be sent to the host organization’s email servers. In this blog we will discuss how our customers set up reports and dashboards by applying simple email parsing rules on their email servers.
What is an email parser?
Email Parser is a program which can be taught to recognize patterns in the emails and save the important texts from the emails and ignore the rest. These texts can then be extracted and sent into other softwares to create meaningful data.
For example, when the host organization receives the QR scan data from the Oloid Certify app in form of an email, the most relevant fields in the email are 1. Name, Email or ID of the Employee or Visitor, 2. Responses to the questions, 3. Date of the Scan.
Now that we know how an email parser works, let’s review the step by step instructions to set this up:
- Set up Email parser account
- Forward email to parser
- Teach the parser to read email
- Set up auto email forwarding from mail client
- Use email data and create a Zap
- Link the Zap to Google Sheets
Set up email parser account
Go to parser.zapier.com, sign in with a Zapier account or create a new account, then click the Create Mailbox button to add a new email parser. You can sign up for a free account if you don’t have one already.
Email Parser will then show an email address like t631rg4f@robot.zapier.com. Copy the email address.
Forward email to parser
Log into the email account which has been configured as the destination for the captured QR-code data in the Oloid Certify app. Email forwarding functionality is supported by almost all email servers. Please follow the corresponding instructions to set up forwarding as per the forwarding criteria described below.
Open your email app and forward one of the Oloid Certify emails received from admin@oloid.ai to the email address you have copied from the parser mailbox.
Once this forwarding rule has been setup, the Zapier parser will start receiving the data from the emails.
Teach the parser to read the email
Once Zapier Email Parser receives the email, it will show a text version of the email in the Initial Template box. All you need to do is find the data to be extracted and tell the parser that this is what to copy.
In our case, we will copy the Employee or Visitor information such as ‘Name’, ‘Email’, ‘Employee ID’, Screening question responses – ‘Response1’, ‘Response2’, ‘Response3’, ‘Scanning date’ and ‘Scanning time’.
To copy these texts you simply have to highlight the same and assign values. Save this template. You can repeat the process by sending more such emails and training the template by clicking on ‘Edit Extra Template’.
Set up auto email forwarding from email client
The email parser is now trained and ready to extract information from similar emails. Next step is to automate email forwarding from your email client. To do this, you need to set up email forwarding for all the emails received from ‘admin@oloid.ai’.
In Gmail, this can be set up from the settings and forwarding. In the forwarding option click ‘creating a filter!’
Once the email forwarding is set up, all the emails received from the QR code scans are automatically sent to the parser from your email account. The parser is already set up to extract information.
The next step is to extract the parsed information into your target tool using Zapier.
Use email data and create a Zap
Log in to your Zapier account www.zapier.com by using the same credentials used to log into parser.zapier.com. After logging in, please select ‘Make a Zap’.
When you select ‘Make a Zap’, the following screen opens up.
You can ‘Name your Zap’, something which can remind you of the activity for which you created this Zap. In this option you have to select ‘Email parser by Zapier’
In this section select ‘New Email’ as the trigger to initiate this Zap activity. This means whenever there is an email received in the mailbox of your parser account from the auto forward set up in your mail client, this Zap becomes active and would start its activity. Next we will connect the Zap to an output software, in our case it will be Google sheet.
Link Zap to a Google Sheet
After you have selected the trigger action and linked parser email to the Zap like in the following screenshot.
Check for the green check marks on the right side. This indicates your parser is connected properly to the Zap and it is in fact sending information to the Zap. Next step would be to continue and connect Google sheet.
Select Google sheet from the list of apps shown. Once Google sheet is selected, it will ask you to connect your ‘Google account’ by logging in. This will allow Zapier to directly interact with your Google sheet.
Prior to connecting to Google sheet here, you need to set up your Google drive account, if you do not have one. You can always create a new official gmail account for this purpose. We also recommend creating a Google sheet with the desired fields and customization you might need in the report.
After the above activities are completed, please select ‘Lookup Spreadsheet Row’ from the options.
This will trigger you to select the particular spreadsheet created to collect data. In our example, we created a spreadsheet with columns similar to the data
extract from the parser. You can name the column anything you want.
After you select the desired spreadsheet, follow the onscreen prompts to select which column should store which information from the parser. Once all the selections are made, walla! .. you have your very own automated sheet collecting data from the QR code scans at the entry points.
To test this, you can start by filling out a questionnaire from the unique url of your organization (www.oloid.me/<company name>). Generate a QR code and scan the same using Oloid Certify App. Make sure the email address getting the reports is the same one, which has the auto forwarding set up. You should see the information collected in the spreadsheet right away. Please refresh the page if you don’t see the entry. You can also create more Zaps in a similar way to connect with any other analytics softwares such as Tableau, Power BI or connect to any apps using web-hooks. You can create your own dashboard or contact tracing view using Zaps.
Oloid Certify has created an amazing way for organizations to administer screening questionnaires in the easiest possible way and yet store all necessary information safely as needed. Our team is motivated when we hear from our customer that we have solved a big problem for them. For Oloid Certify, we have many such customers.
“Oloid Certify streamlined our procedures to save on time and manual wellness attestations. We have eliminated using paper health questions.” – Lisa Blasone, HR manager of New York Institute of Special Education.
