Create Contacts From Inbound Email Body?

Question

Is there a way to have CiviCRM create contacts from email addresses found in the body of an inbound email? We have a number of different sources that send us emails with addresses in the email bodies that we want to capture (for example, we receive volunteer applications from a form on our website, and also from VolunteerMatch - both contain the applicant's email address in the email body). However, it looks like inbound email processing only parses email headers by default. Is there something obvious we're missing?

Answer 1

This would require an extension to do.

That said, I'm not sure this is the best approach for your use case.

If you have a form on your website, it seems like it would be better to integrate that form directly with CiviCRM instead of using inbound email processing. For VolunteerMatch, I would use their API with Form Processor to process the message rather than inbound email processing.

That second item is a complex solution if you're new to CiviCRM, but within the reach of a non-coder, as opposed to writing an extension.