Inbound Webhook is a feature that allows processing of incoming emails for a domain or subdomain. The feature parses contents of an email and POSTs the information to a specified URL in a multipart/form-data format.

Use Cases

  1. Automated Customer Support: This feature can be utilized to create an automated support system where customer emails are parsed, categorized, and routed to the appropriate department or ticketing system. For instance, emails sent to support@reply.yourdomain.com can be automatically parsed for keywords indicating urgency or specific issues, and then the system can either provide automated responses or escalate to human agents as necessary.

  2. Email-based Workflow Automation: Businesses can leverage the Inbound Parse Webhook to automate workflows triggered by email content. For example, purchase orders or booking requests sent to a specific email address like orders@reply.yourdomain.com can be automatically parsed for essential details such as product codes, quantities, or dates, and these details can be used to initiate fulfillment processes, update inventory systems, or schedule services without manual intervention.

  3. Feedback Collection and Analysis: This feature can be used to gather and analyze feedback or survey responses sent via email. By directing survey responses to a specific email, such as feedback@reply.yourdomain.com, the system can parse the responses for sentiment, keywords, and other valuable insights, which can then be aggregated and analyzed to inform business strategies, product improvements, or customer service enhancements.

This feature is available only in Novu cloud. This feature will not work in community self hosted version and local environment.

Steps to set up Inbound Webhook

  1. Set up an MX Record:
    • Log in to your domain host’s website and navigate to the MX Records page.
    • Create a new MX record for the subdomain you want to process incoming email (e.g. reply.yourdomain.com).

    You must create a new record for this as this feature does not work if the MX record is already set on the domain. Here is an example with route 53

    • Assign the MX record a priority of 10 and point it to the specified inbound mail server that located on the admin dashboard on the Email Settings.

      For US, use inbound-mail.novu.co and For EU, use eu.inbound-mail.novu.co

  2. Add Domain to allowed list:
    • Log in to the dashboard.
    • Go to the Setting tab in the left vertical navbar.
    • Navigate to Email Settings on the settings page.
    • Add your domain to the allowed domain box.

    You can only add one Inbound Webhook domain per organization.

  3. Enable Inbound Parse and Set Webhook URL:
    • Log in to the dashboard.
    • Navigate to the Workflow Editor.
    • Select the email step.
    • Enable the Inbound Parse feature.
    • Set the Webhook URL to the location where you want the parsed data to be POSTed.
The Webhook URL must be publicly accessible without authentication.