Email Setup Guide

Follow our setup guide to set up a Fivetran Email connector to send files to your destination.

Prerequisites

To set up the Fivetran Email connector, you need a source that sends files as attachments through email.

Setup instructions

1. Enter your chosen destination schema and table name in the connector setup form.

2. Email a sample file to the email address provided in the Send your emails to field to validate attachments.

   NOTE: We automatically populate the Send your emails to field based on your destination schema and table name.

3. Schedule emails to be sent to the provided email address.

4. Choose your configuration options to ensure that you only sync the files that you need in your destination. In addition, setting up multiple connectors with different options allows you to slice and dice your data any way you'd like.

   You can use the following configuration options:

   • Beta Primary Key used for file process and load - Use this option to let Fivetran know how you'd like to update the files in your destination. When you modify a previously synced file, the option you select determines if we should replace the rows in the destination table or append new rows to the table:
     • If you select Append file using file modified time, we will upsert your files using the surrogate primary keys _file, _line, _modified and _directory.

       NOTE: If we upload new files or modify the existing files once the sync starts, we exclude these files from the current sync and include them in the subsequent sync.

     • If you select Upsert file using custom primary key, you can keep the most recent version of every record and your files will have a combination of the old and new data or data that is updated periodically. You can choose the primary keys you want to use after you save and test. For more information, see our documentation.

   NOTE: You can modify the primary keys only if your initial sync fails. If your initial sync is successful, the option to modify the primary keys is not available.

   • (Optional) File Pattern - Use a regular expression to sync all files you have sent matching this regular expression.

   • File Type - Use the file type to choose the parsing strategy for files without file extensions. If you save your files with improper extensions, you can force them to be synced as the selected file type.

     • If you select infer, we infer the type from a file's extension (.csv, .tsv, .json, .avro, .parquet or .log).

       NOTE: If you have XML files, don't select infer. We sync XML files only when you select the file type as xml. For more information about the file size, see our documentation.

     • If you choose a file type, we interpret every file we examine as the file type you select, so make sure everything we sync has the same file type.

       For example, if you have an automated CSV output system that saves files without a .csv extension, you can specify the type as csv, and we will sync them correctly as CSVs.

     • If you select xml, we load your XML data into the _data column without flattening it.

   • (Optional) JSON Delivery Mode - Available when JSON or JSONL is selected in File Type. Use this option to choose how Fivetran should handle your JSON data.

     • If you select Packed, we load all your JSON data into the _data column without flattening it.
     • If you select Unpacked, we flatten one level of columns and infer their data types.

   • Compression - Use the compression option to choose the compression strategy to decompress files without compression extensions. If your files are compressed but do not have extensions indicating the compression method, you can decompress them according to the selected compression algorithm.

     • If all of your compressed files are correctly marked with a matching compression extension (.bz2, .gz, .gzip, .tar, or .zip), you can select infer. If you select infer, we decompress every file according to their compression extension.

     • If you select uncompressed, we do not decompress the files and sync the uncompressed files.

     • If you choose a compression format, we decompress every file using the format you select.

       For example, if you have an automated CSV output system that GZIPs files to save space but saves them without a .gzip extension, you can set this field to GZIP. We will decompress every file that we examine using GZIP.

5. (Optional) To use the advanced configuration options, set the Enable Advanced Options toggle to ON.

   You can use the following configuration options for specific use cases:

   • (Optional) Archive Folder Pattern - Use a regular expression to filter and sync files from archived folders. We sync the files in compressed archives with filenames matching the specified pattern. If there are multiple files within archive (TAR or ZIP) folders, you can use the archive folder pattern to filter file types.

     For example, if you specify the archive folder pattern as .*json, we will sync only the files that end in a .json file extension from the archive folder.

     NOTE: This is only used to filter the files within the archived folder.

   • (Optional) Null Sequence - Specify which value indicates null if your CSVs use a special value indicating null.

     Only use this field if you are sure your CSVs have a null sequence. CSVs have no native notion of a null character. However, some CSV generators have created one, using characters such as \N to represent null.

   • (Optional) Delimiter - Specify the delimiter. The delimiter is a character used in files to separate one field from the next. Fivetran tries to infer the delimiter, but in some cases, this is impossible. If your files sync with the wrong number of columns or uses a unique delimiter, consider setting this value. For example, if you have tab-delimited files, you must enter \t, and if you have pipe-delimited files, enter |.

     • If you leave this field blank, we infer the delimiter for each file. You can store files of many different types of delimiters in the same folder with no problems. For more information on the delimiter inference, see our documentation.

     • If you specify a delimiter, we parse all the CSV, TSV, and TXT files in your folder path with this delimiter.

     NOTE: You can also specify a multi-character delimiter in this field. A custom multi-character delimiter (excluding "\t" and "\s") should be mentioned only if the source contains only csv files, else it might lead to data integrity issues for other files. The length of custom multi-character delimiter should not exceed 15 characters.

   • (Optional) Escape Character - Set the escape character if your CSV generator follows non-standard rules for escaping quotation marks.

     Only use this field if you are sure your CSVs have a different escape character. CSVs have a special rule for escaping quotation marks compared to other characters; they require two consecutive double quotes to represent an escaped double quote. However, some CSV generators do not follow this rule and use different characters like backslash for escaping.

   • (Optional) Skip Header Lines - Use this option to skip over fixed-length headers at the beginning of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped header lines field, specify the number of header lines you want to skip.

     Some CSV-generating programs include additional header lines or empty lines at the top of the file. The header consists of a few lines that do not match the format of the rest of the rows in the file. These header rows can cause undesired behavior because we attempt to parse them as if they were records in your CSV.

   • (Optional) Skip Footer Lines - Use this option to skip over fixed-length footers at the end of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped footer lines field, specify the number of footer lines you want to skip.

     Some CSV-generating programs include a footer at the bottom of the file. The footer consists of a few lines that do not match the format of the rest of the rows in the file. These footer rows can cause undesired behavior because we attempt to parse them as if they were records in your CSV.

   • (Optional) Headerless Files - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV-generating software doesn't provide a header line for the documents. Fivetran can generate the generic column names and sync data rows with them.

     Some CSV-generating programs do not include column name headers for the files; they only contain data rows. When you set the toggle to ON, we generate generic column names following the convention of column_0, column_1, ... column_n to map the rows.

   • (Optional) Line Separator - Specify the custom line separator for your CSV files. The line separator is used in files to separate one row from the next.

     • If you leave this field blank, we use the new line character \n as the line separator by default.

     • If you specify a line separator, we parse all the CSV files in your folder path with this line separator.

6. Click Save & Test. Fivetran will take it from here.

Fivetran tests and validates the Email connection. On successful completion of the setup tests, you can sync your Email data to your destination.

Setup tests

Fivetran performs the following Email connection tests:

• The Validating File Pattern Regex test validates the file pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the File Pattern field.

• The Validating Archive Pattern test validates the archive pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the Archive Folder Pattern field.

• The Validating EscapeChar test validates the escape character you specified for your CSV files and checks the length of the character which must not be more than one. We perform this test only if you specify an escape character in the Escape Character field.

• The Multi-Character Delimiter Support test validates the length of the delimiter which must be within 15 characters. We perform this test only if you specify the delimiter for your CSV files in the Delimiter field.

• The Validating Attachments test validates if we have received an email with attachments in the designated email address mentioned in the Send your emails to field.

• The Validating Attachment Match Pattern test validates whether the attachments we received matches the file pattern you specified in the setup form.

NOTE: The tests may take a couple of minutes to complete.

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