Automate Your Email Forwarding Workflow

Of course, you can forward each trip related email manually to [email protected], but what if you travel a lot and book with the same travel providers? The good news is that most email providers feature some form of 'mail rules' that you can setup to automatically forward emails with specific subjects, or emails from specific senders.

Whilst we can't provide in-depth support for setting up mail rules, we've tried to gather some resources to help you as well as some example scenarios you may want to consider for email forwarding.

Guides for Setting up Mail Rules

Whilst not comprehensive, we've gathered links to some of the common email providers' guides on how to setup mail rules on their platforms.

• Fastmail
• GMail (Including Google Workspace)
• Microsoft Outlook
• iCloud Mail
• Proton Mail

With the exception of Outlook, the above are all guides to setup mail rules at the 'server side' meaning these rules should run even if you're not logged into your email service or have your mail app of choice open.

Most email apps will also allow you to setup mail rules, but generally speaking these can only run when that app is open. Here's a few guides for some common email apps:

• Apple Mail (macOS)
• Thunderbird

Example Scenarios

These are by no means exhaustive, and are just some examples for you to consider in how you could use email automation to get the most out of Tripsy's email forwarding feature.

In these examples, we'll be using the terms Conditions and Actions which simply mean:

• Conditions: What parts of the email your rule is looking for and will act upon.
• Actions: What happens to an email that matches those conditions

Different email providers may use different terms for these, but the outcome will be the same.

Example 1: Forward all Confirmation Emails from an Airline

In this example, we want to forward only confirmation emails form an airline, rather than every email from the airline, as those will likely contain marketing emails as well.

1. Open one of your confirmation emails from the airline in question, making a note of the email address this was sent from and the subject line. For example:
   1. The airline's email is [email protected]
   2. The subject line is 'Your Flight Confirmation: NCC74656'
2. Create a new rule in your email service that will be setup as follows:
   1. Conditions:
      1. Sender is [email protected]
      2. Subject contains 'Your flight confirmation'
   2. Actions
      1. Forward message to [email protected]
      2. Optional: Archive message / move to a flights folder

Once this is setup, every confirmation email from the airline should go to Tripsy and get parsed into a flight activity for you. Depending on the airline, you may also want to setup an additional rule for when they let you know about flight changes as Tripsy only gets updates to flight schedules within 48 hours of departure.

Example 2: Forward all of your Airbnb reservations to Tripsy:

In this example, we'll use what's known as a wildcard (*) so that all emails from a particular email domain, airbnb.com, are considered and then the subject is compared. Depending on your mail provider, you may instead need to use a 'Sender Contains' option.

1. Create a new rule in your email service that will be setup as follows:
   1. Conditions:
      1. Sender is *@airbnb.com / Sender contains @airbnb.com
      2. Subject contains 'Reservation'
   2. Actions
      1. Forward message to [email protected]
      2. Optional: Archive message / move to a flights folder

This should mean all your AirBnB reservations get parsed into Tripsy, however there is a caveat in that not all hosts reveal the address of your booking until closer to your arrival date and in those cases Tripsy can't parse the reservation because there's no location available to us.

Example 3: Forward all of my Booking.com reservations to Tripsy:

Booking.com have a slightly strange email address format for their confirmation emails, but there is a common pattern with emails starting with noreply_at_booking_com. Similarly, their subject starts with Thanks! Your Booking is confirmed at.

1. Create a new rule in your email service that will be setup as follows:
   1. Conditions:
      1. Sender is noreply_at_booking_com*/ Sender contains noreply_at_booking_com
      2. Subject contains 'Thanks! Your Booking is confirmed at'
   2. Actions
      1. Forward message to [email protected]
      2. Optional: Archive message / move to a flights folder

Tips & Troubleshooting

• If you suddenly find your emails aren't forwarding to Tripsy, you may need to check your mail rules. That's particularly important if the travel provider has changed their email format around addresses and eubjects.
• Many email providers support a concept called 'Plus Addressing' which means you can have [email protected] as a valid email - this is handy to setup mail rules but also helps you know if a particular provider has had any kind of data breach or is selling your details.
• We recommend not deleting your trip emails, but instead archiving them or moving them to a folder (you can also mark them as read with your rules). This is important in case there's a problem with Tripsy parsing the email in question.