DAN AI - Email Inbox Sync (Gmail / Outlook)

Once a user connects a mailbox from Inboxes → Connect Gmail or Connect Outlook, DAN AI polls it on a schedule and creates documents automatically from matching attachments.

1. Connect a mailbox

From the sidebar, open Inboxes, then click Connect Gmail or Connect Outlook.

The flow:

1. You're redirected to the provider's OAuth consent screen (Google or Microsoft).
2. Grant read-only mail access:
   • Gmail scope: gmail.readonly
   • Outlook scope: Mail.Read
3. You're bounced back to /app/inboxes?status=success.

The refresh token returned by the provider is stored encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM. DAN AI never sees or stores your mail password - only the refresh token, which you can revoke at any time from your Google/Microsoft account settings.

Read-only access

DAN AI only requests read scopes. It cannot reply to, delete or move your email. If your organization restricts third-party OAuth apps, ask an admin to allow dan.sdlccorp.com first.

2. Write rules

By default, every PDF / image attachment becomes a document. The rule engine lets you narrow that down using conditions on sender, subject, attachment name, attachment type, date, or label.

Open Inboxes → Manage Rules for the connected mailbox.

Available conditions

Condition field	Example operators	Example value
from	equals, contains, domain_equals	billing@vendor.com
subject	contains, starts_with, regex	Invoice
attachment_name	matches, ends_with	*.pdf
attachment_type	equals	pdf, xlsx, image
received_date	after, before	2026-01-01
label	equals (Gmail labels / Outlook categories)	Finance/Invoices

Conditions inside a single rule are AND-ed. To OR conditions, create separate rules.

Available actions

Each rule attaches one or more actions:

• extract_doc - create a document from this attachment.
• skip - ignore this message entirely.
• tag - create the document with a custom rule_tag for filtering later.

Rule priority and stop processing

Rules within a ruleset run in priority order (lowest priority number first). When a rule with stop_processing = true matches, later rules are skipped for that message - useful when you want a specific sender rule to short-circuit a more general catch-all rule below it.

A typical ruleset

1.  from contains "billing@" AND attachment_type = pdf
    → extract_doc with tag = "vendor-invoices"
    → stop_processing = true

2.  subject contains "Receipt" AND attachment_type = pdf
    → extract_doc with tag = "receipts"

3.  attachment_type = pdf
    → extract_doc

Mail that matches rule 1 is tagged as a vendor invoice and rule 2 and 3 are skipped. Anything else with a PDF attachment falls through to rule 3 and is extracted untagged.

3. Sync schedule

DAN AI polls each connected inbox on a regular interval (default: every 15 minutes). Mail received between polls is picked up on the next run.

If you need an immediate sync - for example, while testing a new rule - click Sync Now on the inbox row to run the sync inline.

4. Monitor sync status

The Inboxes page shows each connected account with:

• Last sync time - when the inbox was last polled.
• Sync count - how many messages were processed in the last run.
• Documents created - how many extractions resulted.
• Last error (if any) - the most recent failure, with a short reason.

Common reasons a sync stops working:

• The OAuth refresh token expired or was revoked → reconnect the mailbox.
• The provider rate-limited DAN AI → wait for the next interval, no action needed.
• A rule's regex is invalid → fix it under Manage Rules.

Dry-running rules

Before pushing a ruleset live, open Manage Rules → Dry Run and paste a sample email subject + sender. DAN AI shows you which rules would match and what actions would fire - no documents are created. Use this to debug a ruleset that isn't picking up the mail you expected.

Next steps

• See exactly what gets created: Dashboard Upload walks through the document detail page that inbox-sync documents land on.
• Receive notifications when these auto-created documents finish: Webhooks.
• Troubleshoot a non-syncing inbox: FAQ and Troubleshooting.