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How Email Automation Works

Arkata can automatically process certain emails from the Planning Authority and file them to the correct project — saving you the manual work of reading, downloading attachments, and updating project records.

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The basics

When an email arrives at your firm’s designated Arkata email address:
  1. Arkata receives it and stores it securely
  2. Identifies the type — is it an ISR, RFI, RFI Reminder, or PDR?
  3. Matches it to a project — using your Internal Reference or PA Reference
  4. Extracts PDF attachments — and stores them as project documents
  5. Creates a task (if applicable) — so you know action is needed
  6. Notifies you — via inbox notification

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What Arkata will never do

Email automation is deliberately limited for safety:
  • It will never create a client from an email
  • It will never create a project from an email
  • It will never modify existing project data beyond adding documents and tasks
  • If it can’t confidently match an email to a project, it flags it for your manual review

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Matching logic

Arkata matches emails to projects in this order:
  1. Looks for your Internal Reference in the email content
  2. Falls back to the PA Reference (for RFI and RFI Reminder emails only)
  3. If neither matches, the email is flagged — you’ll get a notification to handle it manually

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Duplicate protection

If the same email arrives twice (which sometimes happens with PA systems), Arkata detects the duplicate and ignores it. Each email is processed at most once.

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PDF attachments only

Arkata extracts PDF attachments from matched emails. Other attachment types are not processed. If an email has no PDF attachment, it’s still matched and logged — just no document is created.