Falaah Falaah AI

Email Forwarding

Every organization gets a live inbound email address. Mail sent to it opens a shared team conversation in Messages; turn on Email Forwarding and attachments are auto-processed into Documents.

Every Muin organization has its own inbound email address, live from day one. Anyone — a donor, a vendor, a parent, or one of your own staff forwarding something — can email it, and the message lands inside Muin instead of in one person’s private mailbox.

There are two halves to this, and only the second one is a setting:

What arrives Where it goes Setup needed
Shared team inbox An email with a message in it A conversation in Messages, visible to your team None — already on
Email Forwarding An email carrying a document attachment Documents, auto-extracted and categorized Turn on Email Forwarding

The rest of this page covers both.

How document forwarding works

The Basic Flow

Receive Email → Forward to Muin → Checks → AI Processes → Filed in Documents
      │              │              │            │               │
  Your inbox    Dedicated      Sender,      Extracts data,   Ready to open,
                address        type, size   categorizes      review, and use

What Muin Does

When you forward an email carrying a document attachment, and Email Forwarding is on, Muin:

  1. Receives the email at your Muin address
  2. Checks it — the sender allowlist, the hourly rate limit, then each attachment’s file type and size
  3. Extracts the attachments that passed
  4. Files each one in Documents, in the module you chose as the default
  5. Analyzes it with AI to work out the document type and pull out the key fields
  6. Records the whole thing on a row in Processing History, whether it succeeded or was rejected

Your organization’s inbound address

Where to find it

Every organization gets one address, derived from your organization’s slug:

<your-tenant-slug>@inbound.falaah.ai

For example, if your slug is acme-foundation, your address is acme-foundation@inbound.falaah.ai.

Find it at Settings → Email Forwarding — it is shown there whether or not you have turned Email Forwarding on.

The address is derived server-side from your slug — you don’t pick it, and you don’t create it. Reserved local-parts (postmaster, abuse, support, and similar) are blocked, so you will never collide with an operational mailbox. If your slug happens to be one of those, Muin tells you so rather than handing you an address that would not work.

It is already live — there is no setup step

Mail sent to your address is accepted from the moment your organization exists. There is no switch to flip, no verification email, and no DNS record to add before it works. Muin matches the part before the @ to your organization’s slug and delivers into your account from there.

Two consequences worth knowing:

  • You can hand the address out today. Put it on a vendor form, add it as a Gmail or Outlook forwarding target, or give it to a program partner.
  • Turning Email Forwarding off does not turn the address off. The setting controls document auto-processing (below), not whether mail is received.

Emailing it opens a shared team conversation

When someone sends a normal email to your address — a message, with no document attached — Muin opens a conversation in Messages and puts the email in it.

That conversation belongs to your organization, not to one staff member’s mailbox. Anyone on your team with access to Messages can read it, pick it up, and answer it. Nothing is stranded in a personal inbox when the person who owns it is on leave, and nobody has to connect their own Gmail or Outlook account for the team to see the thread.

This is the answer for a team that runs on personal email accounts: point everything at the shared address and the conversation lives in Muin.

Replying from Messages goes back to the sender

Open the conversation in Messages, write a reply, and send it. The reply is delivered to the person who wrote in, over Muin’s managed email infrastructure — you do not need a connected mailbox, and Muin never sends from a staff member’s own Gmail or Outlook account.

The reply carries your organization’s inbound address as its Reply-To, so when the recipient hits reply in their own email client, their answer comes straight back into the same Muin conversation. The thread keeps going, in one place, for as long as the exchange lasts.

What if the email has an attachment?

That is the Email Forwarding half, and it is the one setting on this page:

  • Email Forwarding off — an email carrying a document attachment is not auto-processed into Documents.
  • Email Forwarding on — the attachment is extracted, analyzed, categorized, and filed in Documents, exactly as described in the rest of this page.

Turn it on at Settings → Email Forwarding.

Note: an email with no message body and no attachment is discarded rather than opening an empty conversation. If you sent a test and nothing appeared, put a line of text in the body and try again.

What this is not

  • Muin does not send from your own Gmail or Outlook mailbox, and never asks for permission to. Connected mailboxes are read-only.
  • Mail only arrives at <your-tenant-slug>@inbound.falaah.ai. Other spellings of your organization’s name, or the same local-part at another domain, are not routed — unless you have set up a custom ingestion domain.

Custom forwarding domain (Scale + Enterprise)

Want a custom address like documents@your-org.com instead of the shared inbound.falaah.ai domain? Submit a request from Settings → Email Forwarding → Request custom domain. Our team provisions the SES Configuration Set, DNS records, and routing rules within 2 business days.

Forwarding Methods

Manual Forwarding

Forward emails as needed:

  1. Open the email in your email client
  2. Click Forward
  3. Enter your Muin forwarding address
  4. Send

Automatic Forwarding

Set up automatic forwarding from your email:

Gmail:

  1. Settings → See all settings → Forwarding
  2. Add forwarding address
  3. Gmail emails a confirmation link to that address. It has no attachment, so it opens as a conversation in Messages — open it there and follow the link
  4. Enable forwarding

Outlook:

  1. Settings → Mail → Forwarding
  2. Enable forwarding
  3. Enter Muin address
  4. Choose to keep copy

Other providers:

  • Check your email provider’s forwarding settings
  • Some require filters/rules for selective forwarding

Filter-Based Forwarding

Forward only specific emails:

Example Gmail filter:

  1. Create filter for from:invoices@vendor.com
  2. Action: Forward to your tenant’s <your-tenant-slug>@inbound.falaah.ai address
  3. Save filter

Document Processing

Supported Attachments

Only document file types are accepted from email. An attachment outside this list is rejected and the reason is recorded on the email’s Processing History row — the rest of the email is still processed.

Type Extensions Processing
PDF .pdf Full extraction
Word .doc, .docx, .odt Content extraction
Excel .xls, .xlsx, .ods Content extraction
Text .txt, .md, .rtf, .csv Content extraction

Not accepted by email: ZIP and other archives are not unpacked, and photos and scans (.jpg, .png, .heic) are not accepted as email attachments. Upload those through Documents → Upload instead, where images go through OCR.

AI Extraction

Once a document is filed, Muin classifies it and pulls the fields that fit its type. For invoices and receipts that is:

  • Vendor name
  • Document date
  • Total, subtotal, and tax amounts

Extraction is the same engine that runs on documents you upload by hand — see Document Processing for what each document type yields.

Processing Status

Two places show you what happened:

  1. Settings → Email Forwarding → Processing History — one row per email received: sender, subject, attachment count, documents created, and status (including the rejection reason if it was refused).
  2. Documents — the documents themselves. Open one and choose Review to see the extracted fields and correct anything the AI got wrong.

Processing Settings

Everything you can configure lives in one form: Settings → Email Forwarding → Processing Settings. There are no sub-tabs and no per-email rules — the settings apply to every email that arrives at your address.

Setting What it does
Email forwarding (the toggle) Turns document auto-processing on or off. The address keeps receiving mail either way.
Emails per hour How many emails Muin will accept in a rolling hour. Anything beyond it is rejected and logged.
Attachments per email How many attachments Muin will take from a single email.
Attachment size (MB) The per-file ceiling. A larger file is rejected; smaller ones in the same email still process.
Auto-categorize Lets the AI classify each document by type rather than leaving it uncategorized.
Allowed senders One address per line. Leave it empty to accept mail from anyone.
Default module Which module forwarded documents are filed under — Finance, HR, Vendors, and so on.

Change what you need and save. The new values apply to the next email that arrives.

Where forwarded documents land

There is no per-email routing to decide. Every document created from an email is filed in Documents under your Default module, and — if Auto-categorize is on — labeled with the document type the AI recognized. From there it behaves exactly like a document someone uploaded: it can be reviewed, moved, tagged, and put through an approval or signature workflow by hand.

If you need different destinations for different senders, use a filter in your own mail client so only the mail you want reaches your Muin address, and set Default module to match.

Emailed Invoices

Forwarding invoices to your address is the most common use of this feature. Here is exactly how far Muin takes them on its own, and where a person picks up.

What happens automatically:

  1. Detection — the AI classifies the attachment and recognizes it as an invoice
  2. Extraction — it pulls the vendor name, the document date, and the total, subtotal, and tax amounts
  3. Filing — the document is filed in Documents under your Default module; set that to Finance and emailed invoices land with the rest of your finance documents

What a person does next:

  1. Review — open the document, choose Review, and confirm or correct the extracted fields
  2. Submit for approval — from the document, send it into the finance approval workflow. It then appears in the finance approval queue for whoever approves it

Step 5 is deliberate, not automatic: nothing emailed to your organization enters an approval queue without someone putting it there. There is no auto-approve threshold, no default approver, and no coding default configured from this page.

Approvals, delegation, and the approval queue itself are covered in Invoices.

Workflows

Inbound email does not start a workflow. There is no “Email Received” trigger, and a document created from an email does not launch one on arrival.

What you can do is put a forwarded document into a workflow by hand once it has landed — open it in Documents and start the workflow you want, the same as for an uploaded document. See Building Workflows.

Security

Be clear-eyed about what this address is: a public inbox. Anyone who knows it can email it. The controls below are the ones that actually apply.

Control who can email you — the allowed senders list

This is the answer to “how do I stop anyone emailing this address?”.

  1. Go to Settings → Email Forwarding → Processing Settings
  2. In Allowed senders, enter one email address per line
  3. Save

From then on, an email from any address not on that list is rejected and recorded in Processing History with the reason. Leave the box empty and mail is accepted from anyone — that is the default, and it is what makes the address useful for donors and vendors who write in unprompted.

The list matches whole addresses, not domains, so add each address you expect.

What Muin checks on an attachment

Two checks, both enforced, both on every attachment:

  • File type — only the document types in the table above are accepted. Anything else is rejected with its reason logged.
  • File size — an attachment over your Attachment size (MB) setting is rejected. Smaller attachments in the same email are still processed.

Attachments are not virus-scanned on this path. Muin blocks by file type and size, not by content inspection. Treat a forwarded attachment with the same caution you would in your own inbox, and use the allowed senders list when the mail is sensitive.

Email authentication

Your mail provider’s SPF and DKIM results arrive with the message, and Muin stores both on the email’s Processing History row so you can check them after the fact.

They are recorded for audit — they do not block anything. An email that fails SPF or DKIM is still processed if it clears the allowed senders list, the rate limit, and the attachment checks. Muin does not evaluate DMARC policy, and there is no spam filter or quarantine on this address.

Monitoring

Processing History

Settings → Email Forwarding → Processing History is the record of what arrived. Each row shows:

  • When it was received
  • Sender and subject
  • How many attachments came with it, and how many documents were created
  • Status — and, if it was refused, the rejection reason

Rejections are rows here too, not silent drops. If someone says they emailed you and nothing appeared, this is the first place to look.

There is no separate activity dashboard, and Muin does not send alerts about forwarding volume or processing failures — check Processing History.

Troubleshooting

Nothing arrived at all

  1. Check Processing History first — if there is a row, the email reached Muin and the row’s status says what happened to it
  2. Confirm the address is exactly <your-tenant-slug>@inbound.falaah.ai — no other spelling is routed
  3. Check Allowed senders. If the list is not empty, mail from anyone else is rejected
  4. Check the Emails per hour limit — a burst of forwarded mail can exceed it, and the overflow is rejected
  5. Check spam and junk in the sending mail client, and any forwarding rule you set up there
  6. An email with no body and no attachment is discarded — send one with a line of text

Nothing landed in Documents

  1. Confirm Email forwarding is on. With it off the mail is still received, but attachments are not processed into Documents
  2. Check the attachment’s file type against the supported list above — images and archives are not accepted by email
  3. Check the file size against your Attachment size (MB) setting
  4. Check Attachments per email. Muin takes up to that many from one email; the rest are left behind, so send the remainder in a second email
  5. The email’s Processing History row names the reason for each rejection

Extracted data is wrong

  1. Open the document in Documents and choose Review
  2. Correct the fields there — your correction is what the rest of Muin uses from then on
  3. Check the source document is legible; a low-quality scan extracts poorly
  4. Tell us if the same field is consistently wrong for one document type

Best Practices

Setup

  1. Test first — forward one email to yourself before publishing the address anywhere
  2. Pick the right default module — most organizations point it at Finance, since invoices dominate what gets emailed in
  3. Tell your team the address — the value comes from everyone using the same one
  4. Decide on allowed senders deliberately — leave it empty for an address you publish, fill it in for one only staff and known vendors use

Ongoing

  1. Check Processing History when something is missing — it is the only record
  2. Review extracted fields before an invoice goes for approval
  3. Raise the hourly limit before a busy period rather than after mail has been rejected

Integration with Other Features

With Documents

Forwarded documents are ordinary Muin documents: stored in the Documents repository, searchable by content, and open to the same review, tagging, approval, and signature flows as anything you upload by hand.

With Chat

Ask questions about what has been forwarded in:

  • “What was in that invoice from Acme?”
  • “Summarize the contract we received last week”

Limits and Quotas

Current Limits

These are the defaults applied when Email Forwarding is turned on. An administrator can adjust them at Settings → Email Forwarding, within the maximums shown.

Limit Default Adjustable up to
Emails accepted per hour 100 1,000
Attachments per email 10 50
Attachment size 50 MB each 100 MB
Inbound addresses 1 per organization Fixed — derived from your slug

Mail that exceeds the hourly rate is rejected and recorded in the email log rather than silently dropped.

Exceeding Limits

Nothing is held back for later — each limit rejects at the moment it is hit, and the rejection is written to Processing History with its reason:

What you exceed What happens
Emails per hour The email is rejected. Send it again once the hour rolls forward.
Attachments per email Muin takes attachments up to the limit; the remainder are not processed. Send them in a second email.
Attachment size That file is rejected. Other attachments on the same email still process.

Raise any of the three yourself at Settings → Email Forwarding, up to the maximums above. Contact support if you need more than the maximum.

Next Steps