IFS order intake automation
IFS order intake automation takes the orders that arrive as emails, PDF attachments and spreadsheet exports and turns them into clean customer orders in IFS Cloud. An AI agent does the reading and matching; your team only sees the orders that genuinely need a decision.
The morning rekeying ritual
In most order desks the day starts the same way: open the orders mailbox, download attachments, and start typing. Every customer formats their purchase order differently — one sends a tidy PDF, another a spreadsheet, a third writes part numbers in the email body. A person translates each one into IFS, line by line.
The cost is not just the hours. Mistyped part numbers ship the wrong goods and come back as credit notes. Orders that arrive after lunch miss the cut-off because intake is queued behind one person. And because the source email and the IFS order are never linked, nobody can prove what was asked for versus what was entered.
- Orders arrive as emailed PDFs, spreadsheets and portal exports — each rekeyed by hand
- Customer service spends mornings copying part numbers instead of serving customers
- Mistyped parts and units become wrong shipments and credit notes
- Cut-off times are missed because intake queues behind one person
- No traceable link between what the customer sent and what was entered in IFS
Inbox to customer order, step by step
One flow handles every inbound format, because the agent does the interpretation and IFS Cloud stays the system of record.
- 1
Gmail or Outlook — new email trigger
The flow watches the orders mailbox. An HTTP webhook step can sit alongside it to catch orders arriving from a customer portal or an EDI bridge — same flow, different doors in.
- 2
AI agent — read the order
The agent extracts customer identity, PO number, requested dates, ship-to address and order lines from whatever arrived — PDF, spreadsheet or free text — and maps loose product descriptions to candidate part numbers.
- 3
IFS Cloud — Read Records
It validates the customer against IFS Cloud, confirms each part number exists, and pulls the signals your process cares about — price list, credit status, open orders — before anything is created.
- 4
Branch — clean or review
Orders that resolve cleanly continue automatically. Ambiguous part matches, price deviations, new ship-to addresses or credit-blocked customers branch to a human review step with everything pre-assembled.
- 5
IFS Cloud — Create Record
The customer order is created in IFS Cloud with validated lines. Where your process requires an IFS action afterwards — releasing the order, for example — an Execute Action step runs it.
- 6
Outlook + Slack — confirm and inform
The customer gets an order confirmation by email with the IFS order number; the sales ops channel in Slack sees a one-line summary, so the desk always knows what flowed through.
Every step here is a standard piece of the platform: connectors from the 700+ integration library, the native IFS Cloud connector, and AI agents as workflow steps — assembled in the visual builder, no code required.
Agents prepare, people decide
The agent never gets blanket authority. You draw the line in the flow itself — and the flow enforces it.
What the AI agent does
- Reads any inbound format and extracts header and line data
- Matches free-text product descriptions to IFS part numbers
- Checks customer, pricing and credit signals via IFS queries
- Drafts the complete order and the customer confirmation
What people approve
- Approves price or quantity anomalies before the order is created
- Decides on ambiguous part matches the agent flags
- Reviews orders for credit-blocked customers and new ship-to addresses
What changes
Honest expectations, not vendor math — teams running this pattern typically find:
Order entry moves from next-day to same-hour, including after the cut-off rush
Rekeying errors and the credit notes they cause drop measurably
Customer service time shifts from typing to actual customer conversations
Every IFS order carries a traceable link to the document that requested it
Order intake meets the field in more places than email. NgageEase gives sales and frontline teams mobile forms that write straight into IFS, and NgageChat answers “where is order 4711?” without a screen hunt. Both are part of the Ngage Suite by EX10.
Start from a template
- Email order to IFS customer order
- Order confirmation back to the customer
- Order exception review with approval
IFS order intake automation: questions, answered
Can NgageFlow read orders that arrive in different formats?
Yes. The AI agent step interprets PDFs, spreadsheets and free-text emails without per-customer templates. It extracts header and line data, maps product descriptions to IFS part numbers, and flags anything ambiguous for a person instead of guessing.
Does it create the order directly in IFS Cloud?
Yes. The native IFS Cloud connector creates the customer order with validated lines using a Create Record step, and can run follow-on IFS actions such as releasing the order. IFS remains the single system of record throughout.
How do we stay in control of pricing and credit decisions?
You set the branches. Price deviations, credit-blocked customers and unusual quantities route to a human approval step before any order is created. Everything else flows through automatically under rules you define in the visual builder.
Other flows IFS teams build first
See order intake on your IFS
Bring a real customer PO to the demo and watch it become an IFS Cloud order, or reserve an early-access pilot.