I have a string of tasks I want to perform on an email that is circulated internally on a daily basis.
The email is sent over outlook and contains a .zip file as its only attachment, which opens to contain a single xls file.
The XLS file contains some data which I then need to apply post-processing to which is best accomplished in Excel - particularly because it interacts with vendor products which are distributed as Excel plugins.
After doing the postprocessing, it needs to be saved to a directory location as well as uploaded VIA FTP to a remote server.
I have no idea where to start, I can automate nearly all of these tasks in Excel VBA but I do not know how to make it a continuously running service that doesn't require human interaction.
Perhaps someone here knows
I'd use pentaho data integration for everything after the file is saved down. It is an open source ETL tool available here: http://community.pentaho.com/projects/data-integration/
It can be listen on a particular directory, and when a file appears, it can process the file, via either importing it & transforming inside the ETL, or running a shell script (which might grab excel to do the processing), it can move, zip, combine files, and it can upload to FTP server.
To save the file down from your email though, I think you'd have to write something in outlook. If you can get the file dropped into a shared drive/ftp location this might make it easier for automation though.