Hello Henk, you could also use other GCP products to achieve this workflow, but considering your work-load peaks and the described use-cases App Engine could be a good platform choice. Here comes the shooting :)
*Incoming emails* I'm not sure what caveats come for copy&paste of images between Outlook and a web UI, but I think it should be possible to automate some of these steps. If you don't have a dedicated email address for such messages, Exchange / Outlook could submit POST requests to the GAE app and upload the images on request of the receiving Outlook user. If all suppliers send their messages to a dedicated address (e.g. upl...@example.com), you could configure GAE to handle all incoming mail messages and process the images. Python standard environment has InboundMailHandler <https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/mail/receiving-mail-with-mail-api> for doing this. (Note: Although this feature might not be available for all supported GAE environments or languages, you can combine multiple environments/languages in the same app) If there are not many suppliers you might consider the burden of managing supplier-side users with authorization to upload and tagging images directly into your app. However, the basic steps of the inbound mail handler could be: 1. Retrieve image data from the email (and ignore all other binaries / attachments?) and move the images into a dedicated Cloud Storage bucket. 2. For each image, create a "pending tag-job" in Cloud Datastore. 3. Save mail body and meta data into Cloud Datastore (a very scalable no-sql database) as "email", and link it to all related tag-jobs (i.e. images). 4. Maybe resize the images (some GAE versions have features for that or use a 3rd party lib) or you could use a Cloud Function that automatically resizes all images that are added to a certain bucket. 5. Let the app suggest some tags based on the sender of the email (easy with a map of sender addresses and supplier tags), and maybe even the product tags if the emails are supposed to be structured. 6. Note: There is a maximum size of inbound/outbound mail messages, including attachments: 31.5 MB. *Tagging* In a web UI of the same GAE app, authorized users (of your company) can browse all pending (or completed) tag-jobs, and validate / edit the product and supplier tags that were automatically suggested by the app. (If you are lucky, you can train a machine learning product to tag the images by itself or at least suggest a smaller set of tags, e.g. "Apple Fuji", together with sender addresses it might be possible to reduce the manual tagging effort significantly) *Output* This sounds a little bit like a shop or catalogue. The web pages for that could be done in GAE, maybe with links to Program X pages that also contain the prices? I also don't expect any issues if you want to send the output in different formats through other channels, at least not if there is some kind of HTTP / REST API available. There is also SMS and voice service support in some GAE versions. If the images can be public, you could use the Cloud Storage URLs for caching (faster and cheaper), also in newsletters. The newsletters however could be a little tricky. GAE supports sending mails only in small quotas (if I remember correctly), bulk emails (i.e. same mail to many recipients), or by a 3rd party SMTP server. But there is so much to consider (bounce handling, opt-in / double opt-in etc.), it might be easier to send emails through a mail service provider. Mailgun, Mailjet and SendGrid have special pricing and maybe even free tier for GCP customers, but any provider should work if your app can use their API. *Administrative UI* Maybe also some functions to delete images/emails, mark tag-jobs as completed, edit mappings used for auto suggested tags etc. Maybe also an import of product / supplier data from Program X (CSV?). User authorization. (Authentication probably best via oAuth 2 since there is so much that could go wrong) I hope my 2 cents were helpful. Groet uit Duitsland. Ani On Tuesday, 6 February 2018 17:08:37 UTC+1, Henk Troost wrote: > > Hi all, > > I'm new to the forum so i will just shoot. > > > Simple question: is what i am asking for possible? > > If yes: which way should i be looking? > > I have been googling and searching for ways to upload images to a database > and came across google app engine. > > > The background > > For my business (export of fresh products) i want to use daily images from > my suppliers to enhance our productoffering to our clients. > These images are coming in through email (we are using exchange server & > outlook 2013). > At this moment we are having built a custom ERP-solution (Program X): to > my knowledge webbased and working under SQL. > (i am not familiar with programming etc) > > > The idea > I want to tag image content and upload them to a database. > Then i want to be able to generate a newsletter for clients including > these images. > Also an offer for clients from a sinlge supplier is possible > In the future the output will be extended to web / whatsapp and/or other > apps) > > Tagging: > Product: we have a product structure hierarchical in the custom > ERP-solution (Fruit - Apple - Apple Fuiji - Apple Fuiji New Zealand - Apple > Fuiji New Zealand 18 kg box size 120) > Supplier: the supplier is also a tag > > Speed: > Everyday there is a constant timelimit and stress (Imagine 20 calls a > minute with suppliers/clients for 5-6 hours in a row for example) > The imageupload and tagging has to be done very fast and user friendly. > Ideally just on the image Copy Command (Ctrl-C) and Paset into uploader. > Product and Supplier tag. Done > > Example > 1) tagging picture with "supplier A" and 'Apple Fuiji New Zealand 18 kg > box size 120' > 2) entry in Program X: supplier A has the product 'Apple Fuiji New > Zealand 18 kg box size 120' costing EUR 12 > > Output > 1) Total offer for clients with numerous products (hundreds) form several > supplliers (50-100) illustrated with several pictures > 2) Single offer for clients: including the tagged picture and individual > price setting (Automatically done by program X) > > > Well that's it > Tnx for shooting > > > Henk Troost > Netherlands > > > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-appengine+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine. 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