Struggling with imap integration with Home assistant

Configuration
1

I want to use the imap integration with Home Assistant but am struggling to get this configured right. Here is my usecase:

I get a daily email at 7am each morning from my utility company about my water consumption from the day before. The sender is [email protected]
Subject is ‘Gallon Alert for Meter id XXXXXXXX WA Meter’
Messge content is:
Hello,

You requested the Town notify you when your water usage exceeded 0.0 gallons per day for Meter #: XXXXXXXX - WA. Yesterday, your actual usage was 340.00 gallons. </END of message>

I want to be able to listen for this email arrival event, parse it and extract the ‘340.00’ gallons to display on my dashboard. Ideally I want this number to be appended daily/contiguously so that I can use it as a Utility Meter and display charts etc for daily/monthly etc.

What I have done so far is configured the HA Imap integration with my mailbox

Screenshot 2025-01-15 at 2.44.12 PM
Screenshot 2025-01-15 at 2.44.12 PM579×863 44 KB

I can see the sensor.imap_myemailaccount_messages has ~7500 message

Next I added the following to the configuration.yaml file:

template:
  - trigger:
    - platform: event
      event_type: "imap_content"
      id: "my_mail_eventid"
      event_data:
        search: UnDeleted X-GM-RAW "Gallon Alert"
        initial: true
  - sensor:
    - name: water_email_sensor
      state: "{{ trigger.event.data['subject'] }}"
      attributes:
        Message: "{{ trigger.event.data['text'] }}"
        Server: "{{ trigger.event.data['server'] }}"
        Username: "{{ trigger.event.data['username'] }}"
        Search: "{{ trigger.event.data['search'] }}"
        Folder: "{{ trigger.event.data['folder'] }}"
        Sender: "{{ trigger.event.data['sender'] }}"
        Date: "{{ trigger.event.data['date'] }}"
        Subject: "{{ trigger.event.data['subject'] }}"

Rebooted everything. Wait for the utility water usage email to hit the mail box.
However, my sensor ‘water_email_sensor’ shows as unavailable when I check its value in Developer tools > States.

I know I might be missing something more fundamental here but I have been spinning on this since the last few days and am seeking help from someone who has successfully used imap with HA.

Please help!

2

The search specified in the event trigger’s data… UnDeleted X-GM-RAW "Gallon Alert"
… does not match what you are using in the IMAP sensor config’s “IMAP Search” field i.e. UnSeen UnDeleted; so no events match your trigger’s requirements. Any values you are trying to use as selection criteria in event_data need to match exactly. I would suggest not trying to make the trigger super selective since conditions are now supported for trigger-based template sensors. Definitely include initial and 1-2 other stable criteria like sender in the trigger, but move the search of the subject and any other complex/variable discriminating factors to Template conditions.

Also, your trigger and sensor are configured as two separate list items, so the trigger isn’t even affecting the sensor…

template:
  - trigger:
      - platform: event
        event_type: "imap_content"
        id: "my_mail_eventid"
        event_data:
          initial: true
          sender: [email protected]
    condition:
      - alias: Check subject for "gallon alert"
        condition: template
        value_template: "{{ trigger.event.data['subject'] | lower is search('gallon alert') }}"
    sensor:
      - name: water_email_sensor
        state: |
          {{ trigger.event.data["text"] 
          | regex_findall(find="(?:/* your actual usage was )(\d{1,4}\.\d{1,2})(?: gallons*)" )
          | first | round(2) }}
        attributes:
          Message: "{{ trigger.event.data['text'] }}"
          Server: "{{ trigger.event.data['server'] }}"
          Username: "{{ trigger.event.data['username'] }}"
          Search: "{{ trigger.event.data['search'] }}"
          Folder: "{{ trigger.event.data['folder'] }}"
          Sender: "{{ trigger.event.data['sender'] }}"
          Date: "{{ trigger.event.data['date'] }}"
          Subject: "{{ trigger.event.data['subject'] }}"