Text: Find Phone Numbers

Use this action to find all phone numbers in a text field and save them to a data table.

Use case

Frequently the Text: Find phone numbers action is used to identify phone numbers from text that has other information mixed in. For example, an email body may contain lots of information, but this action can identify the sender’s phone number if it is included in their email signature.

Using the Region column in the output data table, this action can identify the country where a phone number comes from.

How to configure this action

When configuring this action, the Default country should refer to the format the phone number is expected to be in when the action parses it from the document. For example, to find US phone numbers, set the Default country to US. Set this field to the correct default country to make sure it finds the correct numbers.

Set the Output Format to adjust how any parsed numbers are formatted. For example, if you search for US numbers:

• Set the Output Format to NATIONAL to return the numbers in (XXX) XXX-XXX format.
• Set the Output Format to INTERNATIONAL to return the numbers in +1 (XXX) XXX-XXX format.

As another example, if the text had the number 44 (020) 1234 5678 from Great Britain, set the Default country to GB. Then adjust the output format:

• Set the Output format to NATIONAL to return the numbers in 020 1234 5678 format.
• Set the Output format to INTERNATIONAL to return the numbers in +44 20 1234 5678 format.

Fields for this action

• Text to search

  • The text to be parsed, as text or in {{field-name}} format

• Output format

  Set how parsed numbers are formatted in the output.

  • Enter NATIONAL to return the numbers in the local telephone number format as determined by the Default country. For example, if the Default country is set to US, the output would be(XXX) XXX-XXX.
  • Enter INTERNATIONAL to return the numbers in an international format, including the country code, in the telephone number format as determined by the Default country. For example, if the Default country is set to US, the output would be +1 (XXX) XXX-XXX.
  • Enter E164 to return the numbers in +XXXXXXXXXXXX format.
  • Enter RFC3966 to return the numbers in tel:+XX-XX-XXXX-XXXX.
  • Leave blank to use INTERNATIONAL.

• Default country

  • Enter the reference country for international formatting and the default for ambiguous numbers that could match to multiple regions
  • Leave blank or enter US to default to the United States
  • For a different country, enter the CLDR two-letter region code for that region.

• Output Field Prefix

  • To help keep output fields organized, choose an output field prefix to add to the beginning of each output field name as this action may output more than one field.
  • The step’s name is used as the prefix by default.

What will this output?

This action may generate multiple fields. To help keep output fields organized, the prefix above will be added to the beginning of each of the output field names, separated by two dashes. Each field will result as:{{output-field-prefix--output-field}}. Learn more

Output fields for this action

• Data table

  • This field provides the ID for a Data Table where the results are stored. The table will have 8 columns:

  • Column	Description
    Formatted phone number	The original number reformatted to the chosen output format
    Original format	The original number with no formatting
    Type	The type of number, such as fixed line or mobile
    Region	The region of the number, such as the country
    National Number	The original number with the national prefix added
    isPossibleNumber	A estimation if the number is possible based on length
    isValidNumber	If the phone number matches a valid pattern
    isValidNumberForRegion	If the phone number is valid for a certain region

• Number of Phone Numbers Found

  • The number of matches found.

• First Match

  • The first match.