Tonnage Email Parsing: Where Human Approval Belongs

Key takeaways

• Separate extraction, verification, publication and external communication.
• Give reviewers the original wording beside each material proposed change.
• Route uncertain vessel identity, availability and restrictions to named people.

Define the record the parser may propose

Start by describing the intended output: a draft vessel position, an update to an existing entry or a suggestion that information has become stale. These are different actions. The parser should not treat every mention of a vessel in a forwarded email as a new open position.

Preserve vessel name, identifiers when supplied, reported opening place, date expression, source and relevant qualifications. Keep the original phrase alongside any normalised value. A broad geographical range should not silently become a specific port because that port is familiar to the model.

Make the source time distinct from the reported opening date and processing time. A message parsed today may contain yesterday's list or an older quoted message. The review screen should expose that distinction before anyone uses the extracted position in a shortlist.

These are recommended workflow choices, not claims that software can independently establish vessel availability. The authoritative commercial record remains the version approved through the organisation's actual process.

Place approval at changes in commercial meaning

Use automatic draft creation for straightforward extraction from permitted messages. Require review when the proposed change affects identity, availability status, opening range or a restriction that could change the vessel's suitability for an enquiry. The reviewer should understand what changed and why it matters.

For example, changing punctuation in a vessel name may be a routine normalisation, while merging two similarly named ships requires evidence. Likewise, extracting “expected open” should not produce a status that reads as confirmed availability. Preserve uncertainty rather than forcing every record into a binary open-or-fixed choice.

Define who may publish verified information and who may send it externally. Those powers need not belong to the person reviewing the extraction. A junior analyst can confirm that a field matches an email while a broker decides whether and how to use it commercially.

Give the reviewer evidence, not only confidence

Show the proposed field, previous value, source excerpt and original message link together. A confidence indicator may help prioritise review, but it should not replace the evidence. Reviewers need to see whether the parser attached a date to the wrong vessel in a multi-ship list.

Allow the reviewer to accept, correct, defer or reject a proposed update. Deferral is useful when the source is ambiguous and clarification is pending. Without that option, staff may choose an inaccurate value simply to clear the queue.

Capture a short reason for material corrections. Useful categories include wrong vessel association, quoted-history confusion, omitted qualification and ambiguous location. These reasons can guide later improvement without requiring reviewers to write a long explanation for every minor formatting change.

Use a tonnage authority map

Adapt the map to actual staffing. A small desk may assign several roles to one person, but the distinct decisions should remain visible. Otherwise, a click intended to confirm accurate extraction can accidentally publish a commercially unverified position.

Approval should apply to a specific proposed version. If the parser changes the opening date after review, the old approval should not automatically cover the new value. Reopen the affected decision and show the material difference.

Keep email content outside the authority boundary

An incoming email may contain ordinary instructions to brokers, but it should not be able to change the parser's permissions or approval rules. OWASP identifies prompt injection as a risk when untrusted content influences model behaviour. Treat mailbox content as data within the parsing workflow. OWASP prompt-injection guidance.

Have the implementation team enforce action permissions outside the model. The commercial requirement is simple: text inside a circular must not grant access to another mailbox, release a position externally or remove a review step. Security specialists should validate the actual controls.

Use a restricted source set for the parser and avoid giving it unrelated communication powers merely for convenience. A draft extraction service usually does not need authority to send commercial messages. Keeping that distinction makes the human approval map easier to understand and test.

Handle urgent updates without bypassing ownership

Create an escalation route for urgent changes such as a reported withdrawal or revised opening. The route should identify the duty broker and a substitute, with enough context to decide quickly. Urgency should move the item to the right person, not convert uncertain extraction into approved fact.

If the review queue cannot be staffed, keep the proposed update visible as unreviewed and retain the existing approved record with an appropriate freshness warning. Decide in advance how the desk will avoid relying on an outdated entry while clarification is pending.

Review queue behaviour regularly. Repeated deferrals may show that the source format is unsuitable for automatic publication or that the authority map lacks an available reviewer. Fix the workflow instead of instructing staff to approve more quickly without better evidence.

Fictional case: an old opening inside a forwarded circular

In this fictional case, a broker forwards a current note above an older vessel list. The parser associates the older opening date with the new note and proposes replacing the desk's existing position. The review screen shows the extracted field beside the quoted source, allowing the analyst to spot the mismatch.

The analyst defers the update and asks the responsible broker to clarify the current position. The broker confirms the corrected information through the established channel. The system records the original suggestion, the reason for rejection and the approved replacement.

The workflow benefits from automation because the information is organised for review. It avoids treating fluent extraction as verification of a commercial fact that the source did not actually establish.

Common mistakes

Do not use a single approval button for extraction accuracy, availability confirmation and external distribution. Those decisions have different consequences. Another mistake is hiding source quotations behind several screens, making reviewers depend on the parser's summary.

Avoid using a high confidence score as permission to merge vessels or remove qualifications. Finally, do not let a queue backlog justify silent publication. A visible unresolved item is easier to manage than an approved-looking record that nobody has checked.

Where Zeaclub fits

Zeaclub provides a multi-party shared workspace for owners, charterers, brokers and port agents.

Zeaclub offers digitalised procedures across the voyage workflow.

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