👑 Advanced Rules

Advanced Rules extend Jelly’s standard rules with two powerful features: multiple conditions and regular expression matching. These are available on the Royal Jelly plan.

This page describes a feature that hasn’t launched yet. Details may change before release.

Multiple Conditions

Standard rules match on a single condition. Advanced Rules let you combine multiple conditions using AND or OR logic.

AND (All conditions must match)

IF the email is from @bigclient.com AND the subject contains invoice THEN add the “Priority Billing” label

Both conditions must be true for the rule to fire. This is useful for narrowing down which messages a rule applies to.

OR (Any condition must match)

IF the subject contains invoice OR the subject contains receipt THEN add the “Finance” label

Only one condition needs to be true for the rule to fire. This is useful for catching messages that could match in different ways.

Each advanced rule uses either AND or OR — you can’t mix them in a single rule. If you need more complex logic, create separate rules.

Regular Expression Matching

For conditions that need more precision than simple “contains” matching, you can use regular expressions (regex). This lets you match patterns rather than exact text.

What’s Supported

Regular expressions use standard syntax. Some useful patterns:

Pattern Matches Example
\d Any digit INV-\d+ matches “INV-1234”
\w Any word character \w+@example\.com matches “alice@example.com”
\s Any whitespace invoice\s*# matches “invoice#” and “invoice #”
[abc] Any character in brackets [bc]at matches “bat” and “cat”
a|b Either a or b invoice|receipt matches either word
^ / $ Start / end of text ^Re: matches subjects starting with “Re:”
+ One or more \d+ matches one or more digits
* Zero or more \d* matches zero or more digits
? Zero or one colou?r matches “color” and “colour”

All regex matching is case-insensitive, just like standard contains matching.

Safety Limits

To keep things running smoothly, regex patterns have a few deliberate limits:

  • Maximum length: Patterns can be at most 200 characters long
  • No backreferences: Patterns like (foo)\1 are not allowed, as they can cause performance issues
  • Timeout: If a pattern takes too long to evaluate (more than 1 second), it’s treated as not matching

These limits are in place to prevent patterns that could slow down message processing for your whole team.

If you’re not familiar with regular expressions, the standard “contains” matching will cover most use cases. Regex is there for when you need more precision — like matching email addresses with a specific pattern, or subjects that follow a particular format.

Examples

Route invoices with specific numbering:

  • Conditions (AND): Subject matches regex INV-\d{4,}, From address contains @supplier.com
  • Actions: Add “Invoices” label, Assign to Alex

Catch emails from multiple domains:

  • Conditions (OR): From address matches regex @(alpha|beta|gamma)\.com
  • Actions: Add “Partners” label

Filter automated notifications by pattern:

  • Conditions (AND): From address contains noreply@, Subject matches regex ^(Alert|Warning|Notice):
  • Actions: Skip the inbox and archive

Match ticket references across fields:

  • Conditions (OR): Subject matches regex (TICK|SUP)-\d+, Body matches regex (TICK|SUP)-\d+
  • Actions: Add “Tickets” label, Forward to tickets@helpdesk.example.com