This article provides detailed setup and troubleshooting for CRM Email Integration using IMAP.
For an overview of Email Integration types, see: Email Integration.
The Email Integrations feature includes 2 different ways to integrate emails into Administrate.
1. CRM Integration (formerly known as IMAP Email Integration) is designed to import the communications history your Administrate Users have with your Accounts and Contacts, removing any need to copy and paste correspondence into the CRM (Content Relationship Management) system.
Once you enter your email credentials, Administrate will scan the folders you designate for emails, matching the email addresses of your Contacts or Leads in your Administrate CRM. You’ll then be able to view the correspondence in the History section of the Account’s or Contact’s screen.
This means that you can continue using your preferred mail client, e.g. Gmail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, etc., to communicate with your Contacts and all correspondence will be automatically synchronized to the CRM. Then, other Administrate Users can easily see the conversation history with that Contact. Visibility of the email trail between your organization and your Accounts and Contacts is useful for when you have staff that are off sick, are away on holidays, or have someone else work with the same people and organizations.
2. Enquiries Integration is designed as a way to send general enquiries from a shared INBOX into Administrate to receive email enquiries through Administrate's Message Center. Within the Message Center, you will then be able to create new Accounts and Contacts from enquiries received and convert these into Bookings. Email correspondence will also be stored against the contact record. To access the Message Center click on your user icon in the top right of the menu, then select Message Center.
We support Microsoft and any IMAP capable email provider (Custom), and you don’t need to leave your email client running for either integration to function. The CRM sync is automated to run every hour, while the Enquiries sync runs every five minutes.
No matter which email integration you would like to use, you need to start by setting up your Email Accounts.
Set Up
Navigate: Control Panel → Email Integration, then click Add Email Account
- On the Add an Email Account Screen, enter your email Account Name.
- For Provider, select either Microsoft or Custom (select custom for any other IMAP capable email provider other than Microsoft).
- If you select Microsoft:
When you click Next, it will redirect you to sign in to your Microsoft account with your Microsoft username and password.
Select Yes to “Let this app access your info?” to provide Administrate permission to read the emails.
Select Yes to stay logged into Microsoft, to prevent having to re-enter your Microsoft credentials if you need to re-authenticate later.
After you sign in to your Microsoft account, you will be redirected back to Administrate.
-
If you select Custom:
-
Enter your IMAP email account settings. The following is just an example (Gmail IMAP settings), please refer to your email service provider for this information:
Username my_email_username@gmail.com Password my_email_password Server imap.gmail.com Port 993
-
Check "CRM Integration Enabled" if you would like to sync emails with your contact and accounts. After you enable, select folders to sync with Administrate (you may select more than one folder).
- Check "Enquiries Integration Enabled" if you would like to sync emails from the email account INBOX to the Message Center.
Click Save.
Note:
Administrate staff cannot help you troubleshoot password and login problems, and cannot provide the server information above, as we don’t provide your email service. If you have questions about this feature, please contact your email provider.
If a connection onto the email server specified cannot be established (for example the server is down or incorrect, or the credentials are wrong), the system will re-attempt connecting for 24 hours, after which the account will be disabled.
This will be shown on the Email Integration list page, and users can restart the sync again by editing the account and ensuring the connection details are correct.
Verify Connection
We provide a 'Verify Connection' link by clicking on the option menu [] button at the end of the row on the Email Integration list page to test whether a connection can be successfully established.
2-Step Verification (only for Custom providers)
If you use 2-Step Verification, like that of Google’s, you may need an App Password, or App-Specific Password, to authorize Administrate’s IMAP Email Integration service to access your mailbox.
- Follow the previous steps, but enter your App Password instead of your usual (email) password
- Once you have made the connection and see the list of folders, go back into your email service provider’s page (e.g. Gmail) to authenticate the login
Please be aware that password managers and saving passwords on browsers may get confused between your App Password and your site (Administrate’s main login) password and may autopopulate password fields with the latter when you need the former. Emails won’t be synchronized in these cases, as your email login credentials will be incorrect.
Shared Mailboxes (only for Microsoft providers)
If you use Microsoft's shared mailboxes, you will need to click the 'Advanced' dropdown on the 'Add an Email Account' setup screen so you can specify the shared mailbox to use as shown below. You will then continue with the standard setup process.
Initial Sync
Administrate will now start working in the background to match email addresses in your mailbox with the email addresses stored against the Contact records in your Administrate database.
Note:
The initial sync for CRM Integration will typically begin within 1 hour and complete within 24 hours, but could take longer if you have many emails to scan through. We will only sync emails newer than 4 days old.
If Administrate finds an email address that matches a contact in your database, it will copy the content of the email, including all attachments, against the Contact record. All Administrate Users can then recall the conversation in the History section of the relevant Account or Contact page.
The initial sync for Enquiries Integration will typically begin within 5 minute, but also may take time to complete depending on the size of your Inbox. This integration will take all emails in the INBOX and move them to the PROCESSED folder in your email client, while also syncing a copy into the Administrate Message Center.
CRM Integration "View Emails" to Review Matched / Unmatched Emails
Once the IMAP Email Integration has been set up and operating correctly, you can view the Matched/Unmatched Emails from the Email Integration list page by on the option menu [] button at the end of the row and selecting "View Emails". This allows you to view tabs to see the emails that have been synced. The "Unmatched" tab shows email addresses that you may want to create new Contacts for within the Administrate CRM so that future emails from that email address will match.
Security and Firewalls (only for Custom providers)
Administrate is extremely committed to providing a safe and secure computing environment. By using this feature, you choose to store your email password within our database in an encrypted format.
Some enterprise email providers refuse access to their email servers unless their clients access it via a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or via an allowed IP block (or addresses). Due to our need to maintain a completely redundant failover environment, we unfortunately cannot provide a list of IP Addresses to allow, as these could change: in a disaster scenario; during maintenance; or due to the routine addition of another computer node in our infrastructure.
Third Party Encryption
If you route your mail traffic through a third party encryption service, like Vaultive, you may see garbled or illegible messages when viewing the mails on the Administrate application. To get around this, you’ll have to remove the email server address from the third party system and allow unencrypted transit.