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Integration: MailSync™

The MailSync™ integration allows you to automatically capture emails exchanged between your CRM Users and CRM Contacts, saving them to the account timeline as Activities. With two-way email integration, you can maintain a complete correspondence history directly within your CRM. This feature works with most email clients, including Microsoft Outlook and Google Mail, and does not require local software installation.

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On this page you have the following options:

Overview MailSync™ Integration

By using MailSync™, you automatically capture all emails exchanged between CRM users and Contacts. This saves you time and effort compared to manually logging every communication. With two-way syncing, you get the full correspondence history for each Contact directly within your CRM.

Two Integration Options:

  • Automatic MailSync: User-specific integration that connects directly to individual mailboxes for syncing incoming and outgoing emails.
  • Manual MailSync: Organization-wide integration using a dedicated CRM mailbox to capture and process emails. This method is recommended for users of Gmail and other free email services like Yahoo, iCloud, and AOL.
Note: Automatic MailSync is not compatible with Gmail or other free mailboxes (such as Yahoo, iCloud, and AOL). We recommend using the Manual MailSync method in such cases.

Set up MailSync™ Integration (Manually)

Step 1 - Create a CRM Mailbox

To create a CRM Mailbox go to Settings, then Integrations and the open the Email Sync tab, then click the “SETUP” button on the Manual MailSync option.

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On the next screen click “next” to create your unique mailbox address. A unique MailSync mailbox address will automatically be created in the format ‘12345@mailsync.spotlercrm.com‘.

Step 2 - Setup forwarding

Setup “forwarding” on your existing email addresses, to the new address above. You need to tell your mail server to carbon copy (CC), or redirect a copy of each email sent to each User, to the CRM Mailbox. You’ll need to do this for each CRM User, or for those Users that you want to capture incoming emails to.

If you have a generic email address such as support@ or info@ then you might want to do the same for that email address as well. Please note, the emails will only be captured if the Contact is already in the CRM system.

Instead of setting up forwarding on your mail server you could set up a rule to do this in your email client, but this has two disadvantages: you have to set this up for each User on their email client; and emails will only be forwarded when the User is using their email client. If they are out of the office the emails will not be captured until the User downloads their own emails first.

In general

To send an email from the CRM system, click on that Contact’s email address and the link will automatically generate a Bcc to the CRM Mailbox.

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To send an email from your email client directly, if you are using the manual MailSync option, Bcc the email to the CRM Mailbox. The email will be automatically matched to the correct Account when MailSync next checks the CRM Mailbox. If you will be sending emails directly from your mail client, you may want to set up a contact called “CRM” with the CRM Mailbox email address so you can use that as a shortcut.

Receiving Emails
Emails received from Contacts in the CRM system, sent to Users in the CRM system, will be automatically matched to the correct Account when MailSync next checks the CRM Mailbox.

Case Management
If you are using the Service & Support tool, emails with a Case Id number in the email Subject line will be matched to that Case in the CRM system. MailSync checks each email for a Case Id in the email Subject using the format “[#xxxx]”, where xxxx is the Case Id.

Clicking on a Contact’s email address from the Case page in the CRM system will automatically generate an email with the Case Id correctly formatted, as well as bcc’d to the CRM Mailbox.

Attachments
The names of attachments to emails are recorded on the Activity, but the documents themselves are not captured.

Sending Emails from the Marketing Module
If you are using the Marketing tool, the Send Emails routine in SpotlerCRM Marketing does not ‘Bcc’ emails to the CRM Mailbox. Instead, it records them as being mailed in the Campaign Stage.

Matching Emails with Accounts
To determine which Company Account to match the email to, MailSync looks for the email address of one User in the To/From/CC/BCC fields, and the email address of one Contact. Users whose email addresses are also held as Contacts are ignored as Contacts for matching purposes.

Firewalls & Spam
As with sending emails, your mail server may be protected by a firewall that will need configuring to allow remote access. Check with your IT department. Because the email is matched to at least one User and a Contact in the CRM system, Spam emails will be ignored.

Bounces and Out of Office Messages
Out of Office messages that are returned from a Contact will be recognised as valid emails and added to the CRM system. Bounced emails usually do not come back from the Contact’s email address but from the Contact’s mail server or your own mail server. Bounced emails will, therefore, be ignored by MailSync.

Using Gmail

Login to your Gmail account (the one that is setup as a user on SpotlerCRM) and select the Cog icon in the top right hand corner and select ‘See all settings’.

From the top menu in the next screen, select ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’.

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Then choose the button ‘Add a forwarding address’. Enter in your new email address from above, for example 12345@mailsync.spotlercrm.com, and click ‘Next’, and then ‘Proceed’ to confirm.

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A verification code will be mailed back to you to enter and confirm the address. You need to do that for all email addresses that you use within Manage Users in your CRM that you would like to track customer activity with.

The CRM Mailbox is checked every few minutes, and if it cannot match emails with contacts in your system, it will delete those emails.

Using Hotmail or Outlook.com

Login to your Outlook or Hotmail account via https://outlook.live.com/owa and at the top of the page, click the Settings (cog) icon then “View all Outlook settings”.

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In the next screen, select ‘Email’ and ‘Forwarding’.

Then choose ‘Forward your emails to the following email accounts’, and enter in your MailSync email address from above, for example 12345@mailsync.spotlercrm.com, into the box. Ensure you select the tick box ‘Keep a copy of forwarded messages in your Outlook.com inbox. Choose ‘Save’.

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An email is then sent to your account to verify permission. Login to your new CRM email account and click the link in the email to confirm the request.

You’ll need to follow the same procedure for all email addresses that you use within ‘Manage Users’ in SpotlerCRM that you would like to track customer activity with. The CRM Mailbox is checked every few minutes, and if it cannot match emails with contacts in your system, it will delete those emails.

Set up MailSync™ Integration (Automatically)

Automatic MailSync connects directly to your email mailbox, syncing emails automatically. This is a user-specific integration, meaning once set up, emails are synced automatically without any need for forwarding or manual setup.

Automatic MailSync is user specific and will need to be activated by each CRM User.

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  1. Connect Your Mailbox: Go to Settings > Integrations, open the Email Sync tab, and click SETUP under the Automatic MailSync option.
  2. Confirm Settings: Verify your mailbox settings, enter your password, and click Test to ensure the connection works. If the system cannot detect settings automatically, manually enter them.
For Gmail
  1. Log into your Gmail account.
  2. Enable access for less secure apps in your Google account settings.
  3. Enter imap.gmail.com as the server address and set the port to 993 with SSL/TLS.
  4. Verify and test the connection in SpotlerCRM.

Should your test still fail, you will receive a notification from Google that an app has tried to gain access to your account. Set to allow access. Alternatively, go to https://myaccount.google.com/notifications, and click to select ‘Yes it was me’. Then back in your CRM, click to ‘test’ again. A further step maybe to go to https://accounts.google.com/b/0/DisplayUnlockCaptcha and click to allow access, then ‘test’ again.

Integration Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues during setup, ensure the following:

  • Why are incoming emails being picked up by the CRM system, but not ones I send?
    If you are using the Manual MailSync option, you need to “Bcc” the CRM mailbox when you send or reply to emails.

  • Why was an email not picked up by the CRM system and in the system log it is shown as skipped?
    To be picked up by the CRM system, an incoming email must be from a Contact in the CRM system sending to a User, and an outgoing email must be from a User going to a Contact. The system matches on exact email addresses. Emails between your CRM users (i.e. your team/colleagues) are treated as internal mail and are ignored by the system.

  • Why when I sent an email to the CRM mailbox did the CRM system not pick it up?
    Sending an email to the CRM mailbox doesn’t result in the email being picked up; the system needs to match the email to a Contact as well as a User.