Auto-forwarding your emails to Vtiger

Ruba

24 Aug, 2023 - Updated 1 month ago

Introduction

Do you ever find yourself switching back and forth between your email application and your CRM? Don’t you think having your emails and other work-related information in a single space is convenient?

If yes, worry no more! With auto-forwarding support, you can forward emails from your email client to Vtiger CRM. So, why carry the burden of maintaining two applications when Vtiger CRM can solely do the job?

What are email clients

Email clients are computer applications or email services that help you manage your emails. For example, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, etc.

How Auto-forwarding Works

Auto-forwarding is a simple process.

Here is a scenario to help you understand how it works.
Assume that support@grasspods.com is the support team’s email address that you use with a Gmail plug-in. You use Vtiger CRM to store all customer information, including the issues regarding your product or service that they have raised.

In this situation, you must look at your Grasspods account for customer issues and explicitly log them in the CRM. Now, if you use auto-forwarding, all the customer issues automatically get stored in the CRM from your Grasspods email address.

How, you ask.
With the help of Mailroom, of course! The Mailroom is an intermediary between your support's email address and the CRM. You must copy the mailroom address to the auto-forwarding settings in Gmail and enable auto-forwarding.
All the emails that arrive in your Gmail account are forwarded to Vtiger’s Inbox with the help of Mailroom. Not only this, but Mailroom can also create different records in the CRM of the forwarded emails.
To learn more about Mailroom, click here.

Note:

To use Inbox or Mailroom in Vtiger CRM, verify your email address first.
The steps to auto-forward emails for personal and shared mailboxes are different. To learn more about them, click here.

Computer applications or email services that help you manage your emails are called Email Clients. For example, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, etc.

Benefits of using Vtiger’s auto-forwarding support

Forward your emails from multiple email services to Vtiger CRM
Avoid logging in to multiple email clients
Eliminate the need to switch between multiple email IDs to keep track of emails

In this article, you will learn about:

Auto-forwarding emails to Vtiger
Setting up Auto-forwarding in Email Clients

Setting up Auto-forwarding in Email Clients

Here is the process of setting up auto-forwarding in different email clients.

Gmail

Note: Setting up auto-forwarding requires you to keep both your Gmail and CRM tabs open on your browser.

Step 1: On the Gmail tab
Follow these steps to set up auto-forwarding in Gmail:

Log in to the Gmail account you have set up as a mailbox in Vtiger CRM.
Go to your Gmail.
Click the Settings icon located on the top right.
Click See all settings.
Click the Forwarding and Pop/IMAP tab.
Click the Add a Forwarding Address button under the Forwarding section.
Enter your mailroom address in the textbox.
1. You can find your mailroom address under Inbox > Configure > Automate Tasks.
Click Next > Proceed> OK.
1. A verification email will be sent to the mailroom.

Step 2: On the CRM tab
Follow these steps to verify the email:

Log in to the CRM.
Click the User Menu on the top right corner of the screen.
Click Settings.
Look for the Automation section.
Open the email and click the verification in the email.
Click Confirm.

Step 3: On the Gmail tab
Follow these steps to set up the forward process:

Go to the Settings page.
Select Forward a copy of incoming mail to and select the forwarding address (vtiger mailroom address) and fill out other details.
Click Save Changes.

To stop auto-forwarding your emails, select Disable Forwarding in the Forwarding section.

Microsoft Outlook

Follow these steps to set up auto-forwarding in Outlook:

Log in to the Outlook account that you have set up as a mailbox in Vtiger CRM.
Click the Settings icon located on the top right.
Click View all Outlook settings.
Select Settings > Mail > Forwarding.
Select the Enable forwarding checkbox.
1. Note: Uncheck the Enable forwarding checkbox to stop auto-forwarding your emails.
Enter your mailroom address in the textbox.
Select the Keep a copy of forwarded messages checkbox if you want to keep a copy in Outlook.
Click Save.

You must take an additional step in Microsoft Office 365 to complete the process.

As part of their outbound spam protection, Office 365 accounts, by default, block automatic email forwarding. If external forwarding is disabled for your Office 365 account, you will see a bounce message in your Office 365 inbox after attempting to set up auto-forwarding to Vtiger.

The text of the bounce will include this line: 550 5.7.520 Access denied. Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)

To avoid this error, your administrator must make the following changes:

Log in to your Office 365 Security & Compliance portal.
Go to Policies & rules on the left menu.
Select Threat policies.
Search for the Policies section and click the Anti-spam block.
Click on Anti-spam outbound policy (Default).
Scroll to click the Edit protection settings link at the bottom of the sidebar.
Go to the Forwarding Rules section and click the Automatic forwarding rules dropdown.
Choose On - Forwarding is enabled option.
1. Note: You will be unable to set up auto-forwarding if your user role does not have permission to configure outbound spam filters in Office 365.
  1. To add, modify, and delete outbound spam policies, you need to:
  2. Be a member of the Organization's Management or Security Administrator role groups or,
  3. Reach out to the Admin user of your Office 365 account to give you the required permission.
  4. Only the users in the above-mentioned groups can configure outbound spam filtering in EOP.
Click Save.

The auto-forwarding setup for Outlook emails is now complete.

Note: You cannot set up auto-forwarding if your user role does not have permission to configure outbound spam filters in Office 365.

To add, modify, and delete outbound spam policies, you need to:
- Be a member of the Organization's Management or Security Administrator role groups or,
- Reach out to the Admin user of your Office 365 account to give you the required permission.
Only the users in the above-mentioned groups can configure outbound spam filtering in EOP.

You can now mark unassigned emails as Done from the Conversation view of the email.

Note: Only owners of the conversation can mark the conversation as Done, Read, Unread, Deleted, Public, or Private. The CRM displays an error message if non-owners try to assign a status.

You can access setup procedures for other email clients by clicking the links below.

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