email struggles... how does this thing work?

[rudepeople]

I'm struggling to understand the email system in espo. Following the documentation left more questions than answers... The documentation says "As an email is coming, the system tries to link it with the appropriate record (Accounts, Lead, Opportunity, Case). Users who follow that record will receive notification about new email in the system, even if they are not listed in To or CC of the email." ok... how?!?

I have an email address setup for espo (for an example espocrm@mycompany.com--it's an office 365 account) as well as a user with "personal email" setup (user@mycompany.com). I also have a contact in espo with my personal email address set (lets go with personal@gmail.com). I have configured the espo email account in Administration>Email>Outgoing Emails as well as in Administration>Email>Group Email Accounts, and I have the user personal account setup accordingly in Administration>Email>Personal Email Accounts.

When I send an email to personal@gmail.com from user@mycompany.com, espo does nothing...
When I send an email to personal@gmail.com from user@mycompany.com and bcc espocrm@mycompany.com, espo still does nothing...
I can see emails when I go into the group account, but that's it nothing shows up in notifications, or in any of the streams.
If I REPLY to either of the above emails, then espo adds the email to the notification list and the email appears under the contact stream.

what is espo looking at specifically with these emails in order "to link it with the appropriate record (Accounts, Lead, Opportunity, Case)"? what do we need to do to get these emails to work as described?

I would like to note, when users send emails from within espo, sent emails link as suggested, but all of our users use outlook... making them use Espo is a major change in workflow for them, we really need a way to make espo log incoming AND outgoing emails. I'm happy to create mail flow rules to make this happen, but I need to understand what triggers espo first.

[yuri]

It's not very clear for me.

1. Do you send from Outlook now?

If yes, then more questions:

2. Do you have email account (group or personal) that monitors "Sent" folder of user@mycompany.com account?

3. Outlook should be configured to store sent email on IMAP server. So that Espo could fetch them.

Note, that you won't receive notification on email sent from your email address. If I send email from outlook, and this email is fetched to Espo, I won't receive a notification because the email is sent form my email address.

4. Are those sent emails available in Espo? Do they have parent record?

[rudepeople]

It's not very clear for me.

1. Do you send from Outlook now?

Yes. The users currently send from outlook.

2. Do you have email account (group or personal) that monitors "Sent" folder of user@mycompany.com account?

No... one moment... ok that finally fixed the outbound logging.

so it looks like my main issue was the fact Espo wasn't monitoring the right folders.

But my underlying question stands... what about the emails in question is triggering espo to link emails to accounts, tasks, contacts, etc... Is it literally and only the address fields (to, from, cc, bcc)?

[esforim]

Hi there, welcome to Espo.

The linking is not always accurate and fail at certain time due to priority or my EspoCRM set up. Especially when the other party decide to change the email subject name, I also used my own ID code (case ID) so EspoCRM might not recognize that either until I do some coding perhaps.

Here is my insight on email previously when I was exploring it: https://forum.espocrm.com/forum/gene...8210#post58210
There is a few other post in the thread that is relate to email if you want to read it.

From my experience it is linked to Contact and Account primary email.
It will also link you if replies chain and there is a parent that is linked already.

Now to try answer some of your question:
---
I assumed that you did a STMP test during adding email and it was sent correctly?

Please see my insight post of how it link, I'm not sure if it scan the Body content or through Reply-to.

It good that you use Outlook, but make sure your Email is setup to Monitor the "Sent folder" (click that arrow next to Monitored Folders *). But it best to start using Espo in the future for linking purpose and better logging. However you can continue to use Outlook through the "Use external email", and just have EspoCRM auto download email for data record keeping and linking.

[yuri]

When a new email is coming into Espo.

1. It checks References header. In this header we store information about a parent when we send an email from Espo. If the sent email is replied (from any email client), References header is transferred to the replied email.

If parent is found, then skip next steps.

2. It checks In-Reply-To header. If it's set (message id supposed to be set), Espo tries to find an email by the value of that header. If it's found, then a parent of that email will be transferred to the new email.

If parent is found, then skip next steps.

3. It tries to find a parent by 'From' address.

If parent is found, then skip next steps.

4. It tries to find a parent by first 'To' address.

[esforim]

Coding secret reveal.