Connect Gmail or Outlook
1. Connect your mailbox
Each person connects their own mailbox. Nobody else can connect it for you.
- Open Settings from the account menu, then Mail and calendar.
- Under Connect a mailbox, choose Google (for Gmail). Connecting Outlook is coming soon.
- Before anything leaves PetalCRM, a window says what we read from your mailbox, what we keep and for how long, why, who else receives it, and that we never use it to train AI models. Read it, then press the button that agrees and continues to Google. Not now, or closing the window, connects nothing. If your workspace has not turned on email reading yet, an admin sees that choice first, in the same window, and continues only once it is on. Anyone else cannot connect until an admin turns it on: press Ask my admin and your admins are told.
- Sign in to your Google account and allow access. You come back to Your mail and calendar, and the mailbox shows as Connected.
To use a different account, disconnect this one first.
If there is no Google button: Until Google finishes approving PetalCRM, only a limited number of Google accounts can be connected. When that limit is reached, the page says connecting a Google account is paused instead of showing the button. A Google account that was connected before can still connect again. Meanwhile, forward or BCC your email to your filing address, shown under Forwarding email in on the same page. That works for everyone, with any mailbox. See Forward or BCC email so it is filed.
2. What is read
Open What we read on the same page. It says, for your provider, exactly what is read.
- Google: new email in Inbox and Sent is filed from the moment you connect. Email from before you connected, drafts, spam and trash are not read.
If the page says a provider's mailboxes are not read into this workspace yet, connecting that provider files nothing for now.
Email is filed on the people, organizations and deals it concerns. Facts in it become suggestions for you to approve while Reading your email for deal updates is on. Connecting a mailbox switches that on, unless you turned it off before.
3. Send email from PetalCRM
Coming soon.
Under Your email signature on the same page, type the plain text you want at the end of your email. It is added below a line of two dashes. Press Save signature. Leave it empty for no signature.
4. Quoted replies in Gmail
For a Gmail mailbox, PetalCRM asks before it reads the earlier messages quoted in your replies. Press Read the notice and decide, then Accept or Decline. If you decline, nothing changes: quoted replies are not read. You can Withdraw permission later.
5. Connect your calendar
Coming soon. Until then the Connect a calendar card says connecting a calendar is not available here yet, and there is nothing for you to do: a Connect button appears on the card once it is.
6. Disconnect
Press Disconnect your mailbox, then Disconnect it. Email already brought in stays.
7. When a connection stops working
Your mail and calendar shows each connection's status, one card for each kind. If it says Stopped working because the permission expired or was removed, connect again. If your company's IT admin blocked the connection, ask them to allow it.
8. Delete captured email
There is no button that deletes one captured email. Deleting a message in Gmail does not remove it from PetalCRM, and neither does disconnecting: what was brought in stays. Three things remove it:
- To stop keeping the text of email, an owner or admin presses Stop keeping email text in Administration, then What is kept, or sets a shorter period there. Text past the period is deleted and the sender, date and subject stay. See how long email text is kept.
- When a person asks to be forgotten, the workspace owner erases the person, or forgets their email address to erase their mail and keep the contact.
- To delete a whole workspace and everything captured in it, see delete your workspace.