Incoming Email Capture

The most common way to capture your incoming emails is to set up a message rule which will forward emails from your mailbox across to a special capture or trap account inside AffinityLive. 

As a Google Apps user, you also have another option - the sychronization method.

 Setting up a Forwarding Address

In short, you set up a forward so that emails that come into your Google Apps mail account are forwarded to your AffinityLive account.

Log in & go to "Settings"

Once logged into your gmail account, click settings from the top right corner:

Enter the AffinityLive incoming capture address

• Select the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab, and enable the "Forward a copy of incoming mail..."
• Click on the "Add a forwarding address" button, and type richard@demo.affinitylive.com if richard is your username. 
• If your username in AffinityLive is an email address - eg richard@demo.com - you should still only take the richard@ part from your username and then follow with your AffinityLive deployment - ie demo.affinitylive.com - which results in richard@demo.affinitylive.com as your forwarding address.
  
• Gmail will then tell you it has sent you a confirmation code to verify permission.

Enter Verification Code

Google will now send a special email to the AffinityLive capture address. However, since this isn't a normal mailbox that you can log into, AffinityLive instead forwards the email back to your normal mailbox.

Confirm it is working

AffinityLive will only capture emails from addresses that are in the AffinityLive client database or have the same domain name (@domain.com). This feature is usefull if you commonly email john@smith.com, but then start receiving emails from accounts@smith.com. The "account" email address will now be captured.

Either get a client/friend who's email address is already in the system to send you a message and see that it appears on your todo list, or alternatively create a new company/contact record for an address you can send emails from.

NB: Do not test using your own primary email account or that of any other account linked to another staff member in AffinityLive - AffinityLive will also look in the list of staff or user emails, and will match against these addresses first.

 2. Synchronization

The Sychronization option can be configured from your Integrations page within in AffinityLive. This requires no changes to be made to either your mailbox or domain settings within Google Apps or Gmail.

This process works by telling AffinityLive to regularly checks your Google mail account for emails received from contacts that are known to AffinityLive. Matched emails then downloaded and stored as a an activity just like they would be under forwarding.

While the synchronization approach is easier to set up than the outgoing relay approach, this method is less responsive than the forwarding methods. This is because it relies on the AffinityLive servers "sweeping" your inbox periodically, whereas the forwarding methods happen almost instantaneously as email is delivered.

Log into AffinityLive and go to your Integrations setting page

Click "Integrations" from the username in the top right corner of AffinityLive after you've logged in.

Ensure your Google account is connected

To synchronize AffinityLive with your Google mail account, you need to ensure you've given AffinityLive permission. This occurs when you connect AffinityLive to your Google account. You'll see a green tick and the text "Connected to Google".

Tick the "Sync" box for Incoming Email

Under Configuration options, select the Inbound Email Integration option.

Once checked, AffinityLive will automatically connect to your Google Inbox and start syncronising emails that you receive from clients.

This sync process will continue running, approximately every 30 minutes to keep your client correspondence in AffinityLive up to date.

 Outgoing Email

While incoming email capture is great, it is only half the conversation - you will also want to keep track of the emails that you and your colleagues send to clients.

The fundamental requirement for capturing outgoing email is for messages to be delivered to log@yourdomain.affinitylive.com - however, there are a number of ways to achieve this outcome with Google Apps.

 Option 1 – Using AffinityLive as an Outgoing Gateway

The easiest way to capture outgoing email into AffinityLive is by setting AffinityLive to be an outgoing relay server, known in Google Apps as the Outgoing Gateway.

Technically, the way this works is that your Google Apps domain will send emails out to AffinityLive, which will then deliver them out to the intended recipients like normal, as well as processing a copy of the email and storing it in AffinityLive if the people you’re sending the email to have addresses inside the AffinityLive contact database.

Setting up this option is easy, but must be done by the domain administrator and (at the time of writing) this option is not supported in the Free version of Google Apps

Go to the Email Service Settings from the Management Console

After logging in as an administrator, and clicking “Manage this Domain” in the top right, you’ll be presented with your domain management console.

From here, click on “Settings”, and then select “Email” from the list of Services down the left-hand-side.

Enter your AffinityLive address as the 'Outgoing Gateway'

The page that then opens will be your email service settings. In the “Outbound Gateway” location, enter your AffinityLive domain:

Click “Save”, and within an hour your emails will start being routed to the rest of the world via AffinityLive.

 Add the AffinityLive SPF record to your DNS (optional)

Since AffinityLive is now relaying emails for your domain name, you’ll want to configure your SPF records to assert that the AffinityLive servers are allowed to send email on your behalf. See Google’s advice about how to configure your SPF settings, and alongside of Google’s servers, you’ll want to add:

include:affinitylive.com

To test your domain's SPF record (and make sure you have AffinityLive included), use the helpful tool at MXToolbox.com.

Option 2 – Using Postini Reinjection

This option is only available to users of Postini “Stand-Alone”, which is DIFFERENT to the version you get by default with Google Apps Premier Edition.

Please contact our support team for detailed advice on how to set up this service.

 Option 3 - Synchronization

The Sychronization option can be configured from your Integrations page within in AffinityLive. This requires no changes to be made to either your mailbox or domain settings within Google Apps or Gmail.

This process works by telling AffinityLive to regularly checks your Google mail account for emails received from contacts that are known to AffinityLive. Matched emails then downloaded and stored as a an activity just like they would be under forwarding.

While the synchronization approach is easier to set up than the outgoing relay approach, this method is less responsive than the forwarding methods. This is because it relies on the AffinityLive servers "sweeping" your inbox periodically, whereas the forwarding methods happen almost instantaneously as email is delivered.

Log into AffinityLive and go to your Integrations setting page

Click "Integrations" from the username in the top right corner of AffinityLive after you've logged in.

Ensure your Google account is connected

To synchronize AffinityLive with your Google mail account, you need to ensure you've given AffinityLive permission. This occurs when you connect AffinityLive to your Google account. You'll see a green tick and the text "Connected to Google".

Tick the "Sync" box for Outbound Email

Under Configuration options, select the Outbound Email Integration option. NB: If you're using the recommended "Forwarding" method for incoming email, DO NOT tick the Inbound Email sync method.

Once checked, AffinityLive will automatically connect to your Google Inbox and start syncronising emails that you receive from clients.

This sync process will continue running, approximately every 30 minutes to keep your client correspondence in AffinityLive up to date.

This method requires no configuration on Google's side, and is only enabled for those users who configure it. However, it is a little slower than other mail-routing methods as we have to fetch your email on a routine basis.