Point the platform at the address your customers already write to. New mail is collected from the mailbox, matched to the conversation it belongs to, and offered to an agent through the same skill-based routing your calls use — the same queues, the same agents, the same wrap-up codes and the same reports. There is no separate e-mail queue to design and no second set of routing rules to keep in step with the first. A mail thread is a conversation like any other: it runs your visual flow, an AI agent can triage or answer it, and it lands on a human agent’s desktop when it needs one.

​
When to use it

A shared support address

support@, billing@, orders@ — mail that several people answer today out of one inbox, where nobody can tell who has picked up what.

Mail alongside calls and chat

The same agents already take calls. Routing mail through their skills means one set of queues, one occupancy picture, one report.

AI triage before a human

Let a flow read the mail, answer the routine ones, and queue only what needs a person — the same flow builder your IVR uses.

Keeping your existing mailbox

Nothing moves. Your mail stays where it is, on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or your own server; the platform reads it.

​
How a message becomes a conversation

1

The mailbox is checked

The platform connects to the mailbox on the interval you set and collects anything new. Nothing is forwarded and no MX record changes — mail keeps arriving exactly where it does today.
2

The message is threaded

A reply is matched to the conversation it belongs to, following the threading information the sender’s mail client supplies. A customer who replies a week later continues the same thread rather than opening a new one.
3

Your flow runs

A new thread starts the routing program set on the mailbox. It can answer, ask for details, or queue straight to a skill — the same steps a call flow uses.
4

An agent answers

The thread appears in the agent’s Email screen. They reply in place; the answer is sent from the mailbox and lands inside the customer’s existing thread.
A mailbox with no routing program still collects and stores mail — it simply never offers it to an agent. If a newly added mailbox looks silent, this is the first thing to check.

​
Connecting a mailbox

How you sign in depends on who hosts the mailbox.
If a Microsoft 365 or Google mailbox reports that it cannot sign in even though the password is correct, the password is not the problem — those providers no longer accept one for mail. Switch the mailbox to OAuth.
For an OAuth mailbox you register an application with the provider and supply its identifier plus an access token that allows both reading the mailbox and sending as it. A token that only allows reading will collect mail and then fail on the first reply.

​
Encryption and ports

Two settings, and the usual values:
  • Incoming — encrypted on port 993, or upgrade-to-encrypted on port 143.
  • Outgoing — upgrade-to-encrypted on port 587, or encrypted on port 465.
Choosing no encryption sends the sign-in details in the clear, so it is only appropriate inside a network you control end to end.
Collecting mail and sending replies use different servers on most providers. A mailbox that receives correctly but fails on every reply almost always has the outgoing server wrong.

​
Read and unread

The mailbox is the source of truth, not the console. That matters because the same mailbox is usually still open in Outlook or Gmail alongside the console. So:
  • Marking a message read in the agent’s Email screen marks it read in the mailbox too.
  • Someone reading or un-reading a message in their own mail client is picked up on the next check and reflected in the console.
The two cannot drift apart, which is what makes it safe to keep using your normal mail client during a migration.

​
Unwanted mail

Not everything that arrives in a mailbox was written by a person. Every message is checked against the machine markers its sender’s own infrastructure set, and anything that is not from a person is kept and shown, but never sent to an agent: This is not a content filter and it makes no judgement about what a message says. It reads the headers and nothing else, so it cannot mistake a blunt customer for a spammer.
Auto-replies are the important one. Your routing program can answer mail. If it answered an out-of-office, the far side’s responder would answer that, and the exchange would never end — a loop that gets your mailbox rate-limited or blocked by your provider. Setting auto-replies aside is what prevents it.
Nothing is deleted. Set-aside mail appears under Filtered in the agent’s Email screen, labelled with which kind it was, so a message held wrongly is still readable. And a thread stops being filtered the moment a person writes into it — a customer who replies properly to a thread that began with an out-of-office reaches an agent normally.
Your provider’s own junk filter still runs first and files spam into a separate folder. Because the platform reads the folder you choose — INBOX by default — most unwanted mail never reaches it at all. The checks above are what catch the rest.

​
Replies

Agents type the reply and nothing else. The subject line and the threading information are filled in for you, so the answer appears inside the customer’s original thread instead of starting a new one, and the reply is sent from the mailbox the thread arrived in. A reply that the mail server refuses is not lost: it stays in the thread marked as undelivered, with the reason, so the agent can correct it and try again.

​
What it does not do

Attachments

Attachments are not collected. An agent sees the message text; open the mail in a normal client when the attachment matters.

Formatting

A formatted message is converted to readable text. Layout, images and tables are not shown, and the message is labelled so the agent knows.

Outbound campaigns

This is a conversation channel, not a bulk sender. It answers mail that arrives; it does not run mailing lists.

Moving your mail

Your mailbox stays yours. The platform reads it and replies through it; it is not a migration.

​
Next

Set up a mailbox

The Mailboxes screen, field by field.

Skills and routing

How skills, queues and flows work — e-mail uses the same ones.