# Receive and Send Emails

In Concord CRM you can send and receive emails via the email accounts you connected before. The emails can be associated with contacts, companies and deals, so you can have clear overview of all the communication between you and your team members.

The Inbox emails feature works almost identically like any other email client with few more improvements which are related to Concord CRM.

Before starting the using the Inbox emails feature, make sure to check the known limitations.

## Send Mails

### Send Via Inbox

To compose new email follow the steps below.

- Click on Inbox menu item.

- Click the Compose button.

- In the To field, search for companies, contacts or enter an email address.

  If you select, contact or company, Concord CRM will automatically associate the email with the record profile, however, you can still manually associate the email with other records if needed.

- Enter email subject.

- In the editor area, enter the email message.

- If you need to attach files, click the Attach Files button.

- Click Send.

When sending emails directly via Inbox menu item, if you don't search and select the record (company, contact) via the To field and instead enter the record email address directly, the email won't be associated automatically with the record.

### Send Via Record Profile

To send an email directly via record profile, for example, send email while viewing the contact profile follow the steps below.

- Navigate to the contact profile.

- Click on the Emails tab.

- Click Create Email.

  The Recipients field will be auto populated and the email will be auto associated to the record.

- Enter Subject.

- Click Send.

## Reply To Emails

### Reply Via Inbox

To reply to an email follow the steps below.

- Click on Inbox menu item.
- From the emails table, find the email you want to reply to and click on the subject.
- Click on the top right Reply button at the top of the message.
- Enter your reply message.
- Click Send.

### Reply Via Record Profile

If the email message is associated with the a record profile, for example contact, this email message will be visible in the record profile and you can easily reply to the message.

- Navigate to the contact profile.

- Click on the Emails tab.

- Find the email you want to reply to.

- Click Reply button at the bottom of the email.

  The Recipients field will be auto populated and the email will be auto associated to the record.

- Enter your reply message.

- Click Send.

## Predefined Templates

With templates, you can save repetitive email content as an email template. Before sending a template, you can personalize and tailor the content to your recipients.

### Create Template

- Navigate to Inbox and click Compose.

- Click on Templates and then click on Create Template.

Images in predefined templates are not supported in the current version.

- Enter name and subject for your template.

- Enter body of the template.

- To share the template with other team members, select Share this template with other team members?.

  This option can be used when you want to create more general template and you want other team members to be able to re-use this template when composing new emails, in this case, the template will be visible for other team members.

- Click Create.

Now when you will compose new email messages, you will be able to select this template to automatically insert into the email message you are composing.

### Use And Send Template

To use the template into your email message, you can either do this via record profile or when composing new email message via Inbox->Compose.

- For example, navigate to Inbox and click Compose.
- Click on Templates and then hover on the template you want to use and click Select.
- The template message will be embedded into the new email editor.

When the message editor is active, type '[[' to dynamically search for and insert templates.

### Delete Template

- Navigate to Inbox and click Compose.
- Click on Templates and then hover on the template you want to delete and click delete button.

Please note: a template can only be deleted by the user who created it, or by a Super Admin.

## Placeholders

Using placeholders helps you and your sale agents save time, avoid mistakes in mails and close deals faster, the placeholders will be automatically filled based on the mail recipient or first associated record information and can be edited further if needed.

Placeholders can be added directly in the mail editor content or subject when composing a new message or replying to an existing mail. You can use it with combination with the predefined templates, after the template is inserted, Concord CRM will replace all the template placeholders with their appropriate values.

You can even use custom fields as placeholder, note that for technical reasons not all custom fields can be added as placeholders.

### Subject Placeholders

You can use placeholders in the subject input field, the subject placeholders are added in a template format, different than the placeholders in the message content that are added in an input field format.

To determine the subject placeholder template format, you can hover on any of the available placeholders, the placeholder format that is intended to be used for the subject will be displayed on top.

To easily add placeholder in the subject without making any mistakes in the tag name, you can drag and drop the placeholder directly in the subject input field.

### Message Placeholders

You can insert placeholders in the message content when composing new message, replying to a message or when creating a new template, in most cases, you will use placeholders within templates, to create new template with placeholders follow the steps below.

When the message editor is active, type '--' to dynamically search for and insert placeholders.

- Navigate to Inbox and click Compose
- At the top, click Templates
- Click Create Template
- Enter name and subject
- Click the Fields button on the editor.
- Focus in the editor where you want to insert the placeholder and choose the placeholder from the available placeholders list.

If you did not entered a recipient prior to inserting the template the template placeholders will be blank, you can fill them manually or Concord CRM will fill them when you enter recipient from the To field.

### Records for Placeholders

The way Concord CRM determines from which record to use the placeholders is determined in two stages, first associated record or recipient (contact or company).

By default all the placeholders that are added for a specific resource are replaced based on the first associated record, for example, when using placeholders related to a "Deal", the first associated deal will be used to replace the placeholders.

However, when sending a message to a contact or company and the recipient is contact or company, the placeholders will be replaced from the first recipient in the _To__ field.

This allows to associate the message to one contact but send it to another, for example, when the first associated contact is "John" but you are sending a message to "Jane" and "Jane" is the first recipient to the message, the placeholders related to the "Contacts" resource will be used from "Jane".

In order to determine which records will be used for placeholders, you can open the associations popover and a code icon will be displayed next to the record name.

## Synchronization

### Cron Job

The emails are synchronized via cron job every 3 minutes, in order to avoid any synchronization issues, make sure that your cron job is properly configured.

### Manually Sync

In case, you need to perform manually sync for quick sync, when viewing your emails, click on the top right sync button, see the image below.

By clicking the button, will invoke manually sync for the current email account you are viewing.

Manual sync is available only after the email account is first time synchronized via cron job.

### Configure Pusher

As Concord CRM is SPA (Single Page Application), full refresh of the page is not performed on each click or navigation, in this case, Concord CRM use Pusher and Sockets to trigger page refresh when is needed, for example, when new emails are available or when emails synchronization is finished.

To see the new synced emails, unread messages etc..., without the need to reload the page, we strongly recommend you to configure the Pusher integration for best experience.

### Disabling Sync For Account

In case you need to temporary disable synchronization for an account you have connected follow the steps below.

- Click the Inbox menu item.
- Click the right side three dots button and choose Manage Accounts.
- Toggle the Disable Sync option.

## Tracking Email Opens

You don’t need to configure anything; the feature is automatically turned ON and will work right out of the box while you use Concord CRM.

Let's assume you've sent an email to a contact and you want to check if the contact has opened it. Locate the email you sent, either from the contact's profile or the inbox. On the right side, if the email has been opened, you will see an indicator showing the last time it was opened and how many times it has been opened.

However, there is one scenario in which this feature may not function correctly, which depends on the settings the contact/user configures in their email client. Unfortunately, there is nothing Concord CRM can do about this; the tracked email status will remain as "Not Opened."

If the contact/user has an option in their email client/email interface to turn off remote content for received emails, the tracking may not work properly. Below, you can find an example of how this might look, for instance, in the Thunderbird email client.

In such cases, if the contact reads the email and does not turn on remote content or allow remote content for this specific email, the email will be marked as "Not Opened."