Configuring Vantaca Email Accounts to Forward from Gmail

Summary: This card will tell you how to create and add a new Forwarding email account so you can forward Gmail emails straight into Vantaca as Action Items.

Best Practice: It is recommended that your email settings have your inbox set to automatically delete emails older than 30-days (60 days or 90 days based on preference) to prevent the inbox from getting full. Once the inbox is full emails will no longer forward to Vantaca. 

Important: Clients may need to enable permissions found under Roles > Security > Mailroom > Email Accounts in order to have full functionality of the Email Accounts page.

Creating a Forwarding Email

1. Go to Mailroom > Email Accounts.
2. Click the New Email Account button.
   Note: You may also edit an existing email address.
   
   1. Select Forwarding as the Email Usage Type.
      
   2. Enter the Email you'll be forwarding Gmail emails from.
      1. Note: This is what Vantaca will display as the Email Sender.
   3. An Alias is not needed for setting up Forwarding. Your alias will just end up being your Email Address.
   4. Select the Email Type from the dropdown.
   5. Select an Action Type from the dropdown.
      1. Note: If an Action Type is not selected, the action item may not be created when Gmail forwards the emails. This is a integral part of the configuration since you'll need to retrieve a verification code from this action item to fully set up this feature.
   6. Select an Association from the dropdown if necessary, or select (All Associations)
   7. Enter a From Name in the provided field.
      1. This can be used to display as an additional from field on the email. Clients would enter their association’s name in this field to ensure homeowners aren’t confused as to who sent the email. Note: If All Association is selected, the Company name would be used instead. Example: “Vantaca Myles” is the From Name and “vantacabetatest@gmail.com” is the Email.
         
         
   8. Click Update to complete.

After you’ve filled out the new Forwarding Email Usage Type, you can take the newly created forwarding address, found in the Forwarding column, and configure the rest of the settings in Gmail. Note: The forwarding address is system generated and cannot be modified.

Setting up to Forward Mail in Gmail

1. Go to Gmail.
2. Select the Settings icon.
   
3. Select See All Settings.
4. Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
   
5. Disable IMAP access. Note: The Status will still display as "IMAP is enabled", until you click Save Changes.
   
6. Select Add a forwarding address and enter the associated email address from the Forwarding column in Vantaca. Note: When copying and pasting, ensure there are no extra spaces before or after the email address because Gmail will give you an error saying the email is not valid.
   1. Important: Ensure that the user performing the Gmail validation is a default follower of the selected action item. Testing of this functionality found that users who were not default followers were unable to see the action item and not have access to the validation code.
7. A confirmation message will appear in a separate window, select Proceed.
   
8. You’ll receive a message saying that a confirmation code has been sent to the provided email and you’ll need to verify it within Gmail.
   
9. The verification code can be found in a newly created Action Item’s details in Vantaca.
   
   1. Note: Depending on the action item, you may want to select an Action Type like General Inquiry From Email when setting up the Forwarding Email Usage Type to ensure the verification code can be easily retrieved and entered. The action type can always be reverted to its intended use case after verification has been completed.
10. Enter the confirmation code in the provided field and click Verify.
    
    
11. Select Forward a copy of incoming mail to, select the forwarding address from the dropdown and select an option from the second dropdown as needed.
    
12. Select Save Changes to ensure the settings are not lost.
    

Now, any emails that are sent to the Email you entered on the Forwarding form will be automatically forwarded to Vantaca and have an Action Item created with all of the content from the original email (depending on the Action Item configuration).

Making Sure it's Enabled

You can test that everything was set up correctly by sending an email to the Gmail account you just configured. If things went according to plan, an Action Item should have been created with your original email content.
In this example, Gmail forwarding is set to keep a copy of the forwarded email in the Gmail inbox so a copy will arrive there along with the newly created action item, as shown: