Connecting your email

Connect your mailbox so your conversations with contacts appear on their pages, in your Inbox and on the dashboard, and so you can send email from Fifi.

Who can do it: every member connects their own mailbox, one per workspace. Email is a module: if Settings → Email is missing, an owner or admin can turn Email on in Settings → Modules.

Status:

• Gmail and Google Workspace work where CorporateMutt has set up Google (staging has it). Google is in "Testing" mode for now, so only Fifi's listed test users can connect, and Google makes them reconnect every 7 days. Where Google isn't set up, the button is greyed out with "Gmail isn't set up for Fifi yet."
• Microsoft 365 / Outlook shows as Coming soon ("Outlook and Microsoft 365 mailboxes are coming soon."). It's built, and switches on once CorporateMutt sets up Microsoft.

Connect Gmail

1. Go to Settings → Email.
2. Click Connect Gmail.
3. Choose your Google account and allow both permissions: read and send email. Leave both boxes ticked.
4. You're sent back to Fifi: "Gmail is connected. The last 90 days are syncing now; this can take a few minutes."

What you'll see: your address with a status badge:

The line underneath says when it last synced and how many conversations are in this workspace.

Fifi asks only for gmail.readonly and gmail.send. It never changes, deletes or labels anything in your Gmail.

Microsoft 365 / Outlook (coming soon)

When it's available, click Connect Microsoft 365 / Outlook instead. It works with work or school accounts and Outlook.com or Hotmail. Some organisations need their Microsoft 365 admin to approve Fifi first.

You can connect one mailbox per workspace. To switch provider, disconnect the other one first.

What syncs

• The last 90 days when you first connect, then new mail as it arrives. Gmail tells Fifi about new mail straight away; Fifi also checks every 5 minutes in case a notice is missed.
• Drafts, spam, trash and chats are skipped.
• Fifi keeps the plain text of each message, up to 100,000 characters, and its formatted (HTML) version, cleaned of anything that could run or track, up to 200,000 characters. Formatted emails show as designed; pictures from the internet stay hidden until you click Show images (see Sending email and tracking). Long plain-text messages show the first 20,000 characters, with a note that the full message is in Gmail.
• Email you send from Gmail directly is tracked as received and replied, but not opened. Only email sent from Fifi can show opens.

The privacy filter: what Fifi keeps

Fifi only stores a message when someone on it from outside your team:

• is a contact in this workspace (matched by exact email address, whether they sent it or were on To or Cc), or
• sent it from a company in this workspace (matched by the sender's domain; free-mail domains like gmail.com never match).

For email you or a teammate send, every recipient counts: a message to someone new at a client company is kept and linked to that company, including a teammate's message that Cc's you.

Since v0.52.2, a message you receive is matched to a company by its sender only. A promotion addressed to you and to someone at a client isn't that client's email.

Your own domain is never a client. Addresses on your team's domain (the domain of your teammates' and connected mailboxes' addresses, for example corporatemutt.com) count as your team, like your teammates' own addresses do. That includes aliases, shared inboxes and forwarding addresses. Mail to promos@yourdomain.com that reaches your mailbox is never linked to a company on your domain. Free-mail and internet-provider domains such as gmail.com, outlook.es or optonline.net are never treated as your domain. Someone you've added as a contact is always kept, even on your own domain.

If you add a company with your own domain, its page says: "This is your own domain, so email isn't linked to it."

Fifi never stores:

• email only between you and your team (your teammates, and any address on your own domain);
• email involving a contact marked Don't track email;
• email with nobody but you on it.

Stored messages link to the matching contacts, their companies and their open deals. Everyone in the workspace can see synced conversations on contact and company pages. Your Inbox shows only your own mailbox.

Newsletters, promotions and automatic replies

Since v0.52.2, Fifi recognizes bulk and automated email you receive: newsletters, promotions, notifications, receipts and out-of-office replies. Some signs are certain:

• an unsubscribe link or mailing-list header (List-Unsubscribe, List-Id);
• a bulk or list Precedence;
• an Auto-Submitted header (anything but "no"), X-Autoreply or X-Autorespond;
• a no-reply sender, such as noreply@, no-reply@, donotreply@, notifications@, mailer-daemon@, postmaster@ or bounce@;
• Gmail's Promotions tab.

Email with any of these is not stored, unless it comes from someone who is a contact (an exact email address). A client company's newsletter from news@client.com isn't kept just because client.com is a company in Fifi.

Other signs only suggest it: Gmail's Updates, Social or Forums tab, and Outlook's Other tab (Focused Inbox). Real people's email lands there too, so these alone don't stop Fifi keeping email from a contact or from a client company's domain. They only keep it out of "Needs reply".

Either way:

• Never "Needs reply". When automated email is kept, it starts as a closed conversation. On an existing conversation it leaves the state as it was: a client's out-of-office reply doesn't turn "Awaiting reply" into "Needs reply".
• It still shows on the contact's timeline.
• Email you or a teammate send is never treated this way, even a mail-merge with an unsubscribe link.

A real reply from the contact after that moves the conversation as usual.

If a teammate synced the same conversation, it appears once, with "also in 1 other mailbox".

Contacts you add later

When you add a contact (by hand, from a CSV import, a form, a booking, a text or the API), or give a contact a new email address, Fifi looks for their email from the last 90 days in every connected mailbox in the workspace and brings it in, through the same privacy filter. It usually takes a minute or two.

• Contacts marked Don't track email are skipped.
• So are addresses Fifi can't search for safely: ones with characters other than letters, digits and . _ % + - before the @ (an apostrophe, say), or non-English letters. Fifi doesn't look for their older email, and doesn't say so.
• A big import is spread out: each mailbox is searched for at most 300 new contacts an hour, so a 3,000-row import takes about 10 hours to catch up. New mail arrives as usual meanwhile.
• The same address is searched in a mailbox at most once a day.

Disconnect

1. Go to Settings → Email.
2. Click Disconnect Gmail.

Fifi stops syncing and gives back its Google access. Email already synced stays on your contacts and companies. Any campaign sending from your mailbox pauses.

For Microsoft mailboxes, Fifi forgets its access. To remove the app from your Microsoft account too, use the links shown after disconnecting.

Delete synced email

To remove what Fifi synced from your mailbox:

1. In Settings → Email, under Delete synced email, click Delete synced email…
2. Confirm with Delete synced email.

Everyone in the workspace stops seeing it at once. Your Gmail itself isn't touched. This can't be undone, but connecting again syncs the last 90 days again.

Troubleshooting

Related guides

• Sending email and tracking
• Campaigns
• Security overview
• For Fifi staff: Google OAuth and Gmail setup