Setting up Email Sync

Email Sync connects your Microsoft 365 inbox to Alto so that email conversations with your contacts are captured automatically, without you having to copy and paste anything into a File Note.

Every email you send and every reply you receive lands on the relevant Contacts or Properties Timeline in real time, so the whole team can see the latest conversation.

What Email Sync does

• Captures your email conversations against the right contact or property automatically, with no manual logging
• Syncs in real time, so replies appear in Alto without you needing to refresh
• Keeps everything on one shared timeline that the whole team can see
• Notifies you reliably when a reply comes in
• Saves you switching between Alto and your inbox to keep records up to date

Before you start

• Email Sync is currently a beta feature and is not available to all Alto customers by default. Please keep checking back to be the first to hear when Email Sync becomes available to all Alto customers
• You need a Microsoft 365 mailbox - other email providers aren't supported yet
• You don't need to contact Alto Support to enable Email Sync or to connect your inbox
• When you connect your inbox, Microsoft will ask you to give Alto permission to read your mailbox. Alto can't send, edit, move or delete your emails, and only stores emails that are part of a conversation started from Alto - see How Email Sync accesses your mailbox
• If your agency is already using CAMS email integration, every Alto user will need to switch to Email Sync in order for it not show the CAMS reference number in the email subject. Until everyone has switched, emails sent from Alto will still include the CAMS reference number

Setting up Email Sync

Once Email Sync has been switched on for your agency, each individual Alto account holder will need to connect their own inbox. Only one email account can be synced for each Alto user account.  

In Alto:

1. Click on your name on the main navigation bar
2. Click Account Settings
3. Click Your account
4. Under the Email Sync heading, click Link Microsoft Mailbox
5. Sign in to your Microsoft 365 account when prompted
6. Accept the permission request to allow Alto to read your mailbox. To find out what Alto does with this access, see How Email Sync accesses your mailbox

Your inbox is now connected, and your emails will begin syncing automatically.

How synced emails appear in Alto

• Alto initiated emails and their replies are captured automatically - there's no need to add a File Note
• Sync is real time, so replies appear without you needing to refresh
• Every email and reply appears on the timeline of the relevant contact or property, so the whole team can see the latest conversation
• You'll be notified when a reply is received via the Notifications bell on the main navigation bar
• If your agency is moving from CAMS, emails sent from Alto will keep the CAMS reference number until every user has switched to Email Sync. This makes sure emails from colleagues still using CAMS continue to be tracked. Email Sync still works as normal in the meantime, and your emails are tracked without needing the reference number

How Email Sync accesses your mailbox

There are two parts to this: the permission you give Alto through Microsoft, and what Alto actually does with it.

The permission you grant through Microsoft

When you link your mailbox, Alto asks Microsoft for:

• Mail.Read - Microsoft's standard permission to read a mailbox
• Access to your basic profile
• The ability to stay connected without you having to sign in repeatedly

Alto doesn't ask for permission to send, edit, move or delete your emails.

You, or your Microsoft 365 administrator, can review or remove this permission at any time.

What Alto reads and stores

Alto only tracks conversations that start with an email sent from Alto. An email is only stored if:

• It was sent from Alto, or
• It's a reply in the same conversation as an email sent from Alto

Nothing else is stored.

To find these replies, Alto checks each new email as it arrives:

1. Microsoft lets Alto know that a new email has arrived
2. Alto retrieves the email and checks whether it belongs to a tracked conversation
3. If it doesn't, the email is discarded immediately and nothing is kept

Alto has to check incoming emails this way because Microsoft doesn't say which conversation an email belongs to. This is the same for any email tracking tool built on Microsoft 365.

Emails in your Drafts, Junk and Deleted Items folders are never stored, even if they're part of a tracked conversation.

What's stored for a tracked email

So that a tracked email can be shown against the right contact in Alto, Alto stores a copy of its:

• Subject
• Sender and recipients
• Body
• Date and time

Attachments aren't stored. Alto only retrieves an attachment from your mailbox at the moment you open it in Alto.