Emails in the CRM

The Emails feature on a project record combines two surfaces. A read-only drawer surfaces recent emails between you and the customer, pulled live from your connected Outlook or Gmail inbox. A Send-PDF modal ships Reonic-generated documents such as invoices, offers, and letters by email. You read your inbox in the Portal; you reply and compose free-form messages in your own mail provider. This guide covers what each surface does and how to use them together.

Before you start

• Connect your personal mailbox to surface customer emails on the project drawer. See Connect your mailbox below.
• The customer needs an email address on the project. The drawer looks up the project's customer email, so it shows results once an email is on the contact.
• You need the right permission. Account managers, installer admins, and field workers can connect a personal mailbox and read the drawer. Sending Reonic-rendered PDFs requires editor rights or above on the invoice, offer, or letter you want to send.
• The Emails drawer is in the Portal. On the road, open your provider's app directly to read customer emails.

Open the right-side drawer on a project

The Emails drawer is where you read what came in. It lives on every project, offer, request, and installation, scoped to that record's customer email.

1. Open the project (request / offer / installation) in the Portal.
2. Click the Mails button in the top bar of the record.
3. The right-side drawer opens. It shows the most recent messages, with pagination when there are more.
4. The drawer header shows:
   • The result count and unread count for this customer.
   • Provider icons (Microsoft or Google) showing where the results came from.
   • A Refresh button and pagination when there are more messages than the first page.
   • An error banner with a reconnect link when your mailbox connection needs attention.

Each message row shows the unread state, subject, FROM/TO/CC/BCC recipients with avatars, a plain-text body preview, the sent/received timestamp, and a paperclip when attachments are present.

Pro tip: Hover a message row to reveal the Open in Microsoft / Open in Gmail button. It opens the actual email in your provider, where you read the full body, reply, forward, or do anything else the provider supports.

How the drawer works

The drawer reads live from your connected inbox, filtered by the customer's email address. It shows the messages involving this customer; the full email body stays in your provider.

• Body preview in the drawer. Each row shows a short snippet. Click Open in Microsoft / Gmail for the full message.
• New emails appear after a short delay. The drawer and the top-bar unread badge refresh on their own every few minutes while you're working. Click Refresh to pull new messages sooner.
• Filtered by the customer's email. The drawer matches the customer's email address on this record. To search across customers, use your provider's own search.
• CC and BCC recipients are visible. Spot whether you were copied on a thread or addressed directly.

Send a Reonic-rendered document via email

The other half of the feature is the Send-PDF modal. Use it to send an invoice, offer, letter, or order confirmation by email. The subject and body come from your admin-configured template; you edit the recipient list per send.

1. Open the record (invoice / offer / letter / order confirmation) in the Portal.
2. Click Send via email. The Send-document modal opens.
3. The modal pre-fills the subject (from the document type and customer name), the body preview (from the document template and footer), the recipient list (the customer's email), and the document number, title, and description.
4. Edit the recipient list if needed. Add more addresses, which all go on the TO line, or remove the customer's email and send to a colleague for review instead.
5. Click Send document. Reonic generates the PDF, attaches it, and sends the email. Where your company's own outbound mail is configured, the email keeps your company's domain in the From line.
6. Once the email is sent, the document shows a sent-at timestamp and a green tick on the record.

Pro tip: The PDF is generated fresh on each send. If you edit the document after sending and send again, the customer receives the updated version. To keep a record of exactly what went out, download the PDF before you re-edit.

Customize the message for a specific customer

The subject and body are template-driven: your admin configures the email templates in settings, and every send for that document type uses that template. The recipient list is the field you edit per send. When you need a different message body for one customer, you have three options:

• Download the PDF and attach it to a fresh email from your own Outlook or Gmail. You keep full control over subject, body, recipients, and formatting.
• Ask your admin to add a template variant when the difference is structural, for example one tone for B2C and another for B2B.
• Send a follow-up from your own inbox right after the Reonic-rendered send. Reonic sends the formal document; you add the personal context.

The Send modal puts all recipients on the TO line. To copy a colleague, add them to the recipient list.

Reply to a customer email

Replies happen in your provider's own screen. The drawer hands you off to Outlook or Gmail, where you compose and send with the full editor.

1. In the drawer, find the customer's email.
2. Hover the message row and click Open in Microsoft / Open in Gmail.
3. Outlook Web or Gmail opens with the original message loaded.
4. Use your provider's native Reply button to compose your response.
5. Send from your provider. The reply lands in your provider's sent folder.
6. Refresh the Reonic drawer after a few minutes to see your sent message appear.

To attach the customer's earlier emails to a reply, open the message in your provider and use its Forward or attach-previous-message option, then send from there.

Compose a brand-new email to a customer

To start a fresh thread when there's no existing email to reply to:

1. Open the project drawer.
2. Click New e-mail in the drawer header.
3. Your own mail client (Outlook desktop, Apple Mail, or your browser default) opens with the customer's email pre-filled.
4. Compose and send from your mail client.

Note: The email goes from your own address, so the customer sees a normal email from your mailbox. Reonic-rendered PDFs are sent from the Send-PDF modal instead.

Reply to a Reonic-sent email

When a customer replies to an email Reonic sent (a system notification, or a PDF you sent through the Send-PDF modal), the reply reaches you in one of two ways, depending on how your workspace is set up:

• The reply comes straight to your inbox. Reply normally in your provider.
• The reply is routed to the right person. The reply is forwarded to the intended recipient, typically the assigned account manager or the person who triggered the original send, with the original email included for context.

If you're not sure which setup your workspace uses, send a test PDF to yourself and watch where the reply lands, or ask your admin.

Connect your mailbox

For the drawer to surface emails, connect your inbox to Reonic.

1. Go to Settings → Organization → Mail Inbox → Personal inboxes.
2. Click Connect mailbox.
3. Pick the provider: Microsoft (Outlook / Microsoft 365) or Google (Gmail / Workspace).
4. The connection flow runs against your provider. Approve the requested access.
5. Reonic sends a verification email to confirm the connection.
6. Click the verification link in that email to finish setup.
7. The inbox now shows as connected, and the drawer surfaces emails on every project where you have access.

Note: Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace often require admin consent for the access Reonic requests. If you're not the IT admin for your provider, coordinate with them for the initial approval.

The two Google connection modes

Gmail connects either way:

• Per-user. Every user grants their own consent. The Add-Gmail flow adds your own inbox, with your email pre-filled and an info banner reading "Only your own Gmail inbox can be added. Ask your administrator to set up shared inboxes to add colleagues' inboxes."
• Org-wide. Your admin sets up shared access once, and the Add-Gmail flow then lets you add any inbox that shared access covers. Each newly-added inbox owner still receives a verification email.

Shared Gmail inboxes and colleagues' inboxes become available once your admin sets up org-wide shared access. The Microsoft add flow works independently of this.

Connection states

The connection state tells you what to do next:

• Verification needed. Finish the verification step from the email Reonic sent.
• Reconnect needed. Reconnect your mailbox from Settings → Organization → Mail Inbox.
• Wrong provider. The chosen provider doesn't match the email domain. Reconnect with the matching provider.
• Blocked. An admin policy blocks the connection; contact your admin.
• Not connected. You haven't started the connection yet.
• Connected. The drawer reads from this inbox.

Use a company-wide inbox

Some companies connect shared inboxes like info@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com, or support@yourcompany.com so any user with the right access can see emails through the project drawer. An admin manages company inboxes:

1. Go to Settings → Organization → Mail Inbox → Company-wide inboxes.
2. Click Add inbox.
3. Pick the provider and enter the inbox email.
4. Run the same connection flow as a personal inbox, scoped to the company.
5. Verify the inbox from the verification email.

Once connected, company-inbox results appear in every user's drawer alongside their personal inbox results. A user with a personal Gmail plus access to a company Outlook sees both, merged into one list sorted by date. The drawer reads every active inbox you have access to, so you'll see correspondence with this customer from any of them.

Note: shared inboxes are shared. Two account managers can both see the same incoming email, and both could reply from their own provider without knowing the other did. Agree out of band who owns which thread.

Note: company-wide Gmail inboxes need org-wide shared access. The Add-inbox option in Company-wide inbox settings appears once your admin sets up org-wide shared access. Until then, a hint reads "To manage shared Gmail inboxes, connect a Google Workspace service account." Once set up, the hint changes to "Service account connected. Inbox owners receive a verification email when added." and the Add-inbox option appears. Microsoft (Outlook) company inboxes connect without this step.

Note: setting up new shared access re-verifies every Gmail inbox once. When your admin sets up new org-wide Gmail access, every existing Gmail inbox in the company (personal and company) needs a quick re-verification. Inbox owners click a fresh verification email before reads resume. Plan this during a quiet period and tell your team ahead of time.

Handle a bounced email

When an outbound email Reonic sent bounces (a bad or blocked address), the symptoms you'll notice are the customer saying "I never got the email," or later sends to the same address not arriving.

1. Check that the email address on the customer's contact record is correct.
2. If the address is wrong, fix it on the contact and send again. The new address sends normally.
3. If the address is right but the email still doesn't arrive, add the customer's secondary email on the contact so future sends go to both, or reach them on another channel.
4. To clear an address that's being held back, contact Reonic support with the address.

Things to know

• Reading is in Reonic; everything else is in your provider. Composing, replying, forwarding, drafts, and scheduled sends all happen in Outlook or Gmail via Open in Microsoft / Gmail.
• Field workers read customer email in their provider's own app. The Emails drawer lives in the Portal.
• If the drawer shows an error banner, use the reconnect link when it appears, or contact Reonic support for other errors and share what the banner says.
• If your drawer is empty for a customer you know emailed you, and you read a shared Gmail inbox, ask your admin to check the shared-access setup, since that path is managed at the admin level.

Need help?

• Step-by-step questions about this flow → contact your Reonic account manager.
• Feature requests / something missing → let your account manager know.
• Bug reports → include the URL where it happened in your support email.

Last updated on August 4, 2026