Apr 27, 20229:25 AM - edited Apr 27, 20229:28 AM
Contributor
Email channel.
Hi team!
I'm experiencing an issue with the email channel via the conversations.read scope.
Only email messages sent or received from a created 'channel' address (e.g hello-1@20189213.hubspot-inbox.com) are being retrieved via the webhook - screenshot.
Even though it states that 'We don't recommend using a personal email in the inbox. You can still connect a personal email to HubSpot to automatically track emails on CRM records.' it redirects to this page where my personal email ALREADY exists.
The email channel payload only works when sent via 'hello-1@20189213.hubspot-inbox.com' not 'alex@jupita.io'. Even though it seems to offer the choice of adding a personal email to the channel - which I already have setup.
I get why the channel setup exists - to give teams access to group emails e.g info@. However if a user does not use this, and just simply adds their email address under Settings>General>Email, which I have done, then one would expect the conversations.read webhook to still function.
I install the Free CRM to a client, as I am expecting to upgrade further on.
Currently, I have 5 users, and our objective is that each one can read and edit emails from their inbox in Hubspot.
I am getting confused because, when I go to one of the users/go to general, or add their personal email, it only lets me create and get the extension on Gmail, outlook or another but still cannot receive emails in that inbox. But I can see the email history on the contact page.
But if in admin I create a inbox like info@mydomain.com, and authorise all to read and manage this channel I can see than all of them can see and edit those emails.
To confuse, please if anybody can help me to clear this please as I have a meeting tomorrow.
Hi there! Thanks for your question. Conversations webhooks are only sent for messages in the Conversations Inbox (which are set up in the first screen shot you shared). Since personal emails set up for logging messages in the CRM are not processed via the Conversations Inbox and don't land in the Conversations Inbox, webhooks are not created for them. Depending on your use case, if you're looking for webhooks outside of Conversations, you may be able to set something up with workflows: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/how-do-i-use-webhooks-with-hubspot-workflows
So, apps making use of the conversations webhook are already setup to handle webhooks from workflows by default, it just requires each individual HubSpot user to activate it within their own HubSpot account should they wish for their personal business email (john@domain.com) to benefit from the webhooks features, is this correct?
I assume this is something the HubSpot user might need guidance on if they are not technical, eg if the superadmin is a CMO or CEO, they might not understand what a GET or POST request is. Their developer should be able to assist here... but how would they know in the first place that personal emails can be included in the service, i.e adding the webhook to their workflow?
I feel this might need some mention then in our apps documentation either on the HubSpot App marketplace or on our HubSpot documentation on our website e.g - "To include personal emails in our app, just active webhooks with workflows, your developer will handle this for you". Is this something you feel should be clarified to the HubSpot user?
I'm just anticipating once our app is public I might be fielding a lot of 'your app doesn't work' complaints if email support is mentioned but HubSpot users don't realise that for each email to work it needs to be setup as a channel first.
For the superadmin to track all communications & extract all possible analytics from all customer interactions (emails) it needs to include personal emails as well. So another option besides the workflow one is a workaround in the channel creation steps, please bear with me and confirm if you agree;
1. The user has to select 'Team' email and 'Yes this is a shared account', even though it isn't, just to get around the setup process.
2. The user is then greeted with the setup options, now it seems to auto populate the superadmins name as the agent. However if adding a teammates email you would want to change this. From what I can tell the workaround for this is to select Company name in the From name dropdown, and enter in the teammates email like so. I'm not sure if there is any option to edit the actual Agent name, I can't see any? I'm not sure why you can edit the company name but not the agent name...
3. Then customise the from address if they wish & verify it like so.
4. If the superadmin wishes to use the default address option, it would look like this.
5. In the final step the superadmin gets forwarding instructions, for that email so that any emails for john@jupita.io appear in the conversations Inbox.
I think this process needs some thought from both a UI perspective + integration with the webhooks. The webhooks shouldn't be limited to team emails only, it appears there is a workaround as I've outlined above, but it shouldn't exist like this.
I can see why the limitation existed due to the sharing of "personal" emails (they are actually business emails technically), however the superadmin might be the only one with access to the conversations Inbox, or they might just share access with the executive team. Not every HubSpot superadmin shares access to the conversations Inbox with every single employee. So if the superadmin wishes, they should be able to enable any email to benefit from available features of apps listed in the marketplace. At the end of the day it should at least be a choice for the superadmin is what I'm saying otherwise it's an excluding limitation that serves no purpose.
Apologies for the lengthy post, but hopefully this helps streamline the process and improves the overall value offering of these webhooks.
So, apps making use of the conversations webhook are already setup to handle webhooks from workflows by default, it just requires each individual HubSpot user to activate it within their own HubSpot account should they wish for their personal business email (john@domain.com) to benefit from the webhooks features, is this correct?
Not quite. To clarify, conversations webhooks will only ever be delivered for conversations in the conversations inbox. The link I shared above about workflow webhooks could be an option to try to deliver webhooks for personal emails connected to HubSpot(but not the inbox), but those webhooks would not be the same as conversations webhooks that your app is subscribed to. Workflow webhooks also wouldn’t be something your app“subscribes” to via the way conversations webhooks are subscribed to, and would have a different structure to the payload. For more information on workflows, you can see the workflows API documentation here.
I also think that it is important to note the difference between connecting an email to HubSpot and connecting an email to the conversations inbox. Connecting a personal email to HubSpot enables a user to send emails from their personal email address and log emails to CRM records, however those emails will never land in the conversations inbox and therefore won’t have a webhook sent for them.
Unfortunately, conversations webhooks are really designed just for the conversations inbox and the shared addresses/other shared channels that are connected to the inbox, and connecting personal addresses to the inbox where it is shared by all users is really not the use case it has been built for. There isn’t a way to cleanly do what you would like for personal emails if you are using conversations webhooks, and unfortunately I don’t believe these webhooks will ever support personal emails(or emails not connected to the inbox) since it isn’t what conversations was designed for.
The workaround you mention for connecting individual accounts could theoretically be possible, but it would be just that(a workaround). Unless users are using the inbox to reply to emails(or cc’ing the forwarding address or their own address on replies) you won’t receive webhooks for the emails sent by agents, just the emails received. The user could also set up an address in the inbox and have all the individual accounts automatically forward their incoming to that account, and have users cc the forwarding address in their replies to allow for tracking, though in both of these cases those messages would likely be harder to analyze as you would need to do some forwarded email parsing to see who sent and received the initial message.
To answer one question in your example flow, with that context in mind:
I'm not sure if there is any option to edit the actual Agent name, I can't see any? I'm not sure why you can edit the company name but not the agent name...
The agent name will be determined automatically at the time of sending an email by the user who is logged in. Since it’s a shared inbox, the agent name belongs to the user(so the super admin will see their own name in their own account, but another user logged in will see their agent name if sending an email from that address in the inbox).
It’s possible you may be able to figure something out with the email engagement APIand CRM object webhook subscription types, or the workflows API i mentioned above, but since those are outside of conversations, they aren’t really something myself or my team is familiar with. Other community forums within HubSpot may have suggestions as well. I apologize this is likely not the answer you are hoping for, but I hope it does help clarify the intention of the conversations product within HubSpot.
Apr 28, 202210:33 PM - edited May 2, 20228:41 AM
Contributor
Email channel.
Thanks J, so basically conversations inbox only, & need to include the email/forwarding address in CC/BCC if user wants to keep external responses threaded using the conversations webhook. That's all good.
Regarding the agent name, I noticed when adding an email as a channel there is an option to delegate a specific user to that address, and this user gets attached as the sender, is this regardless of who is logged into the Inbox?
For example, sending an email from john@ will actually show my name as the sender on the payload, unless, I assume, if I specifically delegate another user at the time of adding the address to the channel. I assume this is because I am the user logged in sending the email from the Inbox and I haven't changed the 'owner' of the address.
Do all correspondences get assigned to whoever is the logged in user unless this has been manually assigned at time of adding the email to the channel?
If I am reading your question correctly, it looks like you are referring to routing/assignment features of the inbox, which is separate from the inbox email channel itself. If you set up an email channel and select "Assign to: " and a specific user, this will mean that when an incoming conversation is received to the inbox email channel address, that will be "assigned" to the user selected and will therefore show up in their "assigned to me" folder in the inbox when they are logged in.
This does not have an impact on the name from which email is being sent in the inbox. For a inbox email channel address, the send from address will be one of the connected email channel addresses in the inbox, and the friendly from name will be "<Logged In User's Agent Name> from <Company name>" or just "<Company name>" depending on how it is configured.
Correspondences will only be assigned as set up in the Automation tab of the inbox email channel's settings, and the options for that are to assign conversations to a specific user, to a contact owner, or no one.
Hope this helps clarify that feature used for managing the shared inbox!
