IMAP (Recommended) 

POP3 

Setting up IMAP or POP3 Account 

To set up IMAP or POP3 accounts

1. In Zoho CRM, go to Setup > Channels > Email > Email Configuration.
   
2. In the Email Integration tab, choose a Popular Email Service.
   
3. Under Choose the protocol to configure select IMAP or POP.
   
4. Select a desired period from which you want to synchronize your emails from. You can choose to sync from the last 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, the beginning or from a specific date.
1. If you have chosen synchronization from a specific date, select a past date in the calendar.
5. Enter the Display name, Email address, and Password.
   
6. Click Configure.
   
7. Once the mailbox authroization is done, other preferences can be configured:
1. In the Import Filter pop-up, click Import. You can skip this and do it later.
   Note: When setting up IMAP/POP configurations for SalesInbox using .xml or .dat files, you can import existing filters from your connected mailbox. This includes any filters you've already set up for different types of emails or specific addresses.
2. In Email Sharing Settings, select the sharing permission from the drop-down list.
   
1. You can choose between Private, Public, and Custom email sharing options.
   Note: The ability to edit this feature is not available to everyone automatically. It will only be editable if the admin grants the User Choice permissions to a user on the Admin Email Sharing page. Without this permission, users will not be able to make edits.
2. In the Email Sync Preferences, choose the desired date from when you'd like the emails to be synchronized.
   Note: This step lets you configure the duration, if you had missed to choose the preference while mailbox association.
8. In More From Address, the Default Address will display the email address entered in step 6.
   
9. Click Add Email Address to enter more from addresses.
   
10. Under Folder Mapping, select the folders from your custom mailbox to map with the appropriate folder in the SalesInbox.
    
11. This option is only available for IMAP users. Folder mapping is only supported if the server of the integrated mailbox is non-standard.
    
1. Click Server Details to view the incoming and outgoing server settings.The Server Details are automatically populated upon selecting one of the popular IMAP Integrations.
   
12. Check Store sent messages on the server.
    
13. Note that, this option will be displayed only if your SMTP provider does not provide an option to save sent emails by default.
    
14. This option will only be available for IMAP users.
    
15. Click Update. 
    

With IMAP integration complete, you can now enable Zia's email intelligence features to gain deeper insights into your customer communications:

• Email Sentiment Analysis: Zia categorizes incoming emails by tone—positive, negative, or neutral—helping you identify customers who may need immediate attention. You can also receive alerts for consecutive negative emails from the same customer.
• Email Intent Detection: Zia identifies the purpose of each incoming email, classifying it as a request, query, complaint, or purchase inquiry. You can also create custom intents tailored to your business needs.
• Email Emotion Analysis: Go beyond sentiment with detailed emotion classification—happy, frustrated, grateful, confused, and more—to better understand your customers' state of mind.
• Data Enrichment: Zia can extract contact details from email signatures and populate them directly into your CRM records.
• Activity Extraction: Zia identifies meetings, tasks, and calls mentioned in emails and suggests adding them to CRM.

To enable and configure these features, navigate to Setup > Zia > Communication > Email Intelligence. For detailed instructions, see please refer to Zia for Emails.

 NOTE: 

1. Office 365, Outlook, and Gmail users can log in to their accounts using OAuth.
   
2. SalesInbox will be enabled for all users who enable IMAP or POP integration in any email service.
   
3. If the email integration is deactivated, admins will be prompted to choose if they wish to retain the folders, filters, and labels.
   
4. About email synchronization preference:
   
1. At any point in time after synchronization, if you’d like to change the sync from date, you can do so. And, the system will
   
1. Synchronize the remainder of the emails in the background and add them to the existing SalesInbox mailbox: In the case of choosing a older sync from date from the former setting.
   
2. Remove the excess emails from synchronization and thereby from display in the SalesInbox mailbox: In the case of choosing a sync from date that is recent to the former setting.
   

To set up custom email account using IMAP/POP3 configurations: 

1. Navigate to Setup > Channels > Email > Email Configuration.
   
2. In the Email sub-tab, choose Other Mail from the list.
   
3. Under Choose the protocol to configure, select IMAP or POP Integration.
   
4. Click Configure.
   
5. In the Add POP/IMAP Integration page, enter the following details:
   
1. Display Name: Enter a name for the mailbox.
2. Email address/User Name: Enter the email address or user name you wish to configure.
   
3. Password: Add the password for your email address used for configuration.
   
4. If you have enabled two-factor authentication for the account, you must enter the app-specific password and not the regular password.
   
6. Under Incoming Server Details
   
1. Incoming server: Enter the incoming server of the email. For example, pop.gmail.com (for a Gmail account) or pop.zoho.com (for a Zoho Mail account) or pop.zylker.com for (zylker account).
   
2. If you are not sure about this detail, check with your system administrator.
   
3. Port: Choose a port number from 995 and 143.
   
4. Mark in the Use SSL, if required.
   
7. Under Outgoing Server Details
   
1. Email Address: Enter the email address of the account you want to send emails from.
   
2. Outgoing Server: Enter the outgoing server of the email. For example, smtp.gmail.com for a Gmail account.
   
3. Port: Choose a port number from available ports, 465, 587, and 25.
   
4. Use Secure Connection: You can choose a secure connection from SSL, TLS or no secure connection by choosing Never.
   
5. Authentication Required: Choose if authentication is required for the server from Yes and No.
   
6. Mark the box next to Store sent message on the server if you want to store the sent emails in your CRM account.
   Note that, this option will be displayed only if your SMTP provider does not provide an option to save sent emails by default.
   This option will only be available for IMAP users.
8. Click Configure.
   

Modern OAuth based IMAP or POP3 authentication 

To integrate Outlook, Gmail or Office 365 with CRM:

1. In Zoho CRM, navigate to Setup > Channels > Email > Email Configuration.
   
2. In the Email sub-tab, click Get Started.
   
3. In the Email Integration tab, from Popular Email Service, choose Outlook, Gmail, or Office 365.
   
4. Under Choose the protocol to configure, select IMAP or POP from the drop-down.
   
5. Click Configure.
   You will be prompted to log in to your Office 365, Gmail, or Outlook accounts.
6. Sign in to your account using your email address and click Next.
   
7. If you are already logged in, choose an account to sign in and click Configure.
   
8. After successfully setting it up, you'll be taken to the Zoho CRM page for IMAP or POP setup. The synchronization process will complete shortly thereafter. 

Generating an app-specific password for email service providers like Zoho Mail and Yahoo 

For a Zoho Mail Account :

To generate app-specific password for Zoho Mail account :

1. Sign in to your Zoho account.
   
2. From the left menu, navigate to Security and click App passwords.
   
3. Click Generate New Password.
   
4. In the Application-Specific Passwords pop-up, enter the app name, such as Zoho Mail and click Generate.
   
5. Copy the Application-Specific Password.
   
6. You can delete a password if you no longer use the app or wish to remove access to the application.

Note:

1. The device-specific password will only be displayed once and will not be displayed again.
   
2. When providing the password in your email clients, enter it without any spaces.
   
3. You can delete an application-specific password whenever you no longer use that device or application or want to revoke access to that application.
   

For Yahoo Mail Account:   

Viewing Emails in CRM   

1. Emails sent to CRM
   
2. Emails from all IMAP shared users
   
3. Emails from all POP shared users
   
4. Emails by the user name
   
5. Emails from all the above
   

Note: Users are not required to configure their own mailbox in order to view email conversations from the configured inbox of other Zoho CRM users in their organization.

This is especially useful in scenarios where email viewing access is needed by users with sensitive information in their email inboxes who do not wish to connect their inbox with Zoho CRM.

This change has been rolled out for all regions to all editions that have the email inbox configuration feature available. 

Taking Email Backup   

Admins have the capability to back up emails for CRM users within a duration of 6 months from the user’s deactivation, provided these users had set up their email accounts using POP3 or IMAP, and had their emails shared publicly with custom record-level and complete sharing privileges. These inactive users will be displayed under the Setup > Security Control > Zoho Mail add-on users tab.

To initiate a backup, admins can simply select the Backup Emails option next to the details of the respective user. It's important to note that if a user is deactivated from the CRM account without a prior backup of their emails, then those emails, whether sent or received by the user, will not be visible in the related list.

Note:

1. Email backup for inactive users should be completed before six months from the date when the user was deactivated. Email data will no longer be retained beyond this six month period, and all data will be lost if a backup hasn’t been completed.
   
2. If you are looking to delete a user, deactivate them and take the email backup. Proceed with the deletion after this.
3. Administrators can lock the email configuration of the users to prevent them from changing their email account settings to Private Account before their accounts are deactivated.
   
4. For IMAP configuration based back up, the backing up account should be active till the completion of backup. Otherwise, backup will not work for IMAP.