Inboxes

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.emanate.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Agent inboxes let your AI agent receive incoming email on your behalf. Once connected, your agent can read, triage, and respond to messages — just like a human team member monitoring the inbox.

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Prerequisites

Before setting up forwarding, make sure you have:

1. Connected your domain in Emanate (Settings → Email → Domains)
2. Created an agent inbox on that domain

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Creating an Agent Inbox

Navigate to Settings → Email and select the Domains tab. After your domain is verified, click Create Inbox and fill in: This creates your agent’s email address — for example, sales@abc-steel.com.

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Connecting Your Inbox

To get incoming mail into Emanate, set up email forwarding in your email provider. This sends a copy of every incoming message to your agent inbox address. Choose your provider below:

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Verifying Forwarding Works

After setting up forwarding:

1. Send a test email to your original inbox (e.g., john@abc-steel.com)
2. Check your Emanate agent inbox — the forwarded copy should appear within a few minutes
3. If the message doesn’t arrive, double-check:
   • The forwarding address matches your agent inbox exactly
   • Your domain DNS records are verified in Emanate
   • Your email provider confirmed the forwarding address

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How It Works

Once forwarding is active:

1. Someone emails your original address (e.g., john@abc-steel.com)
2. Your email provider forwards a copy to your agent inbox (e.g., sales@abc-steel.com)
3. Emanate receives the message and your agent can process it
4. The agent can draft and send replies from the agent inbox address

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Linked to Lead / Account Badge

Once your inbox starts syncing, every thread is automatically matched to the lead or account whose contacts are participating — and a Linked to badge appears on the thread row in the inbox list.

• Click the badge to deep-link straight into the matching lead or account drawer, with the thread already scrolled into view on the Interactions tab.
• Matching uses the canonical contact email; for accounts, any contact on the account is enough to pair the thread.
• Threads with no match show no badge (rather than a noisy “Unmatched” placeholder).

This makes it easy to jump from a customer reply directly to their full account history without searching, and to pair the new Per-Record AI Overrides with the right record while you’re reading the thread.

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AI Model Selection

Each inbox can pick the model that drives its agent’s drafting and replies. Under AI Settings → AI Model, choose any of: Model choice is per-inbox, so you can run a Claude Opus 4.7-powered procurement inbox alongside a GPT 5.5-powered support inbox without one config affecting the other.

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Per-Record AI Overrides

The inbox-level configuration (agent, mode, knowledge base) is the default that applies to every thread the inbox processes. You can override that default at three finer levels — useful when a single inbox handles a mix of audiences (e.g. inbound sales + enterprise renewals + procurement RFQs) that each warrant different agent behavior.

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Precedence

When an email arrives, Emanate resolves the agent in this order — the first match wins: A thread override on a VIP customer beats their account-level override; the account override beats the inbox default; the inbox default applies if nothing else matches.

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What the Override Controls

Each override can change any of:

• Agent — which AI agent runs (or None to fall back to the next level)
• Mode — Auto-draft (prepares a reply for review) or Auto-reply (sends without confirmation)
• Knowledge Base — whether the agent uses the org KB
• Inbox History — whether the agent reads prior threads on the same inbox as context

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Provider Coverage

Per-record overrides apply to threads received through a directly connected mailbox — Gmail or Outlook via the Shared Inbox connector. Threads handled by domain-only inboxes (forwarded sends and broadcasts) continue to use the inbox-level configuration.

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Sticky Behavior

Overrides are sticky by design — once you set a lead-level agent, it keeps applying even after you later change the inbox default. To stop using an override, set the agent picker on that record to None and save.

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Next Steps