You can configure your existing email addresses to forward messages to Slate. The following sections describe how to configure permissions and a forwarding address for Inbox.

Messages cannot be forwarded to your test environment. Each Inbox group should be configured in production.

⭐ Best Practice

Begin migrating just one mailbox into Inbox. Once you have gone through all of the steps and tested one Inbox group, it will be much easier to replicate the steps for any additional email addresses.

Create an Inbox-Enabled Role

Each message in Inbox must be assigned to an Inbox-enabled role, which will have an associated Inbox group. This role and group combination determines the users who can view and respond to the message.

1. Click Database on the Slate navigation bar and select Role Groups & Permissions in the Users & Access section.

2. Click New Role.

3. Enter the following role configurations:

   • Name: Name the role (such as "Admissions Inbox").

   • Permission: Grant this role the Inbox permission.

   • Reply Email: Granting permission to Inbox enables the Reply Email field at the top of the popup. Provide a Reply Email address for the role. This email address will be the default email address for Inbox replies for messages assigned to this role and its associated group. It will also be used by automatic reply rules that are configured to use the role's email address.

Assign Role Users

1. Click Database on the Slate navigation bar and select User Permissions in the Users & Access section.

2. Select the appropriate user.

3. Click Edit User.

4. Click Role and grant the Inbox-enabled role to each user who should have access to view and respond to messages assigned to that role. These users will inherit the Inbox permission from this role. Users can only view messages associated with roles to which they have been assigned.

Be sure to grant yourself this role as well, even if it is only a temporary assignment. Inbox messages only appear for users who are in the message's assigned role and associated group.

Create an Inbox Group

Inbox groups are each assigned a unique email forwarding address. Any emails sent to that forwarding address are automatically associated with that Inbox group. You will make one Inbox group for each email account that you will be forwarding into Inbox. As stated before, it is a best practice to configure and perfect one Inbox account before configuring the rest.

1. Click Database on the Slate navigation bar and select Inbox Groups in the Communications section.

2. Click New Group.

3. Enter the following group configurations:

   • Name: Assign the Inbox group a distinctive name.

   • Default Role: Select the Inbox-enabled role that you created in the previous step as the default role. Any emails sent to this Inbox group's email address will automatically be associated with the default role.

4. Click the Inbox group that you just created to view the forwarding address that you will use in the next section. Copy the forwarding address, and send a test email to the forwarding address. The message will appear in Inbox within 15 minutes immediately (🏔️ Summit 2025 Feature).

This Role assignment can be changed manually or with the Rules editor.

Configure Email Forwarding

To allow people to continue sending emails to your existing, publicized email address, you must configure that email account to automatically forward the emails to Slate.

1. Configure a forwarding rule in your external email provider to forward all incoming messages to the forwarding address of the Inbox group created in the previous step. If an option is presented to choose between forwarding and redirecting the messages in an email client, choose to redirect the messages. This helps ensure that the "From" and "To" addresses remain intact when a message is pushed on to the next destination.

   📝 This step may require you to consult with your IT department.

2. Confirm that your forwarding rule is configured correctly by sending a test email to the existing, publicized email address (for example, [email protected]). The message should appear in Inbox within 15 minutes immediately (🏔️ Summit 2025 Feature).

If you want to use rules to redirect messages to other groups or for auto-replies, it is recommended that you wait to turn on email forwarding until the rules are fully configured and tested. This will allow you to tweak and test the rules without affecting Inbox users or email senders. You will learn more about this in the Automations section. The Automations section also provides best-practice instructions for testing rule changes once you have begun forwarding messages into Slate.

An email message will only forward to Inbox if it has a message body.

✨ Tip

You can create additional rules for other inbox automation features, such as staff assignment for incoming messages, automatic notifications, or automatic replies.

Inbox Gateway

👀 Watch this space

Comprehensive documentation about Remote Inbox Gateway is on the way.

Inbox Gateway lets you associate constituent email messages with a Slate record, regardless of external email client (Gmail, Outlook, etc).

For messages being sent or received outside of Slate (in the case of a personal email address, for example), the Inbox Gateway allows selected messages to be added to the appropriate record in Slate.

Messages that do not auto-match to a person record can be assigned, allowing them to appear on the Timeline tab of the associated record.

Setting up an Inbox Gateway

There are three ways to get to Inbox Gateway:

• Go to Database → Communications → Inbox Gateway.

• Go to Inbox → Gateway.

• Go to Deliver → Gateway Inbox.

1. Select Connection Instructions.

2. Copy the email address address and add it to your email address book. The email address in the dialog is unique to each user. For this reason, each user should retrieve their own Slate Gateway email address.

   Pre-2023

   Post-2023

   The current structure for the email address is as follows:

   {{your database name}}.{{the user's GUID without hyphens}}@slatemail.technolutions.com

   The current structure for the email address is as follows:

   {{your database name}}.{{the user's GUID without hyphens}}@slate-mx.technolutions.net

3. Paste the copied unique email address into the BCC line of your email when replying or forwarding a message.

🔔 Forwarding address should be kept private. Do not include the email address in the To or CC lines when replying to the constituent.

Periodically check Deliver → Gateway Inbox to review messages forwarded to your personal Email to the Slate Gateway forwarding address.

Inbox Gateway maintenance

You must regularly assign messages in your Inbox Gateway.

Messages received by the Inbox Gateway and matching an existing email address appear on the timeline of the record after at least 15 minutes. This is considered a "soft match," since the timeline displays received messages if the recipient email matches an email address that exists on the device table of a record. If an email address appears on more than one record, then a received email will appear on both records.

The Inbox Gateway will provide you with a list of possible matches. Slate scans the body of the email received in addition to the Sender, Recipient rows to better identify possible matches.

In order to make a "hard match" for a message, a user must assign a message to the appropriate record. Open each message to select a record and assign the message to the appropriate record. Slate provides a suggested record if a matching email address is found. Click on the suggested record to assign the messages to that record, or search for other existing records.

If the record does not exist, it must be created in Slate before the message can be assigned. If a "hard match" is not made, then the message will not appear when querying for messages associated with the person record.

Wait at least 15 minutes after the message is sent before checking the Gateway Inbox to assign messages to records.

Permissions

No special permissions are required to access your own Gateway. To view the Gateway for other users, the Deliver permission is required.

Create New Record

You can create a new record from within the Inbox Gateway. To do so, click on the email in your Gateway. Select Create Record.

Assigning a Message to a Record

In order to make a "hard match" for a message, open the message, select the correct record. Click Save.

If you want to assign the message to a record and move on to the next message click the arrow icon next to the Save button.

Message lifecycle

🏔️ Summit 2025 Feature

Inbox messages are processed as soon as they arrive.

When an email is sent to your existing email address that is configured to forward messages into Inbox, the email is queued in Slate for the following actions:

• Automatic message assignment to a person record: When a message is received, Slate attempts to automatically assign it to a person record. The automatic assignment occurs if there is exactly one record with a matching email address that is not Inactive. If there are no records with this email address, or if there are multiple records with the same email address, the automatic assignment does not occur. The message can be manually assigned later.

• Upon Message Receipt rules (Assignment and Resolve rules): See Inbox Automations.

• Default Role/Group assignment: The default role for the Inbox group is assigned only if a role was not assigned to the message using Upon Message Receipt rules.

• Upon Message Receipt rules (Automatic Reply and Notification rules): Refer to the articles covering Inbox Automations.

Once a message has a role, users assigned that role permission can view, reply to, reassign, and update the status of the message (see below).

If there are active nightly processing rules on the message Inbox population, every evening between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Eastern Time, all messages that are either open or resolved within the past 7 days enter a queue to have those rules processed.

When a message is marked as resolved, it can be viewed for 7 days within Inbox when viewing recently resolved messages. These messages continue to appear on the assigned person records. Messages should be marked as resolved when they no longer require staff attention.