An email drop box has nothing to do with the file storage system dropbox.com. A drop box is simply the name of a system where email can be 'dropped' without further thought.

Some CRM systems provide a full link to your email. This is very convenient but it does mean that your CRM will get just as cluttered as your inbox. The Sheep approach is to 'curate' your email messages and only store those that will be of most use. Be kind to your future self (and colleagues), and don't make them hunt through dozens of embedded reply threads.

The "Flock" is your client identifier if you aren't sure check with our support team.

How to use
Simply send the email from your account as normal but include the drop box account in the bcc field (to or cc fields will work too).

Sheep reads and processes an email sent to that account. Any recipients on the to or the cc line will be matched against your contacts (or created if they don't exist (if you don't want contacts created please contact us - there is a hidden setting to control this). A copy of the email will then be attached to each recipient as a journal message. 

You can choose how unknown email addresses are processed with the email_dropbox_contact_create_policy advanced setting.

(This setting is not currently available in the settings app. Please send a message to support to request a change)

Enter the credentials of an IMAP email inbox to send copies of emails to your contacts directly into sheepCRM. Once set up and an email is sent BCC'ing the inbox, sheepCRM will find a contact with an email address matching the address from the To: field, or create a new contact if no match is found. A copy of the email (and any attached files) will be added to the contact's journal.

An IMAP email dropbox was the original method supported but we now recommend using our own solution as described above.

If you have moved to our new email solution or no longer require the IMAP email dropbox integration then you can disable the integration in settings: https://settings.sheepcrm.com/integrations/config/integrations

Before proceeding, you'll need to create a dedicated IMAP email account for the drop box. Please note that email messages are deleted when they have been imported - the email account used should therefore be dedicated for sheepCRM use only and not a personal account.

We recommend using Google Mail for creating these accounts as they are free to use and easily configurable. You can find instructions on configuring a gmail account from google support here.

As a security measure, Google will not allow you to use your standard account password and will instead ask you to set up and use an app password instead. You can find instructions on setting up an app password from google support here.

For the configuration below, we will use drop-box@sheepcrm.com as our example IMAP email account.

To configure the email drop box, you will need to fill in the following fields:

Email User Account

Enter the first part of the email address - everything before the @ (e.g. drop-box)

Email Password

Enter the password for this email account, using the app password if a Google mail account.

Email Domain

Enter the rest of the email address - everything after the @ (e.g. sheepcrm.com)

Email Server

Enter the IMAP email server from your account provider (e.g. imap.gmail.com)

Email Port

Enter the port setting from your account provider (e.g. 993)

The integration can be temporarily paused by clicking on the pause button, or disconnected completely by clicking on disconnect. Please note that disconnect will immediately stop all functions and delete any saved configuration for this integration.

To use the email drop box in sheepCRM, simply send the email from your account as normal but include the drop box account in the BCC: field.

The email will be delivered to the account you have configured. Sheep checks that email periodically (a few times an hour) and processes an email sent to that account. Any recipients on the TO: or the CC: line will be matched against your contacts or a new contact will be created if they don't exist. A copy of the email will then be attached to each recipient as a journal message.

Please note that anyone who is a sender of these emails must have a sheepCRM contact record where the email address matches the sending email address. If there is no contact record with that matching detail, emails will not be brought into sheepCRM.