New: Configure Email 'From' Address in Accelo

Thanks to Accelo's smart automatic email tracking, we have always been one of the few collaborative communication products to send emails that look just like a regular email you would send from Outlook or Gmail.  By not having you insert a wacky code in the ''from address,'' ''subject line,'' or ''reply to this line'' in the body, you have been able to send emails to prospective and current clients without treating them like they are part of an anonymous helpdesk conversation.  Conveniently, replies from clients and colleagues come straight to your address (including your desktop and smartphone apps), with Accelo cleverly tracking the conversation in the background. 

While this more individualized and professional approach has worked well, until now, there are some situations where this approach isn't ideal: 

• Non-corporate email addresses: if the user sending the email has a @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @outlook.com or similar free email service providers. Emails sent out from Accelo are much less likely to be delivered to a recipient's inbox.  The reason for this is these services are so often abused by spammers standards like SPF (and the inability to configure SPF for these domains) means compromised email deliverability.
• Contractor & freelancer email addresses: with the new Contractors Module, we have realized you probably don't want contractors and freelancers emailing clients directly outside of Accelo. Your contractors and freelancers will more than likely be using their personal email address and getting them to set up the magic email forwarding just for a short term gig with your business isn't going to work. Finally, you might not trust your contractors (or clients) - they may try cutting you out on future projects. Keeping them at arms length, and going through your Accelo account also makes sense.
• Preference for support style addresses: while the personal approach is usually the desired approach there are situations when you may not want your clients to have direct email addresses.  You can probably relate to the all-to-common support or service situation. The case when no matter how many times you tell your clients to email [email protected], they still email someone directly, and when they do not get an immediate response they get frustrated. 

The good news is that from today, we've released a new feature to allow you to configure specific users and specific module types to send emails out to clients with different sender information. Continue reading below to see how you can put it to use.

The Three Email Sending Options for Users

There are three options to control how emails are released on a per-user basis; these include:

User's own email address (default)

This is the way things have always been - you send an email from the user's email address. This option is best when you are setting up a regular employee who got a corporate/internal email address in your domain (@yourcompany.com).(@yourcompany.com. Don't forget to set up email forwarding so that all emails they receive are forwarded across to their special Accelo capture address ([email protected]). 

Activity Specific Address

The second option sends all activities that a user creates as from a special auto-generate ‘’from’’ email address (i.e. [email protected]). Selecting this option will make it so that sender's email addresses are hidden from both parties: the client and the employee/contractor. So for example, when a contractor or freelancer sends an email to a client, it will be captured through Accelo and after that redirected directly to the client. Similarly, if the client replies to one of these emails, the reply will be forwarded to the employee/contractor from a new activity-specific address, ensuring that the conversation always goes through Accelo. 

Custom Email Alias

The third option operates just like the "Activity Specific" address above but allows you to set a specific email address (like [email protected])[email protected]. For this option, you will need to set up a forwarding rule so that all emails that come to this address are forwarded across to the Activity dropbox account (e.g.,(e.g., [email protected]). Selecting this option will also hide the user’s specific email address from the recipient and will ensure that all replies are routed via Accelo before being re-sent on to the recipient. 

Do you have feedback or ideas?

We have had people asking for this new feature for a while and given its role as an intelligent proxy or intermediary of conversations - we'd love to hear your experiences - simply email [email protected] with your thoughts!