Connected inboxes

Overview

Connecting your inbox lets Fondaro work with the email and calendar you already use. Each person in your organization, admin or team member, connects their own inboxes from Settings › Me › Inboxes (also in the menu under your name). The page groups them:

Email and calendar: Google for Gmail and Google Calendar, Microsoft for Outlook and Microsoft 365 calendar, or Other mailbox for iCloud, Yahoo, Zoho and the mailbox that comes with your web hosting. One mailbox per person: once one is connected, the other two leave the list.
Messaging: WhatsApp and Telegram.
Social: Instagram and LinkedIn.

Each inbox is one row: its address, what it is, its status and a ⋮ menu with Reconnect, Details and Disconnect. Only an inbox that needs you shows Reconnect as a button on the row. A connected Google or Microsoft inbox lists its calendars under the row; see Your calendars. The line under the page title says how many you have connected and whether your next inbox is included with your plan or what it costs; see Price. Your signature is below, on the same page.

If the page says connecting is coming soon, it is not available for your organization yet. Until your agency has chosen a plan, the page reads "Available once your agency has chosen a plan." and has no way to connect.

Connect your inbox

Open Settings › Me › Inboxes. Before your first inbox the page shows a button for each kind; after that, select Connect at the top right. Choose Connect Google, Connect Microsoft or Other mailbox.
A short confirmation shows what happens next, what Fondaro keeps, and the price: Included with your plan, with Continue, or the monthly price on the button, for example Connect for €10 per month. If you are a team member and your plan's included inboxes are in use, it says "Your team has used its included inboxes. Your admin can add more." instead; see Ask your admin for an inbox.
Fondaro opens a short connection window. Pick or sign in to your account.
Google or Microsoft then asks you to allow access. That consent screen shows the name of our connection partner rather than Fondaro's; this is expected. Select Allow.
You come back to the provider's page. It reads Connecting for a few seconds, then shows your address as connected. The back link, Inboxes, returns you to the list.

For Other mailbox, the window asks for your email address and password, or the app password your provider gives you.

A sandbox organization cannot connect inboxes, and an organization without an active plan or trial sees the plan options first.

Ask your admin for an inbox

Only an admin adds an inbox your plan does not include, because it is billed every month. If you are a team member and your team has used its included inboxes, the line under the page title reads "Your admin can add more inboxes", and connecting shows Ask your admin instead of a price.

Select Ask your admin. Your admins see your request in their Inbox and on their Inboxes page, and get a notification.
Until they answer, the confirmation says when you asked. Asking again changes nothing.
When an admin allows it, you get a notification and a row in your Inbox: "You can connect your inbox now". Select it, or open the setup page, and connect as usual. The allowance is for one inbox of that kind.

If your admin declines, nothing is connected and you can ask again later. Reconnecting an inbox you already have never needs an admin.

Microsoft: when your admin has to approve

Some Microsoft 365 organizations only let their IT admin approve new apps. If yours does, the setup page says so after you try to connect, and shows:

what your Microsoft admin has to approve, in one step, and
a link to copy and send them.

Once they approve it, select Connect again. This is a setting in your company's Microsoft account, so it is your IT admin who approves it, not Fondaro.

What Fondaro keeps

Fondaro keeps your business conversations, not your whole inbox: your messages with your leads, and new enquiries about a home. Personal mail, newsletters and private messages are checked as they arrive and are never stored.

Nothing is ever sent from your inbox without you. Ask drafts and proposes; you press send.

Your calendars

A Google or Microsoft account often holds more than one calendar, for example Work, Personal and Viewings. Once the account is connected, its calendars are listed under its row on Settings › Me › Inboxes, and on the account's setup page under Calendars.

Choose which calendars show. Tick a calendar and its events appear on your Calendar within moments; untick it and they leave. Each change saves at once. At first only your main calendar shows, and it is always ticked. A calendar you can only read (one someone shared with you, or a holiday calendar) can still be ticked to show.
Made a calendar after connecting? Select Refresh calendars at the foot of the list and it appears there.
Where new events go. A new event goes to your main calendar in your own inbox. When you can write to more than one calendar, the new-event card shows a Calendar row: pick another there, and Fondaro remembers your choice for next time. An agency mailbox you connected yourself counts too. Calendars you can only read are never offered, and a viewing always goes to your main calendar.
Video calls come from your own calendar. Video call on a new event adds a Google Meet link from a Google calendar or a Microsoft Teams link from a Microsoft one, made by your own account. Fondaro offers no other video service. If a link cannot be made, the event says No video link was made: select Add link and paste a link into Place.

You connect one Google or Microsoft mailbox per person; the several calendars are the ones inside it.

Posting from Instagram and LinkedIn

A connected Instagram or LinkedIn account can also post your listings: feed posts and stories on Instagram, posts on LinkedIn, always from your own account. Fondaro prepares the post and it waits for you; nothing is posted until you press Publish now or Schedule, and Fondaro never likes, follows or comments on your behalf. Fondaro reads the comments on the posts you published from it, keeps the ones that are about a home as new enquiries and keeps nothing else. See Post a listing to Instagram and LinkedIn.

What appears on the lead

Once your inbox is connected, every email between you and one of your leads shows on that lead's timeline, usually within a minute:

replies to emails you sent from Fondaro,
emails you send from Gmail or Outlook yourself, on your computer or your phone, and
new emails from the lead.

You do not need to copy Fondaro in or set up any forwarding. An email you send from Fondaro appears once, even though a copy also lands in your Sent folder.

When you first connect, Fondaro brings in the last 90 days of emails with your existing leads, once.

When you add a lead later, older emails with that person are not brought in on their own. Open the lead, select the ••• menu and choose Find past emails. Fondaro searches your inbox for the lead's address over the last 12 months and adds what it finds to the timeline.

What is never stored:

emails that involve none of your leads and are not a new enquiry about a home (personal mail, newsletters, colleagues),
automatic replies, delivery failure notices and mailing lists.

A few things to know:

Deleting or archiving an email in Gmail or Outlook does not remove it from the lead in Fondaro.
Deleting a lead deletes the emails saved on it.
An email to several of your leads shows on each of their timelines.

Portal enquiries

When a property portal emails you an enquiry, Fondaro reads it and the enquiry becomes a lead on its own, with no copying or forwarding. It works for Idealista, Fotocasa, Habitaclia, pisos.com, Kyero, thinkSPAIN, Rightmove Overseas, Green-Acres, A Place in the Sun, JamesEdition, Properstar, Spainhouses, HomesGoFast, Indomio and Zoopla.

If the email address or phone number in the enquiry already belongs to one of your leads, the enquiry goes on that lead's timeline instead of making a new one.
A new lead is shared out the way your organization routes new leads, and whoever gets it is notified as usual.
The lead page shows where it came from: Portal enquiry, with the portal's name and the home they asked about when Fondaro can find it in your listings.
If a portal's email cannot be read, it is treated like any other new enquiry (below).

Portal enquiries sent only once, before you connected, are not brought in.

New enquiries

Sometimes someone who is not one of your leads writes to you about a home, by email or on a connected messaging account. When Fondaro is confident the message is an enquiry, it keeps it as a new conversation in your Inbox, visible only to you (the person whose inbox it arrived in). More messages from the same person join the same conversation.

Open it and choose one:

Add as lead: the CRM's Add Lead form opens, filled in from the messages (name, email or number, language, and the home they asked about). Check it and press Create Lead. The lead is yours unless an admin picks other owners, and every message from that person moves onto it.
Link to lead: the person is already one of your leads, for example writing from a second address. Pick the lead and the messages move onto it. Their next messages go there too.
Not a lead: the messages are deleted from Fondaro.

If you decide nothing, a new conversation is deleted after 14 days; the conversation shows the date. Messages that are not enquiries are never kept, and older mail brought in when you first connect never becomes a new conversation.

Shared mailbox

Portals often write to your agency's shared address, such as info@, rather than to one person. An organization admin can connect it as a shared mailbox, from Settings › Me › Inboxes, under Agency. Portal enquiries sent there become leads the same way, and new conversations from it show in the Inbox of the admin who connected it and of everyone who uses it.

The status of your inbox

Inboxes, the setup page, and every place in Fondaro that uses your inbox show the same status. On Inboxes every row shows its status, and a row that needs reconnecting has a Reconnect button:

Connected: everything is working.
Connecting (Finishing sign-in on Inboxes): Fondaro is finishing the connection. This usually takes a few seconds.
Needs reconnecting: your provider stopped accepting the connection, for example because you changed your password or removed Fondaro's access in your Google or Microsoft account settings.
Error (Needs reconnecting, with a red dot, on Inboxes): the connection failed for another reason. Try Reconnect.

Reconnect

When an inbox needs reconnecting, Fondaro tells you on Inboxes and the setup page, with a notification, and by email. Select Reconnect, sign in again and allow access. You come back to the same page, still connected to the same inbox, and are not charged again.

Disconnect

On Inboxes, open the inbox's row menu and choose Disconnect, then confirm (or use Disconnect on its setup page). Fondaro removes the connection straight away, and conversations already saved to your leads stay where they are.

If you are an organization admin, Inboxes also shows your whole agency. The line at the top counts every inbox and what it costs, in the same words as the page below it ("7 inboxes · 5 included · 2 paid · €20 per month · 1 finishing sign-in · 1 person not connected": finishing sign-in counts the rows that say Finishing sign-in, not connected the people listed under Not connected; an inbox still finishing sign-in is never charged), and every row says Included or Paid after its name. Under your own inboxes come Agency, with your shared inbox (connect one from Connect › Connect a shared inbox), then each person's inboxes grouped under their name: people with an inbox that needs reconnecting come first, and people with no inbox are listed under Not connected. Use Disconnect in a row's menu to remove someone's connection, for example when a person leaves; they would need to connect again. You can't connect an inbox for someone else. When a member is removed from your organization, their inboxes are disconnected automatically.

When a team member asks for an inbox your plan does not include, it appears at the top of Inboxes under Asked for an inbox, with who asked, which inbox and its monthly price, and as a row in your Inbox that opens this page. Select Allow and confirm the price to let them connect it, or Decline. Once they connect it, it is billed like any extra inbox. You connect extra inboxes yourself with the price on the button, as before.

Who uses an inbox

An admin chooses who uses each inbox from its row's ⋮ menu, under Who can use it: tick or untick each colleague, and each change saves at once. The row then reads, for example, "Shared with Ana López". The person who connected it is always ticked, because only they can reconnect it. Everyone else you add:

sees its new enquiries in their Inbox,
can pick it as From in the email composer, and replies from it when they answer an email that came in through it,
sends WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn and Telegram messages from it when they have no account of their own on that channel.

Inboxes given to you show under Assigned to you on your Inboxes page. When someone leaves your organization, they are taken off every inbox.

Price

Your plan includes as many connected inboxes as it has people: one for each person on Foundation, and one for every €200 of monthly budget on Growth (up to 20). They are shared across your agency, not tied to one person. Each further inbox costs €10 per month ($11 for organizations billed in US dollars), billed with your usage. The current price is always on the pricing page and on each setup page before you connect.

An inbox is one connected account: a person's email with its calendar, a shared mailbox, or a messaging account.
The included inboxes are your organization's oldest inboxes that are still connected, whoever connected them. If one is disconnected, the next oldest takes its place from the following month.
Each person can connect one of each kind: one email, one WhatsApp, one Instagram, one LinkedIn and one Telegram. Only an admin connects the shared mailbox.
Only an admin adds an extra inbox. Before it connects, the setup step shows its monthly price and the button says so. A team member asks an admin instead; see Ask your admin for an inbox.
Each extra inbox is charged once per calendar month: when you connect it, and then at the start of each month while it stays connected.
Disconnecting and reconnecting the same inbox in the same month is not charged twice.
There is no refund when you disconnect; the charge simply stops the next month.
During a trial, extra inboxes are paid from your trial credit, like any other usage.

The charge appears on your invoice as its own line, Extra inboxes, and on the Usage page as the Connected inboxes category. See Billing for how usage is charged.