10 min read

Feature

Emails & Activities has revolutionized the way you work on monday.com. But how exactly does it work? If you've ever wondered about when, where, and why certain information is logged in Emails & Activities, we're here to help decode the mystery for you! 🕵️

In this article, you will find information on:

• how email logging works in Emails & Activities
• what determines where the email is logged on your board
• how email tracking in Emails & Activities works
• how to remove emails from your Emails & Activities timeline
• and how to stop logging emails altogether

How email logging works in Emails & Activities

Before we dive into the details, here's a quick explanation of how logging emails works in Emails & Activities. 🔎

Emails & Activities allows users to connect their Gmail or Outlook account in the Emails & Activities settings. When a user connects their email account, we authenticate using OAuth. OAuth gives monday.com the necessary permissions to read and write emails on your behalf.

PART I: What we log

Getting set up

To get started, set up Emails & Activities in your monday account. You can find setup instructions in the "Emails & Activities on monday.com" article. During setup, you will have the opportunity to connect your chosen email account to monday.com.

Note: Emails sent or received before setting up Emails & Activities will not be referenced in the app.

Created in the item's Emails & Activities composer

All email threads sent from the email composer on an item are logged in the Emails & Activities timeline on that item. When the email is sent from Emails & Activities, the email is logged even if the contact isn’t included in the item’s email column.

Sent/received from the item's contact

Outgoing and incoming emails that include both: (1) the email address that's listed in the item's Email column and (2) the email address that you connected to Emails & Activities.

The listed email address and your connected email address need to be part of the thread in some way: they can be the sender, the recipient, or in CC/BCC.

Emails & Activities will log incoming and outgoing emails from the contacts listed in all Email columns on the item. For example, if there are three Email columns with three different contacts, Emails & Activities will log emails related to all three contacts. 

Examples:

1. You are the sender: You sent an email to the contact listed in the Email column on the item. The contact is in the CC/BCC field. The email will be logged in Emails & Activities.
2. The contact is the sender: You received an incoming email from the email address listed in the item's Email column. The email will be logged.

Exceptions:

1. Emails & Activities will not log emails from an email address listed in the Email column if that email address is used in more than 250 Email columns across the account.
2. Emails & Activities will not log emails from an email address in the Email column if that email address is used as an active email connection in Emails & Activities.
   • For example, you connect your email user@email.com to Emails & Activities. Item A has user@email.com in the Email column. Item B has contact@email.com in the Email Column. One email is sent to both user@email.com and contact@email.com. That email will be logged on Item B where contact@email.com is in the Email column, but it won't be logged on Item A where user@email.com is in the Email Column.

Sent to/from the contact on a connected item

Outgoing and incoming emails that include both: (1) the email address that's listed in the item's Email column on a connected item, and (2) the email address that you connected to Emails & Activities.

The email address on the connected item and your email address need to be part of the thread in some way: they can be the sender, the recipient, or in CC/BCC.

When the email thread is related to a connected item, you will see the location of the connected item at the bottom of the email message. It will be listed as: Board Name > Group Name > Item Name

Part of an ongoing thread

Email conversations are saved as threads in the Emails & Activities timeline. Once an email is logged to your Emails & Activities timeline, any follow-up actions will be recorded there as well. This includes replies, forwarding the email, or using the same email thread in any way, even if the recipients are removed or entirely replaced.

Examples:

1. You start an email thread with Contact A, who is listed in the Email Column on the item (or on a connected item). You reply to the email, removing Contact A from the thread and adding their colleague instead. The reply will be logged.
2. You start an email thread with Contact A and then forward it to Contact B. The forwarded email will be logged.

PART II: Managing your timeline

Removing emails from an item’s timeline

There are two ways to remove emails from the Emails & Activities timeline of a specific item.

1. Delete emails you don't want to see.

The user who owns the email account connected to Emails & Activities can delete specific email threads from the timeline. To do this, click on the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the email message.

Keep in mind that once the email thread is deleted, it will be removed from all of the items in the account where it was logged.

2. Filter to only see relevant emails.

You can use the filters to view only item related activities in your timeline. This way, you will only see email messages related to the item or connected items.

The Item related activities filter only filters out email messages that are related to connected items. It does not filter email messages from the same contact listed on other items that aren't connected.

Example:

Item A has contact@email.com in the Email column. Item B also has contact@email.com in the Email column. And Item C also has contact@email.com in the Email column. You send an email to contact@email.com, OR receive an email from contact@email.com. The email message will appear in the timeline of Item A, Item B, and Item C. You will not be able to filter any messages out of any of the item timelines.

How to stop logging emails

There are three ways to stop logging emails.

1. Remove the email address from the Email Column (or delete the Email Column entirely).

When you remove an email address from the Email Column or delete the Email Column, we will stop logging new emails sent or received by the email address(es) formerly listed in that column. However, any replies to email threads that are already connected to the item will still be logged on the item.

2. Remove the email connection from Emails & Activities.

You can remove your email connection by clicking the three-dot button to the right of the email connection. Choose Remove account:

Once an email connection is removed, Emails & Activities will stop logging any new emails related to that email connection. From that point forward, replies to ongoing email threads will not be logged.

Note: Removing an email connection does not delete it. It can be added back to Emails & Activities at any time. Once it is, we will continue logging new emails related to that connection.

3. Delete the email connection.

To completely delete an email account connection, visit the Automation Center and click the Gmail or Outlook icon:

All pre-built recipes for the integration will load. Click on any recipe. Then, the integration will list the connected email addresses under Choose an account connection. Click the trash icon next to an email address to delete the connection:

Once the email connection is deleted, we will stop logging any new emails related to that email connection. This includes replies to existing email threads.

If you have any other automations that use that email connection, those automations will also stop working. 

PART III: Email tracking

How does email tracking work?

Email tracking is a beautiful thing! And less complicated than you might think.

Email open rates

We track emails using an invisible image. That image is a single pixel, a tiny and invisible visual element, placed in the email. The image isn’t attached to the email. Rather, it’s loaded from a server via a URL. When the email client that sends and receives the email attempts to load that URL, our server makes note of a visit to that URL along with some additional tracking information. The URL is unique and randomly generated. That way, we know which email and item it relates to.

Link open rates

We also track engagement with links sent within your emails. If the recipient clicks on the link you included, you'll see that as well. The number of times the recipient opened the link will be to the right of the word Clicked:

Enable or disable tracking

If you want to enable email tracking, you can do so by ticking the Email Tracking box when composing an email. To disable email tracking, untick the box:

Potential issues

Sometimes, the security settings on a recipient’s email client will prevent the URL from automatically loading. In that case, our server will never receive word that the email was opened.

On the other hand, some security software will load the URL before the email reaches the recipient’s mailbox to check that it’s safe. This can lead to a false positive— our server may think that the email was opened even though the recipient hasn’t opened it yet.

Email tracking isn’t perfect, but in most cases, it gives excellent insight into engagement.

Getting specific

The email’s status in the analytics section can give you some insight into how the email was sent. Here are a few examples:

• "Tracking data isn't available”: This indicates that the email was sent from Emails & Activities, but the user disabled Email tracking in monday.com.
• "Email could not be tracked”: This indicates that the email was sent from Gmail or Outlook. In this case, monday.com will not track it.
• "Not opened yet”: This indicates that the recipient has not opened the email yet. It can also indicate that the tracking pixel image in the message was never loaded.
• "Seen”: This indicates that the recipient opened the email and the tracking pixel loaded. 

Note: Only the user who owns the email account used to send the email can see the email tracking details.