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Connecting Your Gmail Inbox to Productive (Beta)

Learn how to connect your Gmail inbox to Productive, view emails, and link threads to contacts, deals, invoices, budgets, tasks, and projects.

Updated today

Productive’s email inbox feature lets you connect multiple Gmail accounts and view your emails directly within the platform.

It’s designed to replace the older BCC inbox functionality, which will continue to exist but is no longer located under CRM > Inbound Emails.

You’ll now find both inboxes under a new mail icon in the top navigation bar, next to the notification inbox.

Connecting Gmail is available on the Professional and Ultimate subscription plans.

Who Can Connect?

Only users with the Manage Emails permission can access and use this feature.

By default, this includes users with the Admin, Manager, and Profitability Manager permission sets.


If needed, you can create a custom permission set, complete with the View and Manage Emails permission and assign it to any user who should have access.

Connecting Your Gmail Account

To connect your Gmail inbox:

1) Click the mail icon in the top navigation bar.

2) Click Add Email Account.

3) Click Connect Email and you’ll be redirected to a Google authentication screen.

4) Allow all the requested permissions. Productive is a Google-verified app, so you shouldn’t see any security warnings.

Be sure to grant Productive permission to access and read your email labels, as well as to read, compose, and send emails on your behalf. Without both permissions, you may encounter a "500 Server Error" and the feature won’t work.

📌 Google periodically reviews and verifies Productive’s integration to ensure it meets their security standards. You can read more about Google’s verification process here.

5) Once connected, your inbox will appear within a few seconds.

📌 You can add multiple Gmail inboxes if needed. Click + Add Email Account to connect them.

📌 To disconnect or edit the integration, navigate Settings > App Marketplace > Gmail.

Supported Connection Scenarios

In addition to connecting a single inbox to a single user in one organization, the following cases are also supported:

  • One inbox connected to multiple organizations (e.g. using the same personal Gmail account in two completely separate Productive organizations).

  • One inbox connected to multiple users within one organization (e.g. a shared sales@company.com inbox).

📌 For shared inboxes, each user needs to connect the inbox separately to see and use it in Productive.

📌 You cannot connect the same inbox more than once to the same user in a single organization.

How the Gmail Inbox Works

1) Only inbox-labeled emails are shown

Productive displays emails that have the Inbox label in Gmail. Emails that are archived or moved to another label won't be visible here.

By default, all incoming messages in Gmail are labeled as Inbox. This simply indicates that a message has arrived in your main mailbox and hasn't been archived, deleted, or moved to another label.

2) Search includes all emails

You can use the basic search bar to find any email in your Gmail account, even those outside the Inbox label.

3) Read/unread sync

Email read status is synced between Gmail and Productive:

  • If you read an email in Productive, it will be marked as read in Gmail.

  • If you mark it as unread in Gmail, it will appear unread in Productive again.

  • Currently, you cannot mark an email as unread in Productive.

Viewing and Using Emails in Productive

HTML rendering

Emails are shown in their original HTML formatting, similar to Gmail. Some emails may not render perfectly—this will be improved over time.

Attachments

Productive displays a list of attachments for each email. You can:

  • Preview supported formats (e.g., PDF)

  • Download attachments

Linking Emails to Productive Data

There are two levels of linking:

1. Linking a conversation (base level)

Click Link Conversation in the right sidebar. Productive will:

  • Save the conversation and its attachments

  • Match email addresses to existing contacts or create new ones

  • Show the conversation under the Activity tab (Email feed) of the linked contact or user

2. Linking to a specific item

After linking a conversation, you can also link it to:

  • Deals

  • Budgets

  • Invoices

  • Projects

  • Tasks

📌 You can add or remove these links at any time.

The email will then appear in the activity feed of that item.

Unlinking Emails

After linking an email to a specific item (deal, budget, project, task, invoice), you can remove that link by clicking the X next to the item.

Removing the link to the item does not unlink the email from the contacts or users. The email will still appear under their Activity > Emails feed.

To fully unlink an email from all contacts, users, and items, open the email in Productive, go to Linked, click the three-dot menu, and select Delete All Links. The email will then be removed from all feeds and no longer associated with any item.

What About the BCC Inbox?

The BCC inbox still works exactly as before. You can forward or BCC emails to your unique Productive address and assign them to deals, budgets, or invoices.

The only change is where you access it: You’ll now find it under the same mail icon, just below your Gmail inboxes.

Security and Authenticity of Incoming Emails

To ensure security and prevent spoofing, Productive enforces SPF and DKIM authentication for all connected inboxes and forwarded emails.

  • SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Verifies that emails are sent from authorized servers.

  • DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Confirms that email content hasn't been altered in transit.

📌 Emails that fail either of these checks will not be processed or shown in Productive. We recommend configuring SPF and DKIM properly in your domain settings.

What’s Next

🚀 The Gmail integration is still in Beta, and improvements are ongoing:

  • Better rendering of complex HTML emails

  • Label-based filtering options

  • More control over read/unread status

If you experience any issues, please let our team know.

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