AndroNautic includes a built-in e-mail integration in its back-office. This allows its clients to exchange e-mails with their customers and have them automatically linked to reservations, proposals, and others. For their convenience, the clients of AndroNautic are instructed to use a dedicated e-mail account for this purpose, which is mandatory when using the POP3 protocol to download e-mails.

Moreover, you can also configure user-specific email accounts in the back-office, which serve a different purpose but share the same configuration steps. The company-wide e-mail account is configured via the "Configuration > My profile > Mail credentials" menu option. The user-specific e-mail account is configured via the "Configuration > Users > Mail credentials" menu option.

If you chose Google as your e-mail provider, or if you are using a Gmail account, you have two options to configure it in the system: manually or via OAuth2. The steps you have to follow are the same whether it is an e-mail account to be used for the whole company, or for a specific user of your company.

Signing in with Google

The recommended option is using the "Sign in with Google" button in the "Gmail" tab. This will open the usual window where you will sign in to the account of your choice and confirm you want to give permissions to the AndroNautic application to handle e-mail of that account.

Once you have completed the process, you will be redirected to the back-office so that you can check the status of the integration, which should read "Valid" and display the last time of synchronisation.

Note: this feature is being tested as of the 19th of July of 2024 and is expected to be released before the end of the year.

Manually configuring the account

The alternative option is to configure it manually by using the "Manual" tab. But first, due to security restrictions, you need to create an app password, which is a 16 character long, specific purpose password randomly generated. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Load the Gmail webmail of your account in your browser.

2. Click on the icon on the top right corner of the screen and click on the "Manage your Google account" button.

3. On the menu on the left, select the "Security" menu option.

4. Under "How you sign in to Google", select "2-Step Verification > Get started" and follow the on-screen steps.

5. After you turn on Two-step verification, you must complete a second step to verify it’s you when you sign in. To help protect your account, Google will ask that you complete a specific second step.

6. Being logged in, finally you can use this Create and manage your app passwords link to create an app password. For that you just need to set a name (e.g., "AndroNautic") and click the button.

7. Copy the resulting 16-characters string (4 groups of 4 characters) and temporarily save it somewhere.

Before going back to the back-office, we still need to enable support for the POP3 protocol in the settings of the account. To do so, go back to the webmail in your browser and follow these steps:

1. Click on the cog wheel icon on the top right corner of the screen (and click on the "See all settings" button).
2. Go to the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.
3. In the "POP download" section, either click "Enable POP for all mail" or "Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on", at your convenience.
4. Also in the "POP download" section, select an option in the "When messages are accessed with POP" drop-down, at your convenience. The default behaviour in Gmail is to keep a copy of downloaded e-mail, but the default behaviour of the protocol is to delete the copy in the server. Unless you plan on having many thousands of e-mails, the default option provided by Gmail should be fine (it will server at yet one more back-up copy).
5. In the "IMAP access" section, select the "Enable IMAP" option.
6. Save the changes.

Now go back to the back-office and use the following details to fill in the fields in the "Manual" tab:

Common settings

• E-mail address: your email address, i.e., [email protected].
• Password: paste the 16-characters app password here.

Send email

• Hostname: smtp.gmail.com
• Security: STARTTLS
• Username: <your email address>
• Port: 587
• Authentication method: Normal

Download email

• Protocol: POP3
• Hostname: pop.gmail.com
• Security: SSL/TLS
• Username: <your email address>
• Port: 995
• Authentication method: Normal

Alternatively, you can also use the IMAP protocol. The difference is that e-mails downloaded via the POP3 protocol are deleted from the e-maill server (unless instructed otherwise) whereas e-mails downloaded via the IMAP protocol stay, so they can be managed from a different client as well (e.g., the Gmail app in your mobile phone). In case that you would like to use IMAP, some values must be changed:

• Protocol: IMAP
• Hostname: imap.gmail.com
• Port: 993

Finally, save the changes. The interface should test the configuration and let you know of any mistakes.

Note: the feature that tests the correctness of the data is being developed as of the 19th of July of 2024 and is expected to be released before the end of the year.