Documentation 19.0

General Settings

Understand how WindoorERP sends and receives email

2 min read Updated 2026-08-14 WindoorERP 19.0

What this does

Explains the mail model behind every record in WindoorERP, and what a self-hosted database has to be told before mail actually flows.

The chatter

Records that people discuss — opportunities, quotations, invoices, service requests — carry a discussion thread called the chatter. From it you can:

  • send an email to the followers of the document, or a notification inside WindoorERP, according to each follower's preference;
  • log an internal note that customers never see;
  • send a WhatsApp message or an SMS, where those are set up;
  • schedule an activity for yourself or a colleague.

When a follower replies to one of those emails, the reply lands back in the same chatter and is relayed to the other followers. Incoming and outgoing messages sit in one thread, in order.

What you must configure

WindoorERP runs on your own hosting, so mail is not wired up by magic. Two halves have to be set:

Incoming mail servers are the simplest of the three and are what we usually recommend. Set the fetch frequency low enough to feel responsive and high enough not to hammer your provider.

  1. 01
    Outgoing — an SMTP server and a sending domain, so your emails leave the database and survive spam filters.
  2. 02
    Incoming — a way for replies to come back, using either redirections to the database, incoming mail servers that fetch mailboxes on a schedule, or DNS records on a dedicated subdomain.

Using a third-party mail provider

Any SMTP provider works — Gmail, Outlook 365, Amazon SES, Brevo, Mailgun, Sendgrid, Mailjet. Each has its own authorizations, its own records to publish, and its own limits: check them before committing. Providers built around personal mailboxes (Gmail, Outlook) are a poor fit for large marketing campaigns.

Common mistakes

  • Treating WindoorERP as a mailbox. It is not an inbox: anything unrelated to a record in the database is bounced, not quarantined.
  • Configuring outgoing mail and forgetting incoming — customers reply, and nobody ever sees it.
  • Sending from a domain whose DNS records were never published, and wondering why everything lands in spam.

In this section

Receive incoming email in the database An inbound message is any email delivered to your database: someone writing to a… Send outgoing email from the database Sets up the SMTP server your database sends through, and the address your recipi… Publish DNS records so your email is trusted SPF, DKIM and DMARC are three DNS records that prove your emails really come fro… Fix an email that did not arrive Walks the usual causes of a missing email, from the red envelope in the chatter …

Continue learning

Send outgoing email from the database Sets up the SMTP server your database sends through, and the address your recipi… Receive incoming email in the database An inbound message is any email delivered to your database: someone writing to a…

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