---
title: Collecting mail
description: How mail and attachments reach FlowOS from a Flowtech mailbox.
sidebar:
  order: 2
---

## What this process achieves

Brings new mail and its attachments from an enrolled Flowtech mailbox into
FlowOS, grouped into conversations and labelled, so the enquiries in it can be
worked.

## Who is involved

- **Administrator** — enrols and removes mailboxes.
- **The system** — fetches on Graph delta, files, labels and reports.
- **Sales person / office head** — work what arrived.

## What starts it

An enrolled mailbox with a live delta cursor. One mail process holds the
cursor per mailbox. This is not a "Sync new" button.

## The steps

1. **A mailbox is enrolled** against an office (Email Management / the
   person's mailbox panel).
2. **The system fetches what Graph has not yet delivered**, newest first.
3. **For each message it has not seen before**, it saves the attachments,
   attaches the message to the conversation — creating it if this is the first
   message — and records what the message is, whether it changes anything
   technical, which project or quotation references it names, and who the
   enquiry originally came from behind any forward.
4. **A message already stored is skipped.**
5. **A closed conversation receiving genuinely new mail is reopened.**
6. **The customer is resolved** from the recovered origin email against party
   contacts. No match becomes a review item.
7. **Sync state** records last run, consecutive failures and last error, per
   mailbox.

## Decision points

| Point | What routes it |
| --- | --- |
| Is this mailbox enrolled? | Anything else is not synced |
| Have we seen this message? | Already-stored messages are skipped |
| Is this a new thread or a reply? | A reply joins the existing conversation |
| Was it closed? | New mail reopens it |
| Do we know the customer? | Unknown origin → review item, not a staff lead |

## Rules that apply

R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, R7, R8, R8a, R46, R48, R55, R56 in the
[business rules register](/business/business-rules).

## What happens if it stalls

- **One bad message** is skipped and counted; the rest of the sync continues.
- **An attachment with no content** is skipped; the message and conversation
  are still created.
- **Consecutive failures** are visible on Email Management. Already-held mail
  stays workable.

See [Mailbox management](/business/features/mailbox-management) and
[Automatic behaviour](/business/automatic-behavior).