Connect your email account

Connecting an email account brings your mailbox into Tidyflow. You can read, send, and reply without leaving the app, and your team can collaborate on replies with internal comments. Contact email matches can link conversations from whole-team mailboxes automatically. For other conversations, you can select a client yourself or use an eligible email automation. Sync is two-way: replies sent from Tidyflow appear in your provider’s sent folder, and changes in your provider show up in Tidyflow.

Supported email providers

Tidyflow connects to:

• Gmail (including Google Workspace) via OAuth
• Outlook (Microsoft 365) via OAuth
• Other provider via IMAP, such as iCloud, Fastmail, Yahoo, or a self-hosted mailbox. IMAP connections are currently in beta. See Connect an email account via IMAP.

Connect Gmail or Microsoft 365

1. In the firm app, go to Settings and open Email accounts
2. Click Connect email
3. Choose Gmail or Outlook
4. Choose who can see the inbox and how much email history to import (see below)
5. Click Continue with Google or Continue with Microsoft and authorize access in the window that opens

For Gmail and Outlook accounts, Tidyflow asks for permission to read, label, archive, and trash messages, to send email on your behalf, to respond to calendar invitations sent to that account, and to show that account’s calendar events in Tidyflow. Tidyflow does not sell your data or use it for advertising.

Once authorized, Tidyflow starts importing your email history in the background. The account shows Importing history until the import finishes, then Connected.

Choose who can see the inbox

When connecting an account, you pick its visibility:

• Private: only you can see emails from this inbox
• Selected users: pick specific teammates who can read and send from this inbox
• Whole team: all users can see emails from this inbox

Only owners and admins can share an inbox with other users, and visibility can be changed at any time from the account’s settings. A shared inbox works well for a practice address like info@ or admin@, while each team member can also connect their own private account. The number of private and shared inboxes depends on your plan; see pricing for current limits.

If your private inbox allowance is already in use, choose an available visibility option explicitly before continuing. Tidyflow does not select sharing for you. Use Manage email accounts to review your connected accounts or Plan details to review your options. If you need shared access but cannot select it, ask an owner or admin to connect the mailbox.

Choose how much email history to import

The Email history setting controls how far back Tidyflow imports existing email, from No history up to 10 years. The default is 1 month (30 days). New email syncs regardless of this setting while the account is connected.

For Outlook, the initial import covers Inbox, Sent, and Junk within the chosen period. Existing Archive and custom-folder history are not imported. Choosing a longer period does not add those folders. Searching in Tidyflow covers email that has been imported, so an older conversation stored only in an Outlook custom folder will not appear from this import.

Where your email appears

Connected email shows up under Inbox, at the top of the left sidebar. Opening Inbox shows your personal triage view: a Pinned section at the top for the threads that are yours (assigned to you, ones you have claimed, or ones where a teammate mentioned you), and a time-ordered feed of your own mail and the shared threads you are part of below it.

The Inbox sidebar also lists your personal folders (Snoozed, Drafts, Sent, and Archived), any Team mailboxes your firm shares, the accounts under My accounts, and your provider labels. Notifications are not a separate folder; they appear directly in your Inbox feed. Each team mailbox shows a count of conversations nobody has picked up yet. For how shared mailboxes, assignment, and the Archive and Close actions work, see How the shared team inbox works.

To connect a conversation to client work, choose Link to client from the conversation’s three-dot menu (⋯) for a client link, or Create or link job for an existing or new Job. A mailbox you manage for a client can receive supplier emails that do not match that client’s contacts, so connecting the mailbox alone does not link every conversation to that client. See Find and organize client emails for manual links, search, and filters, or Automate incoming email for client-linking rules.

See your calendar

Gmail and Microsoft 365 accounts can show their events under Inbox > Calendar. Calendar sync is off until you turn it on: choose Turn on next to the mailbox in Calendars, or switch on Sync calendar in the mailbox’s settings on the Email accounts page. Only people who can edit the mailbox’s settings can turn it on or off, and turning it off removes its events from Tidyflow.

Gmail shows the account’s main calendar, and Microsoft 365 shows every calendar on the account. Use Calendars in the top bar to show or hide each one. Everyone who can see a mailbox in Inbox sees its calendar, and a private event on a teammate’s mailbox shows only as Busy. IMAP accounts do not have a calendar.

The calendar keeps events from six months back to a year ahead and picks up changes made in Gmail or Outlook on its own. To answer an invite from the calendar, open the event and choose Yes, Maybe or No next to Going?. The organizer gets your answer, and for a repeating meeting it applies to that occurrence only. Anyone who can see the mailbox can answer its invites, except on a private event shown as Busy.

See everyone’s day side by side

Choose Team next to Week and Day to see one day with a column for each team member, so you can check who is free and how many appointments each person has. A person’s column shows the events on their own calendar and any meetings they are invited to on a shared team calendar, such as an appointment booked on your admin@ calendar with them as a guest. Team members who declined an invite are left out. Events on a team calendar with no team member invited stay in that calendar’s own column.

Use People in the top bar to choose whose columns to show. Your choice is saved to your account. A person’s own calendar is a mailbox that’s private, shared with selected people, or at their sign-in email address; any other mailbox shared with the whole team counts as a team calendar. The Team view is available when your workspace has more than one person; on a phone, swipe sideways to see more people.

How syncing works

Gmail and Microsoft 365 accounts sync in near real time using provider notifications. Accounts connected via IMAP sync every few minutes, with a Sync now action on the Email accounts settings page to pull changes immediately.

If an account’s sign-in expires, its row shows Disconnected with a Reconnect button. Reconnecting restores syncing without re-importing your messages.

Disconnect an email account

Open Settings, go to Email accounts, and disconnect the account from its menu. Tidyflow stops syncing new email from that mailbox and removes the stored connection credentials. Your synced email history stays in Tidyflow, so you can reconnect the account later and pick up where you left off. To permanently delete the email history as well, choose Delete account & data on that email account instead. Permanent deletion may take up to 30 days to complete across all systems. For Gmail and Microsoft 365 you can also revoke Tidyflow’s access directly from your Google or Microsoft account at any time.