AI Frontdesk: Connecting and managing your email account

Valid for: AI Email Assistant (Momentum AI)

To enable your assistant to read and reply to incoming emails, connect it to the mailbox that receives your customer inquiries. Your email address stays the same: your assistant replies from the address your customers already know.

Once the mailbox is connected, you can test the connection at any time or disconnect the mailbox. This feature is available with the AI Email Assistant. The following steps show you how to connect and manage your mailbox.

Requirement

You know the login details for the mailbox.

Open the Email assistant section

Log in to your IONOS account.
Click on Menu > AI Frontdesk in the title bar.
In the contract overview, click on Manage in the tile for the contract you want.

In the navigation bar on the left, under Settings, click Email assistant. The Email assistant section opens on the Configure assistant page. You can make all of the following settings there.

Select a provider

Until a mailbox is connected, the Email assistant section only shows the choice of email provider. The other settings appear once the connection has been established.

Select the provider of the mailbox that receives your customer inquiries:

IONOS: You connect the mailbox directly with the mailbox password.
Microsoft 365: You sign in with your licensed Microsoft 365 account and then select the mailbox.
Other provider: You enter your provider’s IMAP and SMTP connection details.

Depending on your selection, you are guided through the corresponding sign-in process.

Note

The Gmail tile is marked Coming soon and cannot be selected yet. Until then, you can connect a Gmail mailbox via Other provider using its IMAP and SMTP connection details.

Connect an IONOS mailbox

Please Note

Use the password for the mailbox, not the password for your IONOS account. You can change the password for your mailbox in your IONOS account under Menu > Email.

Select the IONOS tile.
In the Mailbox address field, enter the address of the mailbox, for example info@example.com.
Click Next.
Enter the mailbox password and click Connect mailbox.

Once the connection has been established, the Mailbox section shows the connected address with the status Connected.

Note

The password goes straight to the mail service. It is not stored in the browser or in the chat.

What happens after connecting

As soon as the mailbox is connected, your assistant starts two analyses:

It analyzes the emails you have sent to learn your writing style. To find out how to view what it has learned, see the article AI Frontdesk: Customizing the writing style for email replies.
It uses the emails of the last 30 days to prepare knowledge suggestions, which you can review and approve. The article AI Frontdesk: Letting the assistant learn business knowledge from emails explains how this works.

Both processes take a few minutes and run in the background.

Note

Your assistant only monitors the inbox of the connected mailbox, not any subfolders. Its replies are saved to your Sent folder as usual, and it marks emails it has replied to in the mailbox.
You can connect exactly one mailbox per contract. To connect a different mailbox, you must first disconnect the current one. For an additional mailbox, you need another contract.

Tip

Next, specify which emails your assistant is allowed to handle. The article AI Frontdesk: Setting up email response behavior explains how to do this.

Test the connection

Use the connection test to check whether your assistant can still access your mailbox – for example, after you have changed the mailbox password or if no new drafts are being created.

In the Mailbox section, click Test connection. The assistant signs in to the mailbox and sends it a test email from itself. The section then shows the result.

The test email appears in your inbox. You can delete it once the test is complete.

If the test fails, the stored mailbox password is usually no longer valid. In this case, disconnect the mailbox and connect it again with the current login details.

Note

The connection test only checks access to the mailbox. It is not related to the Test email button in the top-right corner, which shows you how your assistant would reply to an inquiry. For details, see the article AI Frontdesk: Testing replies with a test email.

Disconnect the mailbox

If you disconnect the mailbox, your assistant can no longer access your inbox. It no longer analyzes incoming emails, and it no longer prepares or sends replies.

Please Note

Before you disconnect the mailbox, check under Conversations whether any drafts are still awaiting your approval under Needs approval. The article AI Frontdesk: Checking and approving email drafts explains how to check drafts.

In the Mailbox section, click Disconnect….
Confirm by clicking Remove mailbox.