Email Processing
Email Processing turns inbound email into tickets, ticket updates, notifications, and other automations. An email arrives at one of your mailboxes, the system evaluates the rules attached to that mailbox, and any matching rule runs its action steps in order.
Like every MSPintegrations module, Email Processing gives you building blocks that you arrange around your process. The core pattern stays the same across modules: extract useful data from the trigger, look up the records you need, then create or update the right record.
For PSA work, Email Processing calls the PSA API directly. It does not send the message through Autotask's built-in email processor. Your automation can identify the account first and create the ticket in the right place from the start instead of creating it on a catch-all account and moving it later.
This module is branded differently depending on which PSA you use:
| Your PSA | Brand name |
|---|---|
| Autotask | Email2AT |
| ConnectWise PSA | Email2CW |
| HaloPSA | Email2Halo |
The console, history, and configuration are identical across the three brandings. PSA-specific behaviour is documented inline where it matters.
When to Use Email Processing
Use Email Processing when a third party sends email that should drive work inside your PSA or other business systems:
- Customer support requests arriving at
[email protected] - Monitoring alerts from RMM, backup, or network monitoring tools
- Notifications from vendors (contract renewals, license expirations, spam reports)
- Forwarded email from technicians that needs to become a ticket or opportunity
If the trigger is not an email (a schedule tick, a public form submission, a PSA event), see Scheduled Tasks, Forms, or PSA Workflows.
How It Works
When an email arrives, Email Processing walks four levels:
Domain
└── Mailbox
└── Rule(s)
└── Action Step(s)
Domain
Every inbound email domain belongs to one organization. This includes hosted subdomains that MSPintegrations provides (for example, your-company.onmspi.net) and custom domains you own and point to MSPintegrations with an MX record. When an email arrives, the system matches the domain to your organization and begins looking for a mailbox.
Mailbox
A mailbox is where email enters MSPintegrations and the container that holds your rules. Email Processing supports two mailbox types:
- Hosted Mailboxes: MSPintegrations is the mail server for the domain. Email is delivered by SMTP and processing starts immediately. Recommended for automated senders such as RMM, backup, and network monitoring tools.
- Remote Mailboxes: MSPintegrations connects to your own Microsoft 365 or IMAP mailbox, checks a folder every 60 to 120 seconds, and ingests new messages. Use this when a published address such as
[email protected]needs to stay where it is.
Hosted Mailboxes also offer three address types (Standard, Regular Expression, and Domain Catch-all) that control how the part before the @ is matched.
Full reference → Hosted and Remote Mailboxes
Rules
A rule is a named container for one or more action steps. Rules attached to a mailbox are evaluated top-to-bottom in order. Every rule that matches fires unless a Stop action halts processing.
Each rule has an optional Expression that controls whether it fires at all. If the expression is empty, the rule fires for every email.
Learn more → Expression Builder
Action Steps
Inside each rule, action steps execute top-to-bottom. Each step can also have its own expression. The output of each step is stored in a named variable and is available to every later step in the same rule.
Variables Available in Email Processing
| Variable group | Set by | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
email | System | All inbound email properties (subject, from, body, recipients, and so on) |
meta | System | Processing run metadata (meta.history.id, meta.remote.id for remote mailboxes) |
custom | You | Working data within a single rule (cleared when each rule finishes) |
global | You | Data that must carry over to later rules for the same email |
Full details: Variables.
The Console
Email Processing lives under Email2AT (or Email2CW / Email2Halo) in the console sidebar. From there you can:
- Home: landing page with a quick overview of your mailboxes.
- All Mailboxes / Hosted Mailboxes / Remote Mailboxes: manage mailbox configuration and rules.
- Email History: review every message processed by any mailbox, with the full execution log and replay.
- Rule Library: share and import rule templates.
Start Here
- Hosted and Remote Mailboxes: the two mailbox types, hosted and custom domains, and the three Hosted Mailbox address types.
- Create Your First Mailbox: a full end-to-end walkthrough that builds a support mailbox with the Update-then-Create ticket pattern.
- Email Processing Best Practices: routing, rule ordering, testing, and go-live guidelines.
- Core Concepts: the mental model shared by every module.
Next Steps
- Build a real-world automation with the tutorials below (monitoring alerts, PRTG alerts, UniFi alerts, forwarded emails to opportunities, and more).
- Diagnose problems in the troubleshooting guides.
- Set up your PSA connection in Connections → Autotask or Connections → Microsoft 365.