Mail Desk
a shared team inbox inside Perfex CRM.

01What you bought

Mail Desk is a module for Perfex CRM (sold separately). You connect one or more mailboxes, for example info@yourcompany.com or sales@yourcompany.com. Mail Desk reads new mail from the mail server, groups it into conversations and shows it in an inbox inside the Perfex admin area. Your staff reply from there; the reply leaves through the mailbox's own SMTP server and a copy is saved in the mailbox's Sent folder on the server.

• Mailboxes: as many as you like. Any provider that allows IMAP and SMTP with a password or an app password (Gmail, Google Workspace, cPanel and Plesk hosting mail, your own server).
• Team work: assign a conversation to a colleague, set its status (open, waiting, closed) and priority, add labels and internal notes, see who replied last and who is writing a reply right now.
• CRM links: a conversation is linked automatically to the customer or lead whose e-mail address it comes from, and customers get an Emails tab. Turn an e-mail into a lead, a ticket or a task. Each staff member sees only the customers and leads their Perfex rights allow.
• Writing: reply, reply all, forward and new messages, attachments, drafts, a personal and a mailbox signature, reply templates with merge fields.
• Dashboard: open conversations, unassigned ones, ones waiting for your answer, median first response time, and received and sent mail for the last 30 days.
• Optional AI: summarise a conversation, draft a reply, suggest labels and a priority. Off by default, uses your own API key, and never sends anything.

The module has its own IMAP, SMTP and MIME code written in plain PHP. It does not need the PHP imap extension, which is no longer part of PHP since version 8.4.

02How it works

1. Perfex's cron job runs. Each run, Mail Desk reads new messages from the Inbox and Sent folders of every active mailbox, a batch at a time (How sync works).
2. Messages are stored in Mail Desk's own tables. HTML is cleaned, attachments are saved in a protected folder, and each message is put into a conversation.
3. The conversation is linked to the customer contact or lead with the same e-mail address (Customers and leads).
4. Your team works in the Inbox: reads, assigns, labels, writes notes and replies.
5. Changes go back to the mail server: read and unread, moving to Trash or Archive and back to the Inbox, and the copy of every sent message in the Sent folder.

03What version 1.0 does not do

• Sign-in is by password or app password only (IMAP LOGIN, SMTP AUTH PLAIN or AUTH LOGIN). There is no OAuth sign-in for Google either; Gmail and Google Workspace work with an app password.
• Mail is read over IMAP only. POP3 is not supported.
• Only the Inbox and Sent folders are read. Trash and Archive are used as destinations when you move a conversation. Other folders are not read.
• There is no Emails tab on the lead page. To see a lead's conversations, filter the Inbox by the lead (Leads).
• The AI limits count requests, not tokens or money (Hard limits).

04Pick your path

05What you provide

06Notes about this item

AI tools were used to assist with parts of the code, the documentation and the graphics of this item.

Mail Desk is an independent module. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Perfex CRM or its authors, Google, Microsoft, cPanel, Plesk, Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or Ollama. Product names are used only to say what Mail Desk can connect to.