Gmail Connection

Let staff connect their own Gmail inbox, read-only, so email with leads and consignors is captured against the right record.

Gmail lead capture lets each member of your supply team connect their own Gmail inbox to Babylon. Babylon then reads that inbox, read-only, and keeps a copy of any email exchanged with a lead or consignor you already have in your supply pipeline, matched by email address. Nothing is ever sent from the connected inbox, and messages that do not involve one of your leads or consignors are not kept.

This guide covers switching the feature on, connecting and disconnecting an inbox, and what is and is not captured. For working with leads themselves, see Supply pipeline.

Before you start

Plan: Gmail lead capture is part of the supply pipeline module. If Supply → Supply Leads is not in your sidebar, or connecting sends you back with a message that Supply OS is disabled, the module is not enabled for your account. This depends on your plan: contact Hammerd support.
Switching the feature on needs the manage tenant settings permission, because it is on Business Settings.
Connecting an inbox is done by each staff member for their own Gmail account. They need access to Supply → Supply Leads, and their role must also allow managing settings or viewing payouts. If a staff member gets a permission error when connecting, ask an account owner to check their role (see Team members and roles).
Each person needs a Google account with Gmail, and must be able to accept Google's permission request.

Step 1: switch on Gmail lead capture

Go to Settings → Business Settings and open the Commerce tab.
Expand Supply Leads.
Turn on Enable Gmail lead capture. It is off by default.
Click Save Settings.

This adds a Gmail banner to the top of Supply → Supply Leads. Turning it on does not connect any inbox by itself: each staff member connects their own.

Step 2: connect your Gmail

Go to Supply → Supply Leads.
In the banner at the top of the page, click Connect your Gmail.
You are taken to Google. Choose the Gmail account you use for supply correspondence and accept the requested permissions. Accept all of them: if Google does not grant the access Babylon asks for, you are returned with the message Google did not grant the access needed to connect Gmail. Please try again and accept all requested permissions.
You return to Supply Leads with the message Gmail connected. Your correspondence with leads and consignors will start appearing shortly.

The connection belongs to you, not to your whole team. Colleagues who want their own correspondence captured each connect their own inbox in the same way.

Checking and managing your connection

Once you are connected, the banner on Supply → Supply Leads changes to say your Gmail is connected and offers Manage your Gmail connection. That link opens the Gmail Connection page. The page is not in the sidebar, so use the banner to reach it.

The Gmail Connection page shows:

The connected mailbox address and a status badge: Connected, Needs reauthorization, Error or Disconnected.
When the mailbox was last synced, or Not synced yet straight after connecting. Syncing happens automatically, a few minutes apart. There is no manual sync button.
If the status is Needs reauthorization, a note that Google needs you to reconnect and that sync has paused, with a Connect your Gmail button to do so.
If the status is Error, a short description of the problem.
A Disconnect Gmail button.

If you open the page without a connection, it shows Not connected and a Connect your Gmail button.

What is read and what is kept

Read-only access. Babylon asks Google for read-only access to your mailbox. It cannot send, delete, label or change anything in Gmail.
Only matching mail is kept. Each message is checked against the email addresses of your existing leads and consignors, looking at the sender and at the To and Cc recipients (your own address is ignored). If none match, the message is discarded. If one matches, Babylon keeps the sender, recipients, subject, a short snippet, the plain-text body and the date, and records whether you sent or received it.
Leads and consignors. If an address belongs to both a consignor and a lead, the message is attached to both. Later messages in the same email thread stay attached to the same record.
How far back it looks. When you first connect, Babylon captures matching mail from a limited recent period, then keeps up with new mail from then on. When someone adds a new lead with an email address, Babylon also searches connected inboxes for earlier correspondence with that address, so the history is not lost.
Address matching is exact. A lead or consignor with no email address, or a different one from the one they actually write from, will not pick up their mail. Keep contact email addresses accurate on the lead or consignor.

The admin panel does not currently show a correspondence timeline on lead or consignor screens. Captured messages are stored against the matching record. If you need to review captured correspondence for a record, contact Hammerd support.

Disconnecting

Go to Supply → Supply Leads and click Manage your Gmail connection.
Click Disconnect Gmail and confirm with Disconnect.

Babylon revokes its access with Google and stops reading the mailbox. Correspondence already captured stays on the lead and consignor records. Nothing new is added until you reconnect.

You can also remove Babylon's access from your Google account's security settings. Babylon then shows Needs reauthorization or Error until you reconnect or disconnect.

Turning off Enable Gmail lead capture in Business Settings hides the banner, stops new connections and pauses syncing for everyone. It does not revoke the access staff have already granted, and syncing resumes if you switch the feature back on. If you are withdrawing the feature for good, ask each staff member to disconnect as well.

Troubleshooting and common questions

Check that Enable Gmail lead capture is on and saved in Business Settings → Commerce → Supply Leads.

I get "Gmail email capture is disabled for this tenant"

The feature was switched off between loading the page and connecting. Switch it on again in Business Settings and retry.

I get "Gmail connection is unavailable" or "Failed to connect Gmail. Please try again."

Try again. If it keeps happening, contact Hammerd support.

My status says Needs reauthorization

Google has stopped accepting Babylon's access, for example because you changed your Google password or removed the access from your Google account. Open the Gmail Connection page and click Connect your Gmail to reconnect.

Can I connect more than one inbox?

Each Babylon user has one Gmail connection. Connecting again with a different Google account replaces your previous connection. To capture several inboxes, each person connects their own.

Is personal email captured?

Only messages to or from an email address belonging to one of your leads or consignors are kept. Everything else is discarded without being stored.