Receiving Notifications in an Instant Messengermail_outline

This page focuses on the Slack and Teams instant messaging services

In a work day that involves a lot of communication, it's crucial to know when a work item is ready for you. While email has long been a staple of business communication, many teams now prefer instant messaging services. As both methods are still important, it's useful to have a strategy that allows you to receive email notifications within instant messaging services.

How Does It Work?

This strategy uses two different technologies from instant messengers and email providers.

  • Instant Messenger-provided email addresses* - Generate a unique email address that emails can be directed towards.
  • Email rules or forwarding - Direct emails to be automatically deleted, moved to different folders, or, in this case, forwarded.

*Not all instant messaging services allow for this capability.

You can also use Lytho's Zapier integration to create integrations in additional spaces.

Generating an Email Address in an Instant Messenger

Slack

Start by clicking on your portrait in the top-right corner of the screen and select Preferences from the dropdown list.


On the left navigation bar, select Messages & media. Scroll all the way to the bottom and select the Get a Forwarding Address button.

Any emails sent in through this general forwarding address will appear in the Slackbot channel under Direct Messages.


Alternatively, if you want your notifications to go into a specific Slack channel, right click on the channel you'd like and select View channel details.


In the new window, navigate to Integrations and then Send emails to this channel.

You will not see Send emails to this channel if you do not have the necessary permissions assigned to this channel.

Select Get Email Address to generate the forwarding address for this channel.

Teams

From the left navigation bar start from Teams. From your list of channels, identify the channel that should receive the forwarded emails and select the elipses [...] button. From the drop down menu, select Get email address.


Forwarding Emails from Your Inbox to Instant Messenger

Now that you have your instant messenger's forwarding address, you'll need to create rules in your email inbox to forward all Lytho emails to that address. Make sure you have it readily available for the next step.

Outlook

We recommend that you create these Outlook rules in the Office365 portal instead of the Microsoft Office desktop application even if you primarily use the desktop application. Rules created in the application only run while the application is open while rules created in Office365 will always run.

Under the Home tab look for Rules. If you are using a smaller screen, it may be hidden under the Move button. From there, select Create Rule... .




The prompt that appears will allow you to send emails to other folders, but will not allow us to forward to our instant messenger. To do that, select Advanced Options... .


The Rules Wizard menu will allow you to create rules for a variety of scenarios. For this rule, we want all emails coming from noreply@lytho.com to be forwarded. Select the top option "from ___". This name will be different depending on the email you were looking at when creating the rule. 

In the box at the bottom of the Rules Wizard, labeled Step 2, click on the highlighted sender name. This will open up your Outlook Address Book where you can select from a saved email or key in an outside recipient email. Type in noreply@lytho.com and select OK.

If you only want certain emails to be sent, use the with specific words in the subject or body option. Lytho emails contain phrases such as "submitted their review" or "replied to your comment" that can be targeted by your rule.


Click Next at the bottom of the Rules Wizard to bring up the intended action(s) the rule will take. Following the same process for setting the recipient, select forward it to people or public group and click on people or public group from the bottom box titled "Step 2".

Paste the forwarding address you generated from your instant messenger into the text box at the bottom and select OK.


Select Finish to set the rule for all future email notifications. 

Gmail

From your inbox, click on the slider bar icon found at the end of the Search mail bar. 


Enter noreply@lytho.com in the From text box and select Create Filter at the bottom of the prompt.

If you only want certain emails to be sent, use the Subject and/or Has the words options. Lytho emails contain phrases such as "submitted their review" or "replied to your comment" that can be targeted by your rule.

From the next list of options select Add forwarding address

This will bring you to a Settings page where you'll click Add forwarding address a second time. Key in your address and select Proceed on the confirmation box.


You'll be asked to click on a hyperlink or enter a verification code that were sent to your instant messenger to confirm the connection. 

Follow the instructions in the sent message to finalize the connection for Gmail. Make sure to select the Forward a copy of incoming mail to option and set Gmail's follow up step.

© Lytho, Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy

Have a friend who could benefit from Lytho? Refer them and get a $200 gift card!