Email integration
Outlook connected to your venue CRM
The same principle as Gmail, for Microsoft 365: you send and receive from Joinways, and the full history lands on every client record, with nothing to re-type.
Microsoft 365 OAuth
You sign in with your Microsoft account. No password stored, disconnect whenever you want.
Two-way sync
Emails sent from Joinways show up in Outlook. Incoming emails attach to the right inquiry.
Individual or shared inbox
Each member connects their own mailbox to send and receive. A shared mailbox like events@ is read to create inquiries.
What the Outlook integration does
Your Outlook mailbox keeps working exactly as before. Joinways adds the link between each email and the event it is about.
Full history on every record
Threads attach to the client and the event. Anyone on the team opens a record and sees the entire conversation, whoever handled it.
Inquiries out of the pile
Booking requests arriving in Outlook are detected and turned into inquiries in Joinways, with the key details already extracted.
Reply from Joinways
You answer with your own address, from the same screen where the event and proposal live. The recipient sees a normal Outlook email.
At a glance
- Category
- Availability
- Available
- Setup time
- About 2 minutes
- Who can connect
- Each member (own mailbox); an owner or admin (inquiry address)
- What flows where
- Your mailbox: two-way. Inquiry address: incoming only
- Updates
- Real time for your mailbox; shared mailboxes checked every minute
- Needed on the tool's side
- Microsoft 365 work account or Outlook.com; shared mailboxes need Full Access
- Built by
- Joinways (native integration)
Before you start
- A Microsoft 365 work or school account, or an Outlook.com account.
- For a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox: Full Access to it on your own account.
- Depending on your organization's settings, a Microsoft 365 admin may need to approve Joinways the first time.
- To connect the venue's inquiry address: an owner or admin role in your Joinways workspace.
What syncs with Outlook
- Emails received and sent from the connected Microsoft 365 mailbox, attachments included
- Threads, attached to the inquiry and event they concern
- Emails sent from Joinways, visible in your Outlook sent items
- Inquiries detected in incoming emails, with date, headcount and venue extracted
- Several mailboxes per workspace: individual and shared (contact@, events@)
Security and access
- Your own mailbox: Joinways asks Microsoft to read your email and to send from your address.
- A shared mailbox is read through your own sign-in, read-only, and never used to send.
- Calendar read access is included so you can import your existing bookings once, when you choose to.
- Access tokens are stored encrypted. Joinways never sees your Microsoft password.
- Disconnecting in Joinways deletes the stored tokens and stops Joinways' notifications on your mailbox.
- If your access to a shared mailbox stays broken for 30 minutes, Joinways asks you to reconnect.
What it does not do
- A distribution list is not a mailbox: its inquiries arrive through forwarding.
- Emails are sent from your own connected address, not from a shared mailbox.
- New inquiries come from the inquiry address. Your own mailbox files emails on existing clients and events.
- Shared mailboxes are checked every minute, not instantly.
How to connect Outlook to Joinways
The connection uses Microsoft OAuth on your Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com account. About two minutes. Depending on your organization's settings, an admin may need to approve Joinways the first time.
- 1
Open your integration settings
In Joinways, go to Settings, then Integrations, and choose Outlook.
- 2
Authorize with Microsoft
Sign in with the Microsoft 365 account of the mailbox to connect. Joinways stores no password.
- 3
Choose the mailbox
Individual mailbox, or a shared one your team answers from, like contact@ or events@.
- 4
Work from Joinways
Incoming and outgoing emails sync and attach to the right inquiries and events.
Where it helps day to day
Covering for a colleague at short notice
Your colleague is out, their client follows up. The record shows the whole exchange, no matter who received the emails: you reply fully informed, without digging through someone else's mailbox.
events@ handled by three people, no duplicates
Three people watch the shared mailbox. Every thread files onto its record, so everyone sees what has been answered and replies from their own address: no client gets two different replies.
The events@ mailbox nobody signs in to
events@ is a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox. You connect it with your own account and its Full Access. Joinways checks it every minute and turns each booking request into an inquiry.
Why connect Outlook to your event venue software?
Venues running on Microsoft 365 have the same problem as everyone else: the story of each booking is buried in individual mailboxes. Answers depend on who is at their desk, and covering for an absent colleague means forwarding threads around. Connecting Outlook puts the same complete history in front of the whole team, attached to the client and the event.
The integration authenticates through Microsoft OAuth and syncs both ways. Nothing changes in Outlook itself: your folders, your signature, your habits stay put. Your venue software simply sees the emails your business runs on.
And without the Outlook integration?
Each booking's emails stay in the mailbox of whoever handled it. When that person is away, a colleague has to ask for the thread to be forwarded, or starts from nothing.
Your venue software then shows only part of what was agreed with the client, since much of it is settled by email.
