Communication in Odoo by email¶

Communication in Odoo related to records such as CRM opportunities, sales orders, invoices, … have a discussion thread called chatter, often displayed on the right side of the record.

On the chatter, you can send direct emails or Odoo notifications to the followers of a document (depending on their notification preferences), log internal notes, send WhatsApp messages or SMSes, and schedule activities.

If a follower replies to a message, the reply updates the chatter, and Odoo relays it to the followers as a notification. All emails - outgoing and incoming - appear in the same chatter.

Odoo Online and Odoo.sh users¶

On Odoo Online and Odoo.sh, outgoing and incoming emails work out of the box, nothing needs to be done. Everything is already configured on your subdomain.

By default, outgoing emails use the following notification email address notifications@company-name.odoo.com.

Using another domain¶

If you prefer not to have outgoing emails sent from Odoo’s subdomain @company-name.odoo.com but instead from your own domain, additional configuration will be necessary on the domain and within Odoo. This introduces an extra layer of complexity and necessitates technical knowledge (mainly regarding DNS and mail protocols).

By adding a domain and configuring the administration access rights, you can also access the new domain alias page to configure the alias of your companies. If only one domain is configured, this domain will be shared by all companies on the database.

If you want to keep using Odoo’s mail server, you will have to configure the SPF and DKIM.

If you want to use your own mail server, you will have to follow the mail server provider’s specific documentation.

For incoming emails, after adding your own domain, replies from customers will come back to your domain, and you will need to use one of the three possible ways to get the emails back into Odoo (using either incoming mail server, redirection/forwarding or DNS MX record). Everything is covered in the Manage inbound messages documentation.

On-premise users¶

If you are on-premise, you will have to completely configure your outgoing and incoming emails:

For outgoing emails, you will need to use an SMTP server and a custom domain.
For incoming emails, set the frequency at which you fetch new emails low enough for responsiveness but high enough in order not to stress your system or provider. Due to this reason and the simplicity of this configuration, we usually advise on using incoming mail servers. To use an SMTP server, check out the “Use a custom domain for inbound messages” documentation.

Using a third-party provider’s mail server¶

Odoo’s documentation also covers several popular mail servers. As they require specific authorizations and configuration, they add a layer of complexity. For this reason, using Odoo’s outgoing mail server is recommended.

Note

Every provider has its own limitations. Research the desired provider before configuring it. For example, Outlook and Gmail might not be suitable for large marketing campaigns.