KanMail Help Center

Getting started

KanMail turns your shared inbox into a Kanban board. Incoming email becomes a card; you move cards across lanes as work progresses, then mark them done. Around the board sit the CRM, Calendar, Money and reporting views.

Finding your way around

The navigation lives in the header on desktop and in the bottom bar (plus a More sheet) on phones. The buttons you see depend on your role and which modules your admin has enabled.

The Board & lanes

The board has four working lanes plus a separate Done view. Cards flow left–to–right as you work them.

Moving and finishing cards

• Drag a card between lanes to change its status. On a phone, the board scroll-snaps lane-by-lane; use Show Hidden Columns if a lane is collapsed.
• Open a card to read the email, see the AI summary, write notes, and reply.
• Mark done from inside the card, or drag it to Done. Done cards are archived out of the board but stay searchable in the Done view.

Email → cards

KanMail polls your mailboxes about once a minute. Each new message is funnelled through a single ingest step that decides what to do with it.

1. A new email arrives in a watched mailbox (the shared inbox or any mailbox you added under My Mailboxes).
2. KanMail checks it against the ignore and spam sender lists, and de-duplicates by Message-ID so a forwarded copy doesn’t create a second card.
3. If it passes, a new card is created in the New / Inbox lane and matched to a client / project where possible.
4. If AI auto-processing is on, the card is summarised and classified (unless it’s too short or a trivial “thanks” reply — those are skipped).

CRM modules

Open CRM to work your business records. The CRM is organised into entity tabs. Which tabs you see depends on your role.

List view vs Kanban view

Every CRM tab offers two layouts. Switch with the List / Kanban buttons in the toolbar (your choice is remembered).

• List — a sortable table. Toggle Comfortable / Compact density, hover a row for Open / Edit / quick-status, tick checkboxes to bulk-change status, and page through results.
• Kanban — cards grouped into columns by status (or any other field). Drag a card between columns to change its value — the same drag-to-move feel as the email board.

Search & filter

In list view, type in the Search box to find records instantly (it searches as you type). Each drop-down filter narrows by a field — for example only Active companies. Set up a view you like, then click Save view to keep that search, filter and sort as a named chip you can click again later.

Click a company row to open its Company 360 page — one screen with that client’s contacts, quotes, invoices, projects, time and files.

Quotes & invoices

Quotes and invoices each move through a status workflow. You change status from the record’s status field, the list’s quick-status arrow, a bulk action, or by dragging the card on the Kanban.

Invoice statuses

An invoice starts as draft, becomes validated once it’s final, then sent to the client, and finally paid. (You can also jump validated → paid, or mark an invoice abandoned.) The sent and paid dates are stamped automatically the first time a card reaches those states.

Quote statuses

A quote is draft, then sent, then either accepted or refused (a refused quote can be re-sent). Quotes also carry a sales pipeline stage (lead → qualified → proposal → won / lost) so you can track them on a kanban.

Time Billing

Logged time appears under Time Billing as rows marked unbilled, billed or written‑off. Unbilled time is summed per company so you (or accounting) can review what’s ready to invoice. The Company 360 page surfaces unbilled hours for that client.

Calendar

The Calendar view shows your bookings in Month, Week or Day layouts (Week by default, 08:00–19:00). Use the View: selector to see My, Team or a specific user’s calendar, export a Report CSV, or Subscribe to copy an iCal feed URL into your phone/desktop calendar.

Booking time from a card

The left rail of the Calendar lists your open cards grouped by lane (Priority, New / Inbox, In Progress, Pending) under a Cards heading.

1. Find the card you want to schedule in the left rail.
2. Drag it onto a time slot on the calendar grid — you’ll see “Added to calendar”.
3. Drag or resize the event to adjust it. Use the trash icon on an event to delete the booking.

Accepting emailed meeting invites

When someone emails you a meeting invite (a .ics calendar attachment), KanMail recognises it and puts it in a Pending invitations strip above the calendar grid (with a count badge).

1. Open Calendar. The invite shows its title, time, location and organiser.
2. Click Accept to add it to your calendar, or Decline to dismiss it.
3. If your CalDAV connection is set up, an accepted invite is also pushed to your Nextcloud calendar so it appears on your phone.

Per-card discussion & chat

Card discussion (team thread)

Every card has a Discussion thread so your team can talk about that specific email without leaving KanMail.

1. Open the card and go to its Work tab.
2. Scroll to Discussion.
3. Type your message (placeholder “Write a message to the team…”) and click Send — or press Ctrl/Cmd + Enter.

It’s a plain team thread — visible to your colleagues, kept with the card.

Hugo Chat (the chat bubble)

If your admin has enabled chat, a floating chat bubble sits in the corner of the app. Open it for a global Feed and DM channels, and to message Hugo. The same Feed channel can be bridged to a Telegram bot so you can keep up from your phone (see Telegram access).

Dashboard widgets

The first tab inside the CRM view is your Dashboard — a board of KPI tiles and charts. Above it sit fixed hero cards (Open invoices, Quotes awaiting, Needs contact, Cards in work). Below, you can build your own widgets.

Adding a chart widget

1. On the CRM Dashboard tab, click + Add widget.
2. Choose an Entity type (Companies, Invoices, Quotes, Time Billing…).
3. Pick an Aggregate — Count, Sum of a field, Count / total by a field, or per period over a date.
4. Pick a Visualisation: Stat tile, Bar chart, Line chart, Pie chart or List. (For per-period data you can also group by Month / Quarter / Year and overlay each year.)
5. Optionally give it a Title, then click Add.

Each widget has Move up / down, Edit and Remove controls. Your dashboard layout is saved for you.

The Report view

The top-level Report view is a fixed analytics dashboard — separate from the configurable CRM Dashboard. It shows:

• Incoming Cards by day / week / month.
• Planned tasks & cards.
• Time spent by client / project for the current year.
• Planned time this month and the next three months.
• ClauDev reports where integrated.

There’s nothing to configure here — it’s a read-only snapshot. To build your own charts, use the CRM Dashboard widgets instead.