Problem Description
A user reported that emails sent from their sales team do not appear in Vitally's Active Conversations section, despite the customer being a contact in their CRM.
Potential Reasons for the Issue
End User Record Creation Timing:
Emails will only sync to Active Conversations if the customer record exists in Vitally at the time the email is sent.Disconnected Email Accounts:
The sender’s email account may not be properly connected to Vitally or connected at all. The sender must give Vitally permission to sync their emails into Vitally.Integration Delays or Errors:
Sync issues between the CRM (e.g., Salesforce) or email platform (e.g., Gmail, Outlook) and Vitally may cause delays or omissions in email syncing.BCC-only recipients:
If the customer's email address only appeared in the BCC field of an email, whether it syncs depends on whether the sending provider includes BCC data in the mailbox payload. Gmail, for example, strips BCC from the stored copy in most cases. When BCC data is present, Vitally captures it — but if the provider omitted it, that email will not sync.Sender email matches a Vitally team member:
If the sender's email address exists in Vitally as both an end-user and a team member, Vitally treats the message as outbound/team-sent rather than an inbound customer reply. If that address is the only external participant in the thread, the message does not sync because no end-user participants remain.
Step-by-Step Solutions
Step 1: Confirm End User Record Creation Timing
Check if the customer record exists in Vitally:
Go to the customer’s page in Vitally
Verify that the record was created before the email was sent
If the record did not exist, this would be a reason as to why the email is not in Vitally
Step 2: Verify Email Account Connection
Ensure the sender’s email account is connected to Vitally:
Log in to Vitally and navigate to Settings > Integrations (under Connectors) > Email Accounts
Confirm that the send's email account (e.g., Gmail, Outlook) is connected and properly synced
Reconnect the email account if it is disconnected or have the sender log in to give Vitally permission to sync their emails with tracked Users in Vitally
Step 3: Re-sync your recent emails
Go to Settings > My Profile > Email & Calendar Settings.
Select your connected Google or Outlook account.
Click Re-sync recent emails. This imports emails starting from two months ago and can be run once per day. The re-sync only covers your own mailbox, so if the missing email is on a colleague's thread, they need to run it from their own profile.
Check whether the missing email now appears in the conversation.
Step 4: Check CRM Integration
Ensure that the CRM integration is active:
Navigate to Settings > Integrations (under Connectors) > find your CRM in Vitally.
Confirm the integration status and troubleshoot any errors.
Step 5: Provide the Missing Email for Investigation
Locate the original email in the sender’s inbox.
Download the email file:
For Gmail: Use the three-dot menu and select "Download message."
For Outlook: Use File > Save As to save the email as a file.
Share the email file with Vitally support to investigate why it did not sync.
Step 6: Check for team member/end-user email collision
If a reply is missing and the sender's email belongs to someone who is both a tracked User and a Vitally team member, this collision is the likely cause.
To confirm, check whether that email address exists on both a User record and a Vitally team member profile.
The fix is to test with a recipient email that has no Vitally team member record, or to ensure the person replying uses a different address from their team member account.
Step 7: Check the address on the email against the User's record
Open the tracked User's profile in Vitally and note the email address on the record.
Compare it to the address the message was actually sent to or received from.
If the two differ, that's your cause. Vitally attaches a message to a User by matching an address in the to, from, or cc field against the email on a tracked User record. An address that appears on no User record has nothing to attach to.
If the contact changed their email address, the change should flow through on its own. Your integration supplies the User's email from a designated email field, and that value is re-sent on every sync pass, which updates the existing record. The external ID only tells Vitally which record to find, it does not control the email. You can see which field is designated under Settings > Integrations (under Connectors) > your integration > Users/Contacts.
One exception: if the email address itself is mapped as the external ID, changing it at the source creates a new User record instead of updating the existing one, and the original record loses its integration sync. If you are looking at two profiles for the same person, this is usually why.
FAQ
1. Why don’t emails sent before the user record was created appear in Active Conversations?
Emails sync only after the customer record exists in Vitally. Emails sent prior to this will not backfill into the system.
2. Can I manually sync missing emails?
Yes. From your Email & Calendar Settings, you can trigger a re-sync of your recent emails. Select your connected Google or Outlook account and click Re-sync recent emails. This attempts to import all emails from the past two months and is limited to once per day. Reconnecting integrations or updating traits may also trigger a new sync.
3. How do I check if my email account is connected to Vitally?
If you're an Admin: go to Settings > Integrations (under Connectors) > select the email integration in Vitally and confirm the status of your email integration. If you're not an admin and want to check your own connection, go to Settings > My Profile > Email & Calendar settings.
4. Can Vitally support recover missing emails?
We may be able to help. Providing the original email file can help Vitally support investigate and potentially resolve syncing issues.
5. Why does a conversation appear in Vitally but not in my Gmail inbox?
Vitally aggregates conversations from all your connected email accounts, so a message can be visible in Vitally even if it's no longer in your inbox. This is usually because the email was deleted, either intentionally or by accident, after it synced. Check your Trash and Spam/filtered folders in Gmail first. Vitally can't troubleshoot or restore emails that are missing from your Gmail account, since that's outside our platform's control — for further help, reach out to your Gmail administrator.
6. Why doesn't an email appear in Vitally even though it was sent to a known contact?
Vitally matches a message to a User by looking for a tracked User whose email address appears in the to, from, or cc field. If that User's record in Vitally holds a different address than the one on the message, there is no match and the email does not sync. Compare the email on the User's profile against the address on the message.
7. A contact's email changed in our CRM. Will Vitally pick up the new address?
Yes, as long as your CRM supplies that contact's email to Vitally. The value is re-sent on every sync pass and updates the existing record, so no duplicate User is created. Two things to watch: a blank email at the source will not clear the address already in Vitally, and if the email address is being used as the external ID, changing it creates a new User rather than updating the old one.
8. I edited a User's email in Vitally by hand and now our CRM won't update it. Why?
Manually editing a User's email in Vitally marks that address as protected, and integrations skip it from then on. There is no self-serve way to remove the protection. Reach out to Vitally support and we can clear the override so your CRM controls the email again.