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Integrating with Apple Mail
If you have ever found yourself looking back through old emails trying to locate key details about a client interaction, or you’ve tried locating a conversation thread that remains elusive, then Daylite has the perfect solution. Daylite helps you record every email interaction with your Contacts, using a powerful feature called Daylite Mail Assistant, an extension for Apple Mail. Daylite Mail Assistant allows you to easily add new People into Daylite as Contacts and save a copy of emails that are sent and received in the person’s history. While it is quick and easy to add new People to Daylite in this way, you can also add information such as Companies, job titles, phone numbers, addresses and more, by editing the Contact’s information right from within Apple Mail. It is a powerful way of ensuring that all your team members stay up to date with the latest communication.
The Daylite Mail Assistant comes installed with Daylite, but will need to be turned on and given permission to access Apple Mail. Open Apple Mail and go to Settings > General > Extensions.
Next, click the checkbox beside "Daylite Mail Assistant" and confirm by clicking the "Turn On" button in the alert that pops up.
That's it! You have successfully turned on Daylite Mail Assistant.
The Daylite Mail Assistant settings can be managed in Daylite by going to Daylite > Settings > Mail Assistant.
You can choose to add emails to Daylite manually, or have them automatically added for you, whether it's an email you have received or an email you are composing. When auto-adding is turned on, only emails that are from or to a Daylite contact are automatically added to Daylite, and only emails that you view. However, when opening an email conversation (or "thread"), all applicable emails in that thread are added to Daylite, even if they are out of view.
The auto-adding feature is available on macOS 14 Sonoma or later. If you are on macOS 13 Ventura, you will not see the auto-add option, and will need to manually add your emails to Daylite.
You can also choose which items to have linked to an email when an email is added to Daylite, including Contacts, Users, Opportunities, Projects, and Attachments. Linking your emails to your Contacts, Opportunities, and Projects is especially important, because Daylite will then show your email communication chronologically in the Activity View in Daylite, making it easy to find your client email history later on.
Daylite Mail Assistant appears as a banner at the top of each incoming email. If you would like to add this email and it's contents to Daylite click the Add to Daylite button.
This will open the Daylite Mail Assistant window and add the email to Daylite at the same time. If the email is from an existing Daylite Contact, or there is a Daylite Contact in the To, Cc, or Bcc fields, the email will be auto-linked to the Contact, as well as the active Opportunity or Project the Contact is linked to.
Viewing an email that has been previously added to Daylite, you can see the email banner has changed, letting you know the email has been added, and in this case linked to one Person and one Opportunity. If you would like to open the Daylite Mail Assistant window again, click the Links & Details button.
The email banner may not update right away when you first add an email to Daylite. You may have to leave the email for the banner to update.
From the Daylite Mail Assistant window, you can view a Contact's detail card by clicking on the arrow to the right of their name. From here you can view all of their details, but to see their full history in the Activity View, click the Show in Daylite button.
If you click this button Daylite will then show you the full history of this Contact, including the linked email in the Activity View.
Adding an email to Daylite you're about to send is a quick and easy process, and is encouraged because then you have a record of any outgoing correspondence in one easy-to-view location.
Once you have composed a new message in Apple Mail and added all of your recipients, you can open Daylite Mail Assistant by clicking the icon in the toolbar. If you have auto-adding turned on, the email will be added to Daylite, otherwise you can click the "Add to Daylite" button. Any Daylite Contacts will be automatically linked to the email.
If you have auto-adding setting turned on, you don't need to open the Daylite Mail Assistant. In this case, the email will be automatically added to Daylite when you send the email, as long as there is a Daylite contact in the To, Cc, or Bcc field.
Pro Tip: A great practice is to create a New Task reminding yourself to follow up with this email if you haven't heard back within a few days. Make sure to give your task a due date, and when you get your reminder, it will be linked to the email.
As with any object created in Daylite, it is vital to link all the important information to your emails so everything is together in one place. Thankfully, Daylite makes this easy. In most cases, Daylite automatically links the most important information for you, such as the associated contacts and any Opportunity or Project linked to those contacts. But it's easy to add other things as well.
Whenever you add an email to Daylite, whether you add it manually or it is automatically added for you, any of the email participants with an email address matching an existing Contact in your Daylite Contact list will be automatically linked to the email. This includes both People and Companies.
By default, when a Person is linked to an email, the Person's primary Company is also linked. If you don't like this behaviour, you can turn it off by going to Daylite > Settings > Companies and unchecking the option "Auto Link Person Notes and Emails to the Person's Default Company".
When you add an email to Daylite from or to a Daylite Contact, that Contact's currently active Project and/or Opportunity will be automatically linked to the email as well. If the Contact has multiple active Projects or Opportunities linked to them, those Projects or Opportunities will be shown as suggested links, and you can click the ones you want to have linked to the email.
You can also create new Projects and Opportunities directly from the Daylite Mail Assistant, making it easy to capture new leads (as Opportunities), or begin new Projects for a repeat client.
Whenever Daylite Mail Assistant identifies Contacts, Projects, or Opportunities that might be related to the current email, it will show them in a grey outlined button, making it easy for you to identify and link the correct information to each email. Clicking on a suggested item will link the item to the email, and if the email hasn't been added to Daylite yet it will also add the email to Daylite. The item will turn blue to indicate it is linked, and you can click the item again to unlink it.
In some cases an email might be related to someone who isn't actually a part of the email thread. When this happens the email can be added to that person manually. Use the magnifying glass icon to search for the person and manually link them to the email. The email will now be added to that person's history in Daylite. You can search for and link to other Daylite items as well.
Daylite Mail Assistant is an excellent capture tool that really helps to clear up your inbox, thanks in part to Tasks.
From any email that requires a follow-up or a next action, simply create a Task and it will be linked to the email and the person who sent it. Then you can review your Tasks any time you want to, either from the Contact's Activity View or from the My Tasks section of Daylite. Be sure to add a due date and reminder to your Task so you don't forget about it.
Pro Tip: Try to state clearly what needs to be done, and what the desired outcome would be when creating titles for your Tasks.
For example, rather than using the title Follow up, try something like Call Frank to see if he wants to move forward with the Project. Tasks written with the desired outcome are more helpful when reviewing your Tasks at a later date.
You can create a new Appointment directly from Daylite Mail Assistant, which is then viewable in your Daylite Calendar. The email and the Contact will be linked to the Appointment, making it easy to review the details of your Appointment later.
If you have set up any optional Keywords for your emails, you can add them to an email from the Daylite Mail Assistant.
If you have set up any optional Categories for your emails, you can also add one from here.
You can set the permissions of an email to either Public, meaning it is visible to all Daylite users, or Private, so only you can see the email.
You could even apply a Permission set, so only a specific group of users can see the email in Daylite. This is helpful when dealing with sensitive subject matter that shouldn't be shared with everybody. For example, you could change the permissions so only the Management Team can view the email.
Pro Tip: If you would like all future emails added to Daylite to be Private, go to Settings > Default Values > Email and select Private. You can also set a default Category.
Here are three different scenarios where Daylite Mail Assistant can help.
First, create a new Daylite Contact. The name of the sender is displayed as a suggested Person with a "+" symbol, indicating they can be added to Daylite as a new Person.
Second, create a new Task. Often an email from a new contact requires a follow-up reminder or a next action. If you have already added your new contact to Daylite, then creating a new Task in Daylite Mail Assistant will automatically link the Task to that Contact.
Pro Tip: Set a due date and reminder on your Task so you're reminded about it later and it doesn't slip through the cracks.
Daylite Mail Assistant finds existing Contacts in Daylite based on their email address. So if someone you know emails you, but their Daylite contact doesn't have that email address, you can search for them and add the new email address to their Contact record.
The contact will appear as a suggested Person, and when you click on them a view pops up with the option to search Daylite. Search for the person's name, select the Person, and click "Add to Existing". Their new email address will be added to their existing Contact record in Daylite, and the Person will now be linked to the email.
Sometimes an email is related to a Contact who isn't actually a participant in the email conversation. Click the magnifying glass icon next to "Contacts" to search the Contact you want to link to this email. This is a one-time link only and it will not link future emails in the thread to this Contact automatically.
If the Contact you are searching for ends up not being in Daylite, the search view will give you the option to create a new Person or Company. After creating the new Contact, you can click the arrow next to their name to open their detail card, then click Edit to add any additional information such as Category or Keywords.
Pro Tip: If you're creating a new Contact from a generic email address such as [email protected], it's probably more useful to create a new Company rather than a Person, since those emails aren't usually from a specific person.
Last modified 2mo ago