Summary
"Centralized Connect" is a way of connecting the email (and calendar) of all Users, managed centrally by an admin, rather than each User needing to connect their account to Planhat individually
This simplifies the process of setting up Users, and makes it easier to ensure that all relevant emails are synced into Planhat
With Centralized Connect, your Planhat tenant is set to either Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook (the same as if not using Centralized Connect)
As a Planhat admin, you set up Centralized Connect in the "Settings" Global Tool
Additionally/separately, you can specify for the Inbox and/or Sent labels/folders to be automatically synced
Who is this article for?
Planhat admins who want to connect up Gmail or Outlook for their team/organization
You should also be an admin on the Gmail or Outlook side
Article contents
Introduction
This feature is currently in Early Access, so it is available in some Planhat tenants before General Availability.
"Centralized Connect" is a way for email sync to work centrally:
instead of having one token for each person's email address connected in Planhat (i.e. each User connects their email account to Planhat individually, e.g. as described here) ...
... there is one token for the entire organization (i.e. the connection is made and managed on a whole-tenant level, for all Users)
Centralized Connect helps make the Planhat setup process quick and easy. It reduces the steps that individual Users need to take, by allowing an admin to carry out configuration for your whole organization, saving time by automating the process. It also further enhances connection reliability. It's important that as many relevant emails (from all Users) are synced into Planhat as possible, so that the full picture of communication with customers or prospects is available, giving a full 360-degree view, and meaning that all data is available for AI analysis - and Centralized Connect can help with this.
Centralized Connect is available for both Google Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. To begin, your tenant (i.e. your organization's copy of Planhat) will be set to your chosen option by Planhat staff.
You (as a Planhat admin) then follow the simple steps below to connect your organization's Gmail or Outlook to Planhat.
Although this automates the account connection part, it doesn't sync the actual emails; Users can individually configure which of their labels/folders to sync. Nevertheless, Planhat also has a separate option for admins to start (or stop) syncing one or both of the main folders ("Inbox" and/or "Sent") for all Users automatically; you can read about this in another article here. This setting means individual Users don't each need to take personal action to sync their emails.
📌 Definition
Throughout this article we are capitalizing the word "User", as User is the Planhat data model (equivalent to "object" in some other tools) corresponding to users of Planhat within your Planhat tenant - Users are you and your colleagues, also sometimes called "Team Members" in Planhat.
Preliminary step by Planhat staff
Before you (as a Planhat User) begin the process of setting up Centralized Connect, there is a step that needs to be carried out by a Planhat "Super Admin" - that is, a Planhat staff member (with an @planhat.com email address). This will typically be your Customer Manager (CSM).
The Planhat Super Admin should navigate to the "Settings" Global Tool, and go to the "Email Setup" tab within it (in the "Email Sync" category).
They will need to use the "Email Provider" dropdown menu (shown highlighted above) to select either:
"Google Gmail (Centralized Connect)", or
"Microsoft Outlook (Centralized Connect)"
... depending on the email provider your organization is using. Note that this is a selection for your whole Planhat tenant - so you can't have different Users with different providers. (The other "Google Gmail" and "Microsoft Outlook" options shown in the dropdown below refer to the other connection method, where each User individually connects their own accounts.)
After this, you (as a Planhat admin) now have steps to carry out to finish the setup. We describe these below. There are slightly different steps depending on whether you are using Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook. You can use the links below to jump to the relevant part of the article - particularly if you want Outlook, as Gmail is next!
Google Gmail
📌 Important to note
You should be a Google admin to follow these instructions.
Also, your Planhat Role needs to have the "Admin Access" workflow permission to be able to see the relevant part of the "Settings" Global Tool.
📌 Important to note
If your organization hasn't restricted Gmail/Calendar services within your Google Workspace, you can simply follow the steps below, but if you do have this additional security feature set up, you will first need to configure a new trusted app for Planhat in your Google Workspace, following the additional instructions here.
After a Planhat staff member ("Super Admin") has set your Planhat tenant to "Google Gmail (Centralized Connect)" ...
Navigate to the "Email Setup" part (in the "Email Sync" category) of the "Settings" Global Tool
You will see a list of instructions to follow, as shown below. We will go through these points in the next steps
Click the image to view it enlarged
For step one, you can click directly on the link in the app - or alternatively here: https://admin.google.com/ac/owl/domainwidedelegation
Sign into Google if prompted
Note that you should sign in with a Google administrator account
As described in step two in the app, click on "Add new" ...
... and enter the "Client ID" and "OAuth Scopes" shown in Planhat into the Google modal - note the "copy" buttons on the right-hand side of these fields in Planhat, which make the copy/paste process really easy
As stated as step three in the instructions within Planhat, click on "Authorize"
Wait until it has finished loading, and a new line has appeared for Planhat within your Google Workspace
Click the image to view it enlarged
Back in Planhat, ensure that the email address of your Google Workspace administrator is stated in the box in step 4
This field will be automatically populated with the email address of the current User, i.e. you, but you can adjust it if desired. (The email address can't be that of a Planhat staff member - we can't do this for you)
Click the image to view it enlarged
Finally, as stated in step five in Planhat, click on "Connect" (in Planhat) to finalize the setup
This will initiate the "User Delegation Sync". (Note that you may need to refresh your browser window to prompt it to update to show the loading wheel)
Click the image to view it enlarged
This process goes through all the applicable (active) Users in the Planhat tenant, and attempts to match these with the email addresses of the Centralized Connect Google Workspace connection
The process may take some time if there are a lot of Users - from a few minutes to a few hours
Once completed (and you may need to refresh your browser window to get it to update), you will see a message confirming this, as shown below. (You'll also see the option to "Disconnect", in case you want to do so in future)
Click the image to view it enlarged
Now, when each Planhat User goes to their User Profile by clicking on their name in the top-right corner of Planhat and selecting "Profile" (and refreshes the browser if necessary to reflect updates) ...
... and they go to the "Email" tab, they will find that their email has been connected and their labels are listed:
... and similarly, if they go to the "Calendar" tab, they'll see that that has been automatically connected too.
📌 Important to note
Each User needs the "Email sync" and "Calendar sync" workflow permissions enabled for their Role in order to see the "Email" and "Calendar" tabs in their User Profile.
🚀 Tip
It's important to note that the process described above automatically connects the email account for each User, but (by itself) it doesn't automatically start syncing email.
If you would like to set up automatic email sync for your organization/tenant too, you can do this for the "Inbox" and/or "Sent" labels. This is configured within the "Settings" Global Tool, where you have just set up the automated connection. You can read more about this in a separate article here.
Alternatively/additionally, each User can simply configure which emails to sync by using the checkboxes for the different labels in the "Email" tab of their individual User Profile (as we pictured above).
🚀 Tip
After you have set this up, if a new User gets created/activated (with an email address), the Centralized Connect process will automatically kick in to connect them.
🚀 Tip
If you want to manually trigger the User Delegation Sync at a later date, e.g. if you experience any issues with the initial sync, or a User is added without an email address but then you add the email address in later, you can click the "Rebuild" button.
Possible preliminary stage: setting up a trusted app
In most cases, you can simply follow the instructions above. However, depending on your organization's Google Workspace setup, you may have additional security features enabled, which would mean you need a few extra steps (carried out at the start) to ensure you can successfully connect Planhat to your Gmail and Google Calendar.
Scenario
Firstly, let's just confirm the setup we are referring to, where the additional preliminary steps are required.
Within your Google Workspace (Admin console), and go to "Security" > "API Controls".
Click the image to view it enlarged
What we are referring to is "restricted Google services". Whereas in the example screenshot below there are 0 restricted Google services, if you have restricted the relevant Google services here (set up by clicking "Manage Google services" as shown below), then that could prevent the connection to Planhat from working properly.
Click the image to view it enlarged
If you do have restrictions set up, you have two options. Either you can set it to "Unrestricted", or if you don't want to do that, you can follow the simple steps below to "trust" Planhat.
Method
You can click the images to view them enlarged.
Go to the same part of the Google Workspace as before (shown below), and click "Manage app access"
Click on "Configure new app"
From within the Planhat Settings, copy your "Client ID". (You can click on the button on the right-hand side to do so)
Paste it into the box in Google, and click on "Search"
Click on the project
Click "Continue"
Select "Trusted" and "Continue"
Click "Finish"
Microsoft Outlook
📌 Important to note
You should be a Microsoft admin to follow these instructions.
Also, your Planhat Role needs to have the "Admin Access" workflow permission to be able to see the relevant part of the "Settings" Global Tool.
After a Planhat staff member ("Super Admin") has set your Planhat tenant to "Microsoft Outlook (Centralized Connect)" ...
Navigate to the "Email Setup" part (in the "Email Sync" category) of the "Settings" Global Tool
Click on the "Connect" button
Click the image to view it enlarged
You will be redirected to the admin consent flow. Firstly select your account ...
... and when asked about permissions, click on "Accept"
This will close the Microsoft modal. In Planhat, you will see that Centralized Connect is connected, and a sync is in progress. Depending on how many (active) Users there are to sync, this process may take from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours. (UPN Sync = User Principal Name Sync)
Click the image to view it enlarged
After giving it some time, you should refresh your browser window so that it shows the updated information. Once the sync is finished, you will see the message "Sync is completed." (You'll also see the option to "Disconnect", in case you want to do so in future)
Click the image to view it enlarged
Once everything is connected, when each Planhat User goes to their User Profile (by clicking on their name in the top-right corner of Planhat and selecting "Profile" (and refreshes the browser if necessary to reflect updates) ...
... and they go to the "Email" tab, they will find that their email has been connected and their folders are listed:
... and similarly, if they go to the "Calendar" tab, they'll see that that has been automatically connected too.
📌 Important to note
Each User needs the "Email sync" and "Calendar sync" workflow permissions enabled for their Role in order to see the "Email" and "Calendar" tabs in their User Profile.
🚀 Tip
It's important to note that the process described above automatically connects the email account for each User, but (by itself) it doesn't automatically start syncing email.
If you would like to set up automatic email sync for your organization/tenant too, you can do this for the "Inbox" and/or "Sent Items" folders. This is configured within the "Settings" Global Tool, where you have just set up the automated connection. You can read more about this in a separate article here.
Alternatively/additionally, each User can simply configure which emails to sync by using the checkboxes for the different folders in the "Email" tab of their individual User Profile (as we pictured above).
🚀 Tip
After you have set this up, if a new User gets created/activated (with an email address), the Centralized Connect process will automatically kick in to connect them.
🚀 Tip
If you want to manually trigger the User Delegation sync at a later date, e.g. if you experience any issues with the initial sync, or a User is added without an email address but then you add the email address in later, you can click the "Rebuild" button.
Next steps
Once you have set up Centralized Connect in your tenant, and therefore connected the account of each User to Planhat, you can optionally choose to automatically sync the emails in specific ("Inbox" and/or "Sent") labels/folders. To read about how to do this, see our separate article here.
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