We love the Emails & Activities feature - but it has taken us a bit of time to understand the way it works across boards. First, a quick overview of what we’ve found out about how it currently works and then a request on how we would love for it to be able to work.
How it works
Most of the time in Monday user settings are managed from “My Profile”, workspace settings from “Manage Workspace”, and then Board settings from “Board Settings”. However, Emails & Activities works a little differently - while they are configured within a board, they are applied at an account, board or user level. Here is what I’ve learned:
Emails and Activities Connected Accounts - Account Level
When you add an email within a board, you are actually adding it to all boards in all workspaces that you are a part of, including boards that you are not a member of. For example if John integrates his email in Workspace A, Board 1 then it will also log those email activities in Workspace B, Board 2 - even if the person who set up the integration is not part of Workspace B, Board 2. An email integration is essentially an “Account level” setting that can be set by any member of a board. At first I thought this was a bug, but support has informed me this is the expected behavior.
Emails & Activities Automations - Board Level
This is configured in the pane, but only applies to the board where the setting is created.
Emails & Activities Default Sharing & Email Signature - User Level
The interface says “this will only affect your personal account” - but the setting seems to apply to all boards within an account - so sort of an user/account level setting I think.
Challenges
While the functionality is great, there are also some limitations with the current system:
A board admin or owner has limited insight into or control over what emails & activities are being shared by users on a board. Board users can setup connected accounts in different ways with different configurations that impact all users on the board. Image for example if any user added to a board could setup an automation that applied to all boards across all workspaces - regardless of whether that person was a member of those other boards. Not great.
We have some boards that use a shared email - for example help@usu.edu. Currently every user who wants to send emails have to setup the connection - and each person that sets it up can have different settings - that then apply to every board in every workspace. When multiple have the same email connected - the last person to change the settings are the ones that are applied. No way to tell who that was as far as I can tell.
There is no way to have board specific Emails & Activities settings when it comes to which emails or connected to a board, how those emails are logged or shared. We have a number of scenarios where board specific settings would be super helpful.
It is is different configuration pattern than anything else in Monday as far as I can tell where you setup and configure something within a board and some of those settings apply to the user or all boards. Even though there is some help text that explains this - it is not intuitive based on my own experience and others users in our organization.
What we would love to see
Board Specific Emails & Activities Settings
The ability to manage which email accounts are connected for which boards. For example I may want to connect my personal email with one board and a shared account with another board. Another use case may be that on one board I want to log all of my emails, but on another board I want to log emails BCC’d.
Board Connected Account
For shared emails - I would love to be able to add a shared account (help@usu.edu) and set the configuration for that account that applies to everyone in the account. That way, everyone who is a member of that account could send emails using that account.
Transparency for Board Owners
If board owners are not able to manage the emails that board users have setup or the configuration of those emails - it would be great to at least have some transparency into what accounts users have connected and how they are configured so that board owners can work with those users to update their settings as needed.
I would love to hear if other people are working through any of these issues or have other features on this you would like to see.
@mactoph I appreciate the details on your post. They helped me understand a little more of my own issues.
I have been in contact with support in regards to a potential security issue. When you use an ‘email’ column and put in your email address (or a coworkers) email address (thats connected), the Emails and Activities section will display the entire inbox for all to see. Not just emails your account has, but all emails from any connected account in the column.
Thanks @Audiomutt - I just voted up that issue you posted. It seems odd that support doesn’t recognize this as an issue. I have heard some updates to Emails & Activities are coming by the end of the year - but I’m not sure what those are, hopefully some of these issues are addressed!
Especially your no. 2 ‘love to see’ is a must for any team or teamwork.
And I also understand your number 1 would be a great addition to functionality.
I’m still looking for a work around without resorting to make.com or something similar, as for a small business costs add up quickly.
I wholeheartedly agree and note, with some dismay, that this post is now 3+ years old. Here are my own September 2025 suggestions, which will strongly resemble that (terrific) original post.
We have a law firm, so we create CRM “contacts” (judges or opposing lawyers, for example) who surface in more than one workspace because each client gets a workspace of their own. In other words, many of our clients have the same judge or face the same opposing attorney.
I know there are some ways to mitigate the impact of related problems with stricter email habits in a source email program like Outlook or Gmail, e.g., cutting down on forwarded chains. But they are not perfect solutions, and they don’t reach the core problem here.
Two good solutions (plus a dubious throw-in) would be …
A toggle that, by default, blocks the replication of emails from a contact across serial workspaces or boards unless the admin affirmatively flips the toggle to disable that barrier. Even better, the admin could view a searchable dropdown menu for that contact, right in their profile card, that allowed them to select which locations could receive that cross-pollination.
Improve the existing Filter option to allow the exclusion of (i) senders you don’t care about in that particular contact’s card, or (ii) messages written to/from that contact that are not related to the specific board or workspace where you are currently working. Not as nice as #1, but way better than the status quo.
As a “mediocre but I guess I could make it work” alternative, change the Delete option to let the user choose between erasing a given message everywhere it appears versus deleting it only in that timeline, i.e., because it doesn’t belong there. Cumbersome, brain-deadening, and time-consuming for sure. But at least you could mop out some of the clutter.
Hi all, I just published a video post on this exact subject. You can check it out here in case it’s of use - https://youtu.be/SXRufyBlw5k
FYI the “sent from this item” filter in Emails & Activities does what Thomas mentioned as wish-for solution #2 ie it filters to only show items directly related the current item. You can save this filter and it will be applied in Emails & Acivities everywhere for you but I believe the filter is user specific so each user would need to enable it for it to take effect. IF you don’t enable it, emails & activities will show all emails from all DIRECTLY CONNECTED ITEMS. ie if Contact A is connected to Deal 2 and Deal 2 is connected to Account X but Account X is not connected directly to Contact A, then by default you will see all emails fro all email accounts you have permission to view for both Contact A and Deal 2 in BOTH Contact A and Deal 2. And in both Deal 2 and Account X you will be able to see all emails sent to Deal 2 and Account X. Hope this helps.
While the native Emails & Activities feature doesn’t yet provide this kind of flexibility, one option to consider is our Email to Tasks for monday.com. It allows you to selectively convert only the emails you need into tasks on specific boards, giving you more control over what gets logged and where. This way, sensitive or irrelevant emails don’t flood every workspace, and you can keep communication tied to the right place.
It doesn’t solve all the limitations you’ve highlighted, but it can help reduce the noise and bring more structure when working with multiple boards and accounts.
