The Agent Hub automatically processes incoming emails and answers them with the help of AI – directly from within Xentral. To give it access to your messages, you connect your existing mailbox to the Agent Hub using a forwarding rule. Your existing email addresses and your mail infrastructure remain completely unchanged. Here you can learn how to set up the email integration, create blocking rules for pre-filtering incoming emails, and which permissions you need.
With the Agent Hub, you can have incoming emails processed and answered automatically. For this purpose, each Agent Hub instance receives its own email address to which you forward messages from your existing mailbox.
The setup takes place directly in your existing mail system, for example in Gmail or Microsoft 365. You do not need to migrate or set up an existing mailbox again. Your existing email addresses remain as usual. New messages are additionally forwarded to the Agent Hub.
This procedure is also common for many ticket, helpdesk, and AI systems.
Tip
It is best to start with a clearly defined use case and a single email address.
Well-suited examples include:
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Return requests
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Support requests
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Orders
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Supplier inquiries
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Internal service mailboxes
Example:
returns@company.com → forward to your Agent Hub address
or
support@company.com → forward to your Agent Hub address
This way, you can test the Agent Hub specifically for a concrete process and expand it step by step later.
Each Agent Hub instance has its own email address, the Inbox address. You forward messages from your existing mailbox to this address. You can find it in the Agent Hub under Settings > Email integration and on the Home page in the Ready in 2 steps area.
Example:
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Your existing address: support@company.com
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Agent Hub address: d8d3ba5z-c770-4f59-8781-f39rvdf8ea63@xentral.help
When a customer writes to support@company.com, the message is automatically forwarded to the Agent Hub and processed there as a task.
You can decide yourself which messages are forwarded. Either you forward all emails of an address or only specific messages, for example based on sender, subject, or recipient address.
To enable the Agent Hub to process your incoming emails, you set up forwarding to the Agent Hub address in your mail system. You decide yourself whether all emails of an address are forwarded or only specific ones – for example based on sender, subject, or recipient address:
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Only orders
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Only invoices
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Only specific senders
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Only specific subject lines
In Microsoft 365 or Outlook, you can also create rules that automatically forward incoming messages to the Agent Hub. This works, for example, via Outlook rules, inbox rules, or the Exchange Admin Center.
Steps:
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Copy the Inbox address in the Agent Hub under Settings > Email integration using the copy icon.
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Open the settings of your mail provider.
In Gmail or Google Workspace, navigate to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
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Add the Agent Hub email address as a forwarding address.
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Enable automatic forwarding.
For outgoing emails, you set up a sending account in Xentral. This determines which mailbox is used to send replies and which sender address is visible. You can find the settings for this in the Agent Hub under Settings > Email integration:
Field name |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Inbox address |
The email address of your Agent Hub instance. Forward your emails to this address so that the agents process them automatically. Use the copy icon to copy the address to the clipboard. |
|
Sender account |
Select the Xentral email account the agents use to send messages. The available accounts correspond to the email accounts stored in Xentral. |
|
BCC address (optional) |
All emails sent by the agents are additionally delivered as BCC to this address. Useful for internal documentation or quality control. |
The process is then as follows:
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A customer writes to your existing email address, for example support@company.com.
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The email is automatically forwarded to the Agent Hub.
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The Agent Hub processes the message and creates a proposal in the Tasks tab.
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You review the proposal and approve it. The reply is sent via the sending account set up in Xentral.
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If the customer replies again, the reply goes back to your existing email address and is forwarded to the Agent Hub again.
Tip
Use the same email address for incoming and outgoing mail so that customer replies automatically return to the Agent Hub via the same forwarding. If the incoming address and the sender account differ, both addresses must have forwarding to the Agent Hub.
This keeps the entire conversation connected.
All incoming and outgoing messages are automatically documented in Xentral COM. This makes previous messages, replies, and attachments available to you directly in the respective context.
Note
Notes for administrators and key users:
The Agent Hub works with a forwarding architecture and not with a direct IMAP or Exchange synchronization.
This means:
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No direct connection to your mailbox is established.
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No historical emails are synchronized.
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Only new messages that are forwarded to the Agent Hub address are processed.
Forwarding works with almost all common mail providers, including:
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Google Workspace / Gmail
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Microsoft 365 / Exchange
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Classic IMAP mail servers
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Hosting providers with mail rules
This makes it easy to integrate the Agent Hub into existing mail infrastructures.
In the Block rules tab in the Settings, you create fixed rules that discard matching emails before an agent sees them – similar to a blacklist. This way, you can prevent newsletters or specific senders from being processed as tasks, for example.
Steps:
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Click on Add Rule.
The form for adding a blocking rule is opened.
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Fill in the fields in the form.
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Click on Add Rule.
The fields in detail:
Field name |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Email Field to Check |
The email field to be checked: From (Sender) or Subject. |
|
Matching Type |
Defines how the value is compared: Exact Match, Contains, Starts With, Ends With, or Regex Pattern. |
|
Value |
The value the selected email field is checked against, e.g., "spam" or "@domain.com". |
|
Description (optional) |
Internal description of the rule. |
|
Rule active |
Enable the option so that the rule is applied. |
You can see all created rules in a table with the columns Field, Type, Value, Description, Status, and Actions. Using the actions, you can edit or delete a rule.
Note
Example: You want emails with the subject "SPAM" not to be processed by the AI at all. Create a rule with the email field "Subject", matching type "Contains", and value "SPAM". All incoming emails whose subject contains this value are then sorted out before AI processing.
Tip
In addition to your blocking rules, the Agent Hub automatically sorts out spam and pure notification emails that do not require any processing (e.g., shipping notifications or system messages). You can find these emails in the Tasks tab under More > Spam or More > Not relevant.
To use the Agent Hub, you need certain permissions in Xentral.
There are two options:
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Administrator access: If your user account has administrator rights, all required permissions are automatically in place.
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Individual permissions: If you are not an administrator, the following rights must be set:
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Addresses → permission "list"
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Orders → permission "list"
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Delivery notes → permission "list"
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Items → permission "list"
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Analytics Platform → permission "all"
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Important
All listed permissions must be active at the same time.
Note
With the general availability of the Agent Hub as of 10/01/2026, the permissions for the Agent Hub are integrated into the user permissions of Xentral. You then assign them as usual for the respective user in the Rights tab. You can learn more about assigning permissions in the article User Permissions Assignment (Workflow).