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Agent-Hub: Setup & Settings

  • Updated

The Agent Hub automatically processes incoming emails and responds to them using AI — directly from Xentral. To give it access to your messages, you connect your existing mailbox to the Agent Hub via a forwarding rule. Your existing email addresses and your mail infrastructure remain completely unchanged. Here you will learn how to set up the email connection, configure incoming rules for automatic pre-sorting, and assign the necessary permissions.

Connecting emails to the Agent Hub

With the Agent Hub, you can have incoming emails automatically processed and answered. For this, each Agent Hub instance has 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 reconfigure any existing mailbox. Your existing email addresses remain as usual. New messages are additionally forwarded to the Agent Hub.

This method is also common in many ticketing, helpdesk, and AI systems.

Tip

Start with a clearly defined use case and a single email address.

Good options are, for example:

  • Return requests

  • Support inquiries

  • Orders

  • Supplier inquiries

  • 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 one concrete process and expand it step by step later.

How the email integration works

Each Agent Hub instance has its own email address. You forward messages from your existing mailbox to this address.

Example:

When a customer writes to support@company.com, the message is automatically forwarded to the Agent Hub and processed there.

You can decide 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.

Setting up email forwarding

For the Agent Hub to process your incoming emails, you set up a forwarding rule 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:

  • orders only

  • invoices only

  • specific senders only

  • specific subject lines only

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:

  1. Open the settings of your email provider.

    In Gmail or Google Workspace, navigate to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

  2. Add the Agent Hub email address as a forwarding address.

  3. Activate automatic forwarding.

Sending and receiving replies

For outgoing emails, you set up a sending account in Xentral. This defines which mailbox replies are sent from and which sender address is visible. You can find the settings under Settings > Email Sending:

Field

Description

Sender account

Select the Xentral email account the Agent Hub uses to send messages. The available accounts correspond to the email accounts stored in Xentral.

BCC address (optional)

All emails sent by the agent are also delivered as BCC to this address. Useful for internal documentation or quality control.

The process is then:

  1. A customer writes to your existing email address, for example support@company.com.

  2. The email is automatically forwarded to the Agent Hub.

  3. The Agent Hub processes the message.

  4. The reply is sent via the sending account set up in Xentral.

  5. 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 messages, so that customer replies automatically return to the Agent Hub via the same forwarding rule. If the incoming address and the sender account are different, both addresses must have a forwarding rule to the Agent Hub.

This keeps the entire conversation connected.

All incoming and outgoing messages are automatically documented in Xentral COM. This means earlier messages, replies, and attachments are directly available in the respective context.

Note

Notes for administrators and key users:

The Agent Hub works with a forwarding architecture and not with direct IMAP or Exchange synchronization.

This means:

  • No direct connection to your mailbox is established.

  • No historical emails are synchronized.

  • Only new messages forwarded to the Agent Hub address are processed.

Forwarding works with almost all common email providers, including:

  • Google Workspace / Gmail

  • Microsoft 365 / Exchange

  • Classic IMAP mail servers

  • Hosting providers with mail rules

This makes it easy to integrate the Agent Hub into existing mail infrastructures.

Incoming rules

Via the Incoming rules tab in Settings, you define how incoming emails are filtered and routed before AI processing.

There are two sub-areas:

  • Incoming rules (before AI processing): Static routing rules that filter emails based on sender, subject, or other fields — before the AI processes the message.

  • Excluded domains (for ERP search): Domains that are not taken into account during the ERP search.

Steps:

  1. Click on Add rule.

  2. Fill in the fields in the form (rule name, email field, matching type, value, actions).

  3. Click on Add entry.

The fields in detail:

Field

Description

Rule name

Unique name for the rule, e.g. "Block spam from domain".

Check email field

The email field to be checked, e.g. subject, sender, or recipient.

Matching type

Defines how the value is compared, e.g. "Exact match" or "Contains".

Value

The value against which the selected email field is checked, e.g. "spam" or "@domain.com".

Description (optional)

Internal description of the rule.

Priority

Numeric value, default: 0. Rules with a higher value are checked first.

Actions

Defines what happens to emails that match the rule. Available actions:

  • route_to_agent – Forward message to a specific agent (parameter: agent name)

  • set_priority – Set message priority (parameter: number)

  • add_tag – Add tag (parameter: tag name)

  • ignore – Ignore email (no parameter)

You can combine multiple actions per rule.

Hinweis

Example: You want return requests to be automatically forwarded to your returns agent. Create a rule with email field "Subject", matching type "Contains", value "Return", and action route_to_agent with the parameter "Returns processing". All incoming emails whose subject contains the word "Return" are then passed directly to this agent — without manual pre-sorting.

Excluded domains (for ERP search)

Here you define which terms, addresses, or domains should be ignored when searching in the ERP — so that common terms from email texts are not searched as customers or suppliers.

Steps:

  1. Click on Add entry.

  2. Fill in the fields in the form (matching type, value, entity types).

  3. Click on Add entry.

The fields in detail:

Field

Description

Matching type

Defines how the value is compared, e.g. "Exact match" or "Contains".

Value

Term or address to be excluded from the ERP search, e.g. test@example.com.

Description (optional)

Internal description of the entry.

Entity types

Restricts the exclusion to customers, suppliers, or both. Leave empty to apply to all types.

Hinweis

Example: Your company name "Sample Corp" appears in every outgoing email signature. Without an exclusion, the Agent Hub would try to search for "Sample Corp" as a customer or supplier with every customer reply. Add the company name as a blocklist entry so that the ERP search only reacts to the actual sender data.

Click on Add entry to save the entry.

Agents

Via the Agents tab in Settings, you configure the individual AI agents of your Agent Hub instance. In the left sidebar you can see all created agents with their status — a green dot indicates that an agent is active. Select an agent to edit its settings.

Each agent has its own use-case-specific fields. For the Returns & Complaints agent, the following settings are available, for example:

Field

Description

Return policy (days)

Number of days during which customers can return products. Typical reference value: 14 days statutory + 7 calendar days goodwill.

Warranty policy (days)

Number of days during which customers have warranty coverage. Example: 2 years = 730 days.

Items excluded from exchange

Free text field: Define here which items are excluded from returns or exchanges.

Click on Save to apply the agent settings.

Below the settings fields you will find two expandable sections:

Rule overview

Displays all decision rules of the agent in a table with the columns Name, Conditions, and Actions. Via the Business / Technical toggle you can switch between a readable view for business teams and a technical view. The download button allows you to export the overview.

The following rules are pre-configured for the Returns & Complaints agent:

Name

Conditions

Actions

Cancellation before shipping

Customer wants to cancel → order not yet shipped, released

Cancel order

Amazon right of withdrawal without exchange

Customer wants to cancel → after shipping → within 37 days → Amazon order → first return

Create return

Amazon right of withdrawal with exchange

Customer wants exchange or modification → after shipping → within 37 days → Amazon order → first return

Create return, create order

Right of withdrawal without exchange

Customer wants to cancel → after shipping → within 14 days → first return

Create return

Right of withdrawal with exchange

Customer wants exchange or modification → after shipping → within 14 days → first return

Create return, create order

Transport damage on delivery

Customer reports defect/warranty case → after shipping → within 14 days → first return

Create return, create order

Defect within warranty

Customer reports defect/warranty case → after shipping → after 14 days, within 730 days → first return

Create return

Technical rule overview (for administrators)

Name

Intents

Order Status

Days Since Delivery

Reasons

Items

Existing Returns

Stop

Actions

Automatic

Cancellation before shipping
Priority: 100

cancel

created, released

✓

cancel_order

✓

Amazon right of withdrawal without exchange
Priority: 200

cancel

shipped, completed

≤ 37

empty

✓

create_return

✓

Amazon right of withdrawal with exchange
Priority: 201

exchange, modify

shipped, completed

≤ 37

empty

✓

create_return, create_sales_order

✓

Right of withdrawal without exchange
Priority: 205

cancel

shipped, completed

≤ 14

empty

✓

create_return

✓

Right of withdrawal with exchange
Priority: 210

exchange, modify

shipped, completed

≤ 14

empty

✓

create_return, create_sales_order

✓

Transport damage on delivery
Priority: 215

defect

shipped, completed

≤ 14

empty

✓

create_return, create_sales_order

✓

Defect within warranty
Priority: 300

defect

shipped, completed

14, ≤ 730

empty

✓

create_return

✓

Reference: Classification values

Overview of all available values for order status, intent, and reason used in the technical rule view:

Classification values (for administrators)

Order Status

Intent (customer intent)

Reason

created – Order created

cancel – Cancellation/refund

wrong_item_sent – Wrong item sent

ordered – Order placed

defect – Warranty case/defect

exchange – Exchange (size/color)

shipped – Order shipped

exchange – Exchange/replacement delivery

delivery_problems – Delivery issues

delivered – Order delivered

modify – Modification before shipping

legal_return – Statutory right of withdrawal

missing_item – Item missing

address_change – Address change

Permissions

To use the Agent Hub, you need certain permissions in Xentral.

There are two options:

  • Administrator access: If your user account has administrator rights, all required permissions are automatically in place.

  • Individual permissions: If you are not an administrator, the following rights must be set:

    • Addresses → permission "list"

    • Orders → permission "list"

    • Delivery notes → permission "list"

    • Items → permission "list"

    • Analytics Platform → permission "all"

Important

All listed permissions must be active at the same time.

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