How to access Gmail for storage in custom CRM using a SQL Server database?

Question

I have a client who wants his custom-written CRM to be able to access his sales people's emails so that, effectively, a history of email conversations between customer and salesperson is stored inside the CRM's database.

The CRM is written in Visual Basic 2008 and the database is SQL Server 2008. The only email these people use, in the shop and on the road, is Gmail. Each sales person has their own Gmail address. That's how they operate.

If they're on the road and respond to a customer's email inquiry about a product, they would like that email conversation to be stored in a table in the database. I think that's the part I can't wrap my head around. How do I get access to the email data (knowing the user id and password) and doing so from Visual Basic 2008?

A free or close to free solution would be preferred.

Answer 1

One thing that we have done in the past is create a separate email account and just have the users to BCC this email address, for example, [email protected]. We then have a small application, on the server, that polls email from this central mailbox and automatically attaches it to the entity based on the recipients email address.

We also allow the user to add some commands at the bottom of the email, for attaching to things like work orders and/or bills, for example, wo 1000 (for a work order 1000) or b 1000 (for bill 1000).

Just another idea.