Folio has a sophisticated algorithm that crawls through your emails, and looks for patterns that identify that something is related to a client or transaction -- either a property you're working on that's gone into escrow, or a listing with an agreement that has been signed.
When you first create an account, Folio will start by looking through the last 30 days of email to identify your clients and transactions.
As you use Folio regularly, Smart Folders are automatically created for anything Folio thinks is a transaction.
When you manually create a smart folder, it also organizes emails for that too. If you manually create a folder, Folio will only look back at the past 30 days of emails.
For Gmail Users
An email is not moved to a Smart Folder -- it will continue to exist in both your inbox and the folder. This is because Folio has simply added a label to the email; it hasn't created a copy of the email.
For Outlook Users
If you're an Outlook user, you can opt into email organization by visiting your settings page. Opting in means Folio will create folders for clients and transactions you add, and automatically move emails into those folders once they're received. Learn more about it here.
Email filtering for Pre-contract vs Under-contract folders
There are two types of Smart Folders, depending on what stage of the process your client is in: Buyer/Seller pre-contract and Buyer/Seller under contract.
Please note, Folio considers active listings as under contract.
Under Contract folders
Buyer/Seller Under contract folders primarily filter emails based on the property that is referenced inside the emails.
Folio looks for the short property address to help organize your emails. For example, if the address is 123 Main Street, San Francisco, CA. Folio will look for "123 Main" and variations like "123 Main St" or "123 Main Street" inside the subject line, body, and email attachments.
Folio does not gather all emails from your Smart Folder's contacts. The email must contain the address in the subject line, body, or email attachments.
Pre-contract folders
- Buyer pre-contract folders without an address primarily filters emails into folders based on the client(s) email address you identify. This helps keep the email exchanges between you and your clients in one place.
- If you're working with a seller to list their home, and you are not under-contract, we will filter emails based on the property address, as described above.