Guides for The-Y CRM

Create an account & sign in

You start The-Y CRM right in the browser — no installation.

1. Go to crm.the-y.at/register and create a free account (company name, your name, email, password).
2. Tick the Alpha terms and confirm — you’re signed in immediately afterwards.
3. Later you sign in at crm.the-y.at/login. Forgot your password? The “Forgot password?” link emails you a reset link.

The dashboard & the setup tutorial

After signing in you land on the dashboard. At the top, a setup checklist (“Getting started”) walks you through the 6 key steps: invite your team, connect a channel, create your first contact/deal, write a knowledge article. The progress bar shows what’s already done; you can hide the checklist once you’re finished.

Below it you see key figures (open tickets, your tasks, sales pipeline & weighted forecast) and upcoming appointments.

Invite your team & assign roles

Under Settings → Team you invite colleagues and control who can do what.

1. “＋ Invite”: choose email, name and role — the person receives an invitation link and sets their own password.
2. Roles: Admin (everything), Supervisor (CRM + reporting, whole team), Agent (their own contacts/deals). Permissions can be fine-tuned per person on top (allow/deny per permission).
3. Via Workspaces (brands) you assign staff to individual brands — one invoice, several brands.

Tickets, status & priorities

The inbox bundles all channels (email, web chat, WhatsApp, SMS, calls) into one list. Every conversation is a Ticket #N.

• Status: open · snoozed (with presets 1 h / tomorrow / until reply) · closed. When the customer replies, the ticket reopens automatically.
• Views: My open · Unassigned · All open · Waiting · Closed — each with a counter.
• Priority (urgent/high/normal/low) and open tickets as a tab bar for quick switching. Use j/k to move through the list.

Replies, internal notes & assignment

1. Open a ticket, write your reply at the bottom, hit “Send” — the reply goes out over the original channel.
2. Internal note (yellow): visible to your team only, never delivered to the customer.
3. Assign: pick an agent in the header. On the right you see the customer panel with the 360° history, deals, invoices and consent.

Write on another channel from a ticket

In the ticket’s customer panel, “💬 Other channel” opens a new conversation with the same customer already selected — one click to reach them on WhatsApp, SMS or email. The available channels are filtered by consent and reachability (only channels the customer allows and has an address for).

Templates & macros

Recurring replies live under Templates (sidebar).

• Canned responses with placeholders ({{contact.firstName}} and more) — insert them in the composer via the templates icon.
• Macros (⚡): one click sets status, priority, assignment, labels, an internal note and a reply template all at once.
• 📖 Knowledge articles inserted straight into your reply (from the knowledge base).

Consent & opt-out in the ticket

In the customer panel you set, per channel (email/SMS/WhatsApp/call), what the customer wants to receive. “New chat” and marketing respect this automatically. An opted-out channel is marked “opted out”.

Connect an email mailbox (IMAP/SMTP)

Under Settings → Channels you add one or more mailboxes per brand.

1. “＋ Add” → Email → the setup panel opens automatically.
2. Enter IMAP (receiving) and SMTP (sending). Passwords are stored encrypted.
3. “Test connection” checks the credentials live. On import, choose “New mail only” or “Full history”.
4. Optional: an HTML signature per mailbox (filled in per agent).

Embed web chat on your website

1. Settings → Channels → enable web chat.
2. Copy the embed code (a <script> snippet) and paste it before </body> on your website — the chat bubble is live.

WhatsApp, Messenger & Instagram

The-Y connects the whole Meta family through a guided setup.

1. Settings → Channels → “Set up” the channel you want.
2. For Facebook/Instagram the “Connect” button walks you through page selection. For WhatsApp you provide your WABA + number.
3. Outside the 24-hour window, WhatsApp requires an approved template (HSM) — you manage those per number on the Templates page.

Business hours & auto-reply

Under Settings → Business hours you define, per channel, opening times and an auto-reply both inside and outside business hours (only to the first customer message).

Set up a line (provider / SIP trunk)

The-Y ships with its own phone system. First you connect a line.

1. Open Telephony → Lines. If you don’t have one yet, a guided helper shows suitable providers (depending on your country, e.g. Zadarma, sipgate, Twilio) with an explanation and a direct link.
2. Get a number + SIP credentials from the provider and enter them under “Lines” (server, user, password, country code).
3. Activate — outgoing and incoming calls then run through your system.

Extensions & softphone

1. Telephony → Extensions: one extension per employee (or “create for everyone”). Can be assigned to a user.
2. The softphone in the bottom right automatically registers your own extension — so you make calls right in the browser (answer, dial, hold, transfer, park).
3. Clicking a phone number in the CRM starts the call. On incoming calls the contact card pops up (screen pop).

Menus (IVR), queues & call flow

Under Telephony → Call flow you build call routing as a visual flow (connecting nodes) — no technical knowledge needed.

• Greetings & menus (IVR): greeting + keys → destinations (extension, queue, forward, voicemail). Greetings via text-to-speech, recording or upload.
• Queues & ring groups: several agents ring, with an overflow destination and hold music.
• Time conditions: route differently inside/outside business hours.

Contacts, companies, deals & pipeline

• Contacts/companies: create, link, merge (duplicates). Every contact page shows a 360° history across all channels.
• Deals: with value, stage and a link to a contact/company. The pipeline is a Kanban board with drag & drop — a stage change derives the status.
• Custom fields & collections for your own data structures (e.g. policies, trips).

Invoices & quotes

Under CRM → Invoices you create invoices and quotes with line items, tax and your own number range. Issuer details and layout (header/footer/accent) per brand. A clean print/PDF view is built in.

Import & export data

1. Import: contacts via CSV — under Contacts → “⤓ Import”, with automatic column mapping and conflict resolution.
2. Export: under Settings → Backup → “Export by area (CSV)” you download contacts, companies, deals, tasks or conversations as CSV.

Marketing campaigns Free in the Alpha

Under Marketing you send campaigns over email, SMS or WhatsApp.

• Segments (all / per brand), placeholders like {firstName}, consent is always respected.
• Birthday automation: sends automatically on the birthday (with a yearly guard against double sends).
• WhatsApp campaigns use approved templates (HSM) with placeholder mapping.

Knowledge base & help portal Free

Under Knowledge you maintain articles (WYSIWYG editor).

• Published articles appear in your brand’s public, branded help portal at crm.the-y.at/help/<your-brand>.
• Articles are full-text searchable and double as the knowledge base for the AI assist and for inserting directly into ticket replies.

Automation & chatbot

• Settings → Automation: rules “IF channel/subject/text → THEN assign/label/priority/status/internal note”. Triggers for a new conversation or every customer message.
• Settings → Chatbot: rule-based keyword replies in web chat.

AI assist & bring your own provider

The-Y lets you choose your AI provider — with no AI surcharge; you pay your provider directly (BYO).

1. Open Settings → AI and choose your provider (Anthropic, OpenAI or Google).
2. A guided walkthrough per provider links straight to key creation. Paste the key, tick “AI active”, test the connection.
3. The inbox then offers “💡 Suggestion” (from the history, grounded in your knowledge base) and “📝 Summary”; translations get better too.

Attendance, shift plan & leave

Under Team → Workforce you handle the working-time topics.

• Time clock (🟢 in / 🟡 break / 🔴 out) with an automatic flexitime account (actual vs. target). Can be turned off per person (normal mode).
• Shift plan derived from target working hours, with exceptions; week/day view and an understaffing warning.
• Leave & absence request/approve, leave account with remaining days; sick leave with a doctor’s-note upload.

Branding & notifications

• Settings → Design: app name, accent color and short code per brand — applied in the app, on the login and on the public pages (web chat, help portal, booking).
• Settings → Notifications: in-app bell, browser push, email and SLA escalation; notification email templates are editable.

Backup & export

Under Settings → Backup:

• Snapshot export/import per tenant (settings, CRM, messages) as a single file — also for migrations (Free→Paid, hosted→self-host).
• CSV export by area (contacts, companies, deals, tasks, conversations).

System requirements & server size

The CRM already runs on a small 4 GB server. What drives demand is concurrent calls + recording and large marketing sends — not the number of contacts.

• Small (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 40 GB SSD): single office, CRM + email + web chat, 1–2 concurrent calls.
• Medium (4 vCPU / 8 GB / 80–160 GB SSD): our standard recommendation — a growing team, marketing, 5–10 concurrent calls with recording.
• Large (8+ vCPU / 16–32 GB / NVMe): call center, 20+ concurrent calls; split telephony and database later.

Installation & license

Self-hosting arrives in the Beta phase. You then install The-Y via Docker Compose on your own server (app, worker, PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO, optionally the phone system), with automatic HTTPS (Caddy) and optional auto-updates (Watchtower).

The feature set is identical to the hosted version; it’s unlocked via a server-validated license key.