To set up an email integration, you must first create an email account. Email accounts hold the email server and connection details for receiving and sending email in your application. With the email account details, you can create the following email configurations:

• To automatically create a case when you receive an email in your application, associate an email account with a top-level case type. When you configure email instantiation, you enable an email listener that monitors this email account. This configuration automatically generates service email rules.
• To take advantage of advanced email configuration options for managing incoming email, such as using Pega Email Bot™ to create cases or configuring text analysis to route incoming emails, configure an email channel. This configuration automatically generates email listeners and service email rules.
• To share information about a case with stakeholders, you can automatically send emails from a case, add case attachments to the email, and define the content of the email. You can also send case notifications to users, for example, to notify a user that a case has reached the approve/reject stage so that the user can decide whether to approve an application.
• If you do not require advanced options for managing your email, such as using an email bot to route email messages, you can manually configure email listeners and service email rules in Dev Studio. Manual configurations are useful if you want incoming email messages to create or update cases directly.

For more information about the relationship between email listeners, service email rules, and email accounts, see Exploring email configurations.