contact collection - php, mysql, mail server

I am building a project assuming that there is a method for intercepting incoming and outgoing mail from a mailserver. If it is not possible please let me know, I am new working with mail servers, so any material that you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

I am building a project to manage contacts and the organization's interaction with them throughout a broad range of services. I would like the creation of the contacts be as automatic as possible. In this sense, what I had thought would be interesting was to create a page that would intercept all incoming and outgoing message from the org.'s mail开发者_如何学Cserver. The intercepted data would be stored on a MySQL database.

Is this possible in PHP? Would this be the correct way of going about it?

What I'm looking for is a place to start looking and learning. Reading materials, tutorials, case-studies, etc. Whatever you can send over to help me get closer to my goal. Also, if the method I've described above is flawed, or you can recommend a better method, I'd be willing to hear your thoughts on that as well.

If so have a look at PHP's IMAP functions as they provide everything you need to be able to do this quite easily.

Have a look at http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.imap.php and ask any specific questions about the functions used you may have.