Connect a shared inbox

A shared inbox is a Gmail address more than one person answers: support@, sales@, billing@. ShareMail connects to it over Google’s API and adds a collaboration layer on top. Your mail stays in Gmail, so nothing is migrated and nothing moves.

What you need

• The Google account for the shared address, or the ability to sign in to it.
• An owner or admin to do the connecting. Whoever creates the inbox manages it and can add everyone else.

Connect it

1. Settings → Inboxes → New shared inbox. Type the address and the name your team will recognise in the sidebar. The name is internal; customers never see it.
2. Create, then Connect Gmail on the new card, and sign in as the shared address. Google shows you exactly what you are granting. If you sign in as yourself by mistake, ShareMail refuses the connection rather than quietly attaching the wrong mailbox.
3. The first sync starts immediately and works backwards. A busy inbox takes a few minutes to fill in.

The card shows Connected once Google has accepted. If it ever shows Not connected later, for instance after a password change on the Google account, the same button reconnects it.

Add your team

On the inbox card, Add member lists everyone in the workspace who is not yet on it. A shared inbox is visible only to its members: being an admin does not grant sight of it. Members can read, reply, assign, comment and tag. The × on a member chip removes them.

By default new teammates are added to every shared inbox as they are invited. The switch Automatically add new teammates to shared inboxes at the foot of the page turns that off, for a workspace where billing@ should not be everyone’s business.

How the inbox is worked

Edit on the inbox card opens four settings that shape how the inbox behaves for everyone.

• In-app display name. The sidebar label.
• Send as. Blank sends each reply as the teammate who wrote it, for example “Dana Whitfield <support@…>”, with replies routed back to the inbox. Set a name to send as the inbox instead, “Acme Support”, when you would rather customers did not see individual names.
• Undo-send window. How long a sent reply waits before it really goes, which is the window for clicking Undo. Ten seconds by default, up to sixty, or zero to send immediately. Per inbox, because a sales desk and a support desk feel differently about it.
• How this inbox is worked. Two modes, and the choice decides what the number beside the inbox in the sidebar means:
  • Assignment queue (default). The inbox opens on the Unassigned tab and the badge counts conversations nobody owns. Same number for everyone; reading does not clear it, assigning does. Right for a support desk where every email needs a human.
  • General inbox. The inbox opens on Open with the usual tabs and the badge is your unread count, the way Gmail does it. Right for an address that is mostly notifications, invoices and receipts, where nobody assigns anything.

Personal inboxes are a different thing

The top of the same page connects your own Gmail. That one is yours alone. It never appears in a team view, an analytics report, or a workspace export, and your workspace admins cannot see it. That is enforced in the code, not by policy.

Mail from your personal inbox goes out under your own name. Settings → Profile has a Name on outgoing mail field if you want a different one.

What to do next

• Assign conversations so two people never reply twice
• Talk about an email without replying to it