What are Collaborative Inboxes

Collaborative inboxes allow multiple people to access emails that arrive at a shared group address versus those same people accessing one email account, which poses a security risk. Collaborative inboxes are particularly useful for “generic” email addresses like “support@email.com” or “hr@email.com” With a collaborative inbox members can assign emails to themselves or others ensuring accountability and preventing duplicate efforts. Teams can also mark conversations as “complete”, “duplicate”, or “no action needed” allowing them to monitor progress and stay informed.

How to use Collaborative Inboxes

Locate the desired inbox by navigating to groups.google.com and clicking on the group name. Remember that not all groups are collaborative inboxes.

Below is an example of what a collaborative inbox might look like.

The primary difference between collaborative inboxes and regular inboxes is that you don't email someone directly, but instead "CC" the desired recipient's address. This ensures that the email appears in the shared inbox and alerts team members of the conversation.

After composing your email, click "post message" to send it.

When responding to a message, you must click "Reply all" to ensure that your response appears in the collaborative inbox.  You can respond as either yourself or the "group" when using "Reply all."  If you simply reply to the message's author, you can only respond as yourself.

Collaborative inboxes do not have an archive option, so all items remain visible. To archive an item, you can either "lock" the thread to prevent further changes or mark it as "completed."

Collaborative inboxes also do not have a “trash” folder like most personal emails do. Once something is marked for deletion, it is deleted forever and is unable to be recovered.