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How to manage emails in your shared inbox

Gmelius Updated by Gmelius

After a shared inbox is created, all the members part of it will find a new workspace in the left pane of Gmail.

When you click on a shared inbox's dropdown, as shown below for a shared inbox named "Info - Team Inbox", its dedicated conversation panel will expand.

Gmelius University: Click here to access tutorial videos about shared inboxes

The conversation panel explained - views of a shared inbox

Your shared inbox conversation panel has different views to help you locate emails based on different conditions. Using views you can see emails based on the status (open, closed, pending), assignment (assigned to you or to other team members) as well as a board view.

Unassigned: Here you can find all the emails that are open and not assigned to any user.

Mine: Here you can find all the open or pending emails that are assigned to you.

Assigned: Here you can find all the open or pending emails which are assigned.

Pending: Here you can find all the emails with status as pending.

Closed: Here you can find all the closed emails.

Board View: Here you can see your shared inbox depicted in a visual Kanban board. You can work directly from your board view. Click here to loard more about it.

Assignments

When a new conversation reaches the Shared Mailbox, it appears in the Unassigned folder for all the users.

How to assign a conversation to a user

  • Click on the dropdown 'Assign to' in the conversation widget on the right pane of your Gmail to find a list of all the users in the shared mailbox to whom the conversation can be assigned
  • Select any user to assign the conversation.

When you assign a conversation to a user then:

  • the conversation disappears from the 'Unassigned' view and appears in the Assigned folder of the shared inbox.
  • the assignee will get a notification in the right sidebar

How to assign conversations from the email list

  1. Click on the "Share and Assign" Button that appears on the right side of a conversation once you hover over it.
  2. From the drop-down list of users, double-click on the grey box of the user you want to assign the conversation to. Once the conversation has been assigned, the box will be reverted to blue. 

 How to assign conversations in bulk

You can select multiple conversations at once and assign them in just two clicks to a user.

  1. Select conversations.
  2. Click on the "Share and Assign" button.
  3. Select the assignee from the users list and click on box tick. The assignee's box should turn "blue" to indicate the assignment.

Locating your assignments

  1. View the conversations assigned to you in a shared inbox by clicking on the Mine folder.
  2. View all conversations assigned to you from multiple shared inboxes, shared labels or via email delegation, click on "Mine (all)" 

 

Status of conversations

An email received in a shared inbox can have any one of the three status:

  1. Open is the initial status of an incoming conversation - even if it is assigned to a teammate. 
  2. Pending status lets you put on hold your conversations, e.g. if you are waiting to hear back from your contact or just need time to gather information before replying. When you set a conversation to pending the email remains in the "Unassigned, Mine or Assigned", but will be also placed in the ticketing folder "Pending"
  3. Closed status means you are done with the conversation and you archive it. The conversation moves from its current folder to the ticketing folder "Closed" where you can see all the conversations that your team dealt with. If you get a reply from your recipient, the conversation will leave the "Closed folder and will be "Open" again in the respective folder. 

How to change the status of a conversation

Click on the dropdown on the conversation widget on the right pane of Gmail to choose any option (Open, Closed or Pending).

How to change the status of conversations in bulk

You can change the status of conversations in bulk by simply selecting conversations and click on the "Pending" or "Closed" button.

When a new conversation arrives on a Closed thread, Gmelius will automatically 'Open' the whole thread under the name of the user to whom it was last assigned. If not an assigned conversation, it will pop back into the unassigned folder. 
Send & Close

You can close a conversation with just one click by hitting the button "Send & Close" when you reply to an email.

How did we do?

Understanding shared inboxes

Troubleshooting a Shared Inbox created from a Google Group

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