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Manage emails in your shared inbox
Updated
by Gmelius
You can see all the shared mailboxes of which you are a user in the left Gmail pane. The following animated image shows where you can locate the shared inboxes.
When you click on a shared inbox drop-down - as the image demonstrates for the shared mailbox Inbox -support.acme@googlegroups.com, its dedicated conversation panel will expand.
Check this short video to quickly see how you can manage your shared inbox:
Status of conversations
An email received in a shared inbox can have any one of the three status:
- Open is the initial status of an incoming conversation - even if it is assigned to a teammate.
- 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"
- 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.
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).
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.
Send & Close
You can close a conversation with just one click by hitting the button "Send & Close" when you reply to an email.
Assignments
When a new conversation reaches the Shared Mailbox, it appears in the Unassigned folder for all the users.
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
Assign conversations from the email list
- Click on the "Share and Assign" Button that appears on the right side of a conversation once you hover over.
- 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.
Assign conversations in bulk
You can select multiple conversations at once and assign them in just two clicks to a user.
- Select conversations.
- Click on the "Share and Assign" button.
- 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
- View the conversations assigned to you in a shared inbox by clicking on the Mine folder.
- View all conversations assigned to you from multiple shared inboxes, shared labels or via email delegation, click on "Mine (all)"
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.
Manage your shared inbox with the Board View
The board view of your shared inbox allows you to visualize and manage your shared inbox from a Gmelius board. As each assignee will have his own column, you will have complete visibility on the email distribution and be able to manage your cards directly from the board.
- To access the board view, just click on "Board view" label in your shared inbox conversation panel, located below your closed folder.
Assign conversations
You have various ways of assigning conversations to your teammates in the board.
- Click on "Assign to" icon on the card (see image below)
- Drag and drop the card in the column of your teammate
- Use the conversation widget inside the card
The card will be placed in the column of the user you assigned it to
Change the status of conversations
Mark as closed
- Right-click on the card
- Click on "Mark as closed"
The card will be placed in the column closed
Mark as pending
To mark a card as pending, click on a card and in the conversation widget under Status, select the status "Pending" in the dropdown list.
The card will be placed in the row "Pending" under the column of the user to whom the card is assigned.
To remove the row "Pending", disable "Split each column with pending status" in the settings of the board (see here)
Collision Alert
This is a default option on all shared conversations and alerts a user who is going to reply to a shared conversation when someone else from the team is already viewing or replying to the email.
This is very useful in customer support, where customer queries reach many users.
The alerts are displayed as follows:
- Team members viewing the conversation: their avatars displayed on the top right corner of the conversation
- Team member replying to the conversation: A red pen icon next to the avatar displayed on the top right corner of the conversation
