Using Google Group as a Shared Inbox
Use a group as a collaborative inbox
Where to Find Your Collaborative Inbox
Once you log in to Gmail using your EOI account, click the grid icon in the top right to access the available Google Apps.
From there, select Groups.
https://groups.google.com and click on the group name.
How It Works
You can use a group as a collaborative inbox to distribute and track responsibility for emails/messages/topics among the group's members.
These collaborative features are especially useful for support or customer service teams. Your support staff will receive your customers' messages, and they can do any of the following from the group's Topics view:
- Assign responsibility for a message/email/topic to a member of the group
- Mark a message/topic as resolved
- Edit the tags associated with a topic
- Filter messages/topics according to tag, resolution status, or assignee
Send an email on behalf of the group
To send an email from the group email address click the "New Topic" button.
- On this screen you will put the options of how you want to send out the email the drop-down for "by" is where you will choose the option to send on behalf of the group (AKA masking your own email address and sending through the group's email address).
- You will enter the subject line of the email that will be sent and to send
the email directly to an individual email account click the "add CC" button and enter the email address you want the message to go to. - Once completed click "Post" and this will send the email as well as add the message to the thread in the group so all members can see that you sent a message out and follow the history of the message.
Assign a message/email/topic
To assign responsibility for a topic to yourself or another group member, open the email/topic from the Topics view and do one of the following:
- Click Take to assign the email/topic to yourself.
- Click Assign to assign the message/topic to another group member. Search for the member's email address in the dialog that appears, then click Assign next to the member in the search results.
If a topic is assigned to you and you want to remove the assignment, open the topic and select Dropfrom the Actions drop-down menu. You can then assign the email/message/topic to another group member.
To view topics that have been assigned to you, select Assigned to me from the Filters drop-down menu
Resolve a message/email/topic
Resolving a topic indicates that the topic requires no further action. There are multiple ways to resolve an email/message/topic, depending on the way it's resolved:
- If a new email/topic requires no action, click No action needed.
- If a topic is resolved by a followup message, open the message/topic and click Mark as complete or Mark as best answer on the followup message.
- If a message/email is a duplicate of a previous topic, click Set as a duplicate. In the dialog that appears, specify the URL of the original topic.
The Topics view indicates which emails/topics have been resolved, and how. Note that these resolution settings are not mutually exclusive; you can apply more than one to a single message/topic.
Filter message/email/topic
To filter the message/topics currently displayed in the Topics view, click Filters. You can filter topics by any combination of the following:
- Topics without replies
- Topics you've started
- Topics you've replied to
- Topics marked complete
When you've selected the filters you want, click Apply selected filters at the bottom of the menu. To remove the filters you've applied, choose Filters > Clear all filters (display all topics).
You can also filter messages/topics by tag. To do so, switch to your group's Tags view and select the tag you want to view.
If you want to learn more about using Google Groups in depth click here for the support site: