Re: Use Google Groups as a shared inbox

Zino49

Hello Google Community,

I have what I believe is a straightforward requirement, but I'm struggling to find a solution.

In our organization, each user has their own Gmail address. Additionally, we use Google Groups for collaborative work within the Google Groups for Business interface. These Google Groups are also used for communication with external customers, and we want to ensure that replies to these emails are sent only from the group email address to the original sender.

So far, I have set up the group as a Collaborative Inbox and configured the "Who can post as the group" setting to allow group members to post. However, it seems that we are only able to reply to emails within the group interface by either:

Replying to the group itself with the original sender as a CC, or
Replying directly to the group.

What we need is the ability to respond directly to the external sender from the group's email address, without having to switch to the Gmail interface. While we know it's possible to send emails from the group's email address via Gmail, switching between interfaces is not efficient for us.

Any advice or solutions on how to configure this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

christiannewman

If the group isn't included in the distribution list (to or cc), then the replies sent from the group address (by your team) or back from the client, won't be captured in the group's conversation history.

Zino49

Hi Chris,

but are they not captured in the sent history?
But what is then the best feature zu achieve this usecase?

christiannewman

They're captured in the sent history of the group mailbox if they're sent from the group mailbox.

They're captured in the sent history of the user mailbox if they're sent from the user mailbox (using the group email address).

Zino49

Yes, i understand this.
But you said earlier when the group is not included in the receivers (even if the message ws sent from the groups directly) the message is not inlcuded in the conversation history, right?

But is there no good way to effectively work together with other users on a same mailbox? Something like the shared mailbox feature in Exchange Online https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/email/about-shared-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwi...

b_gorsky1

I agree that this is basic functionality and should be possible. It has frustrated me as well.