How to create a shared inbox in Gmail

You can use a group as a collaborative inbox in Gmail to distribute and track responsibility for topics among the group's members.

Shared inbox is useful for technical support or customer service teams. For example, you can create a group with the address support@yourcompany.com, add your support representatives as members, and allow customers of your organization to send messages to the group.

Your support agents will receive your customers' emails, and they can do any of the following from the group's Topics view:

  • Assign responsibility for a topic to a member of the group
  • Mark a topic as resolved
  • Edit the tags associated with a topic
  • Filter topics according to tag, resolution status, or assignee

Shared inbox in Gmail Setup

  1. To set up a new group as a collaborative inbox go to Groups (https://groups.google.com) and click Create Group.
  2. Fill in your group's name, email address and description in the appropriate fields.
  3. From the Select a group type drop-down menu, select Collaborative inbox.
  4. Under Participants, select which types of group member (owners, managers, and/or standard members) receive access to collaborative inbox features.
  5. Specify any additional settings you want under Basic permissions.
  6. Click Create.

Featured blogpost: 4 Signs That Gmail Won't Cut it as a Shared Inbox Anymore