Google Groups for Business: Create a Collaborative Inbox

Does your team use email to process support tickets, sales inquiries, or other requests from colleagues or customers? If so, you might want to set up a Google Group as a collaborative inbox. With a collaborative inbox, members of a group can receive and respond to email requests using a common address, such as support@your_company.com. They can also assign incoming messages to group members, track status, categorize posts so theyre easy to find later, and more. Heres how a collaborative inbox works, how to set it up, and how to launch it with your team. Already set up your Google Group? Learn more about how to use the new Google Groups for Business here.

Collaborative Inbox: How it works

Lets consider the customer support team for a fictitious company named Solarmora, who is using a collaborative inbox to field and track support requests from customers: 1 2 3 4 5 The team began by creating a Google Group containing all its members. They configured the group as a collaborative inbox with the email address support@solarmora.com. A customer emails a question to support@solarmora.com. A group member receives the inquiry and assigns it to an available support rep in the group. The rep responds to the customer using the support@solarmora.com email address. After resolving the customer's request, the rep marks the request as resolved.

Does this sound like something your team needs? If so, heres how to set it up...

Collaborative Inbox: How to set it up

To set up a collaborative inbox, you create a Google Group thats configured to enable inbox features. Next, you can define roles for different members of the groupallowing only certain people to add other members or delete topics, for example. Then finally, when you add people to the group, you assign each one their appropriate role. Note: To set up a collaborative inbox you need to be an authorized to create groups. For help with that, contact your company's Google Apps Administrator.

Create and configure the group

1 2 3 4 From the Groups welcome page, click New Group. Enter the group's name and description. Update the group's email address as desired. Select Collaborative inbox as the Group Type.

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* Important: Selecting Collaborative inbox sets several permissions for the group that cant be undone by disabling the setting later. To revert the group back to its original state, you must change each setting individually. Adjust group settings as shown in the tables below. Click Create Group when youre done.

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Review group roles and permissions

To regulate which tasks certain group members can perform, you can assign them roles. Each role grants specific permissions. When you create a collaborative inbox, Groups sets up three roles with the permissions shown below. You can modify these roles for your group or even create new ones. But first, take a look at the default roles to see if theyll work for you as is: Member: Can post, assign, and mark topics. People added to the group get this role by default. Manager: Can also add or remove members, manage roles, and delete or lock topics. Owner: Initially has the same permissions as managers. By default, the groups creator is an owner, but you can add other owners, too.

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In addition to the Basic permissions you set when creating the group, additional permissions related to Posting, Moderation, and Access are set based on the group type you selected. The default permissions for the collaborative inbox are shown on the next pages of this document. Note: You can enable or disable additional permissions for the group. Select Manage > Permissions to adjust permissions for the group.

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Moderation: Collaborative Inbox Default Permissions Add Members Approve Members Approve Messages Ban Users Change Any Tag Or Category Delete Any Post Delete Topics Edit Others' Posts Edit Own Posts Edit Welcome Message Hide Abuse Invite Members Lock Topics Mark Duplicate Mark Favorite Reply On Any Topic Mark No Response Needed Modify Members Modify roles Move Topics In Move Topics Out Sticky Topics Take Topic Unassign Topic Unmark Favorite Reply On Any Topic

Member

Manager X X X X X X X

Owner X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X X X X

X X X

X X X

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Access: Collaborative Inbox Default Permissions Contact the Owner of a Group Filter Topics View Member Email Addresses View Members View Topics

Member

Manager

Owner

X X X X X X

X X X X

Posting: Collaborative Inbox Default Permissions Add References Assign Topic Attach Files Create a Private Discussion Enter Free Form Tags Mark Favorite Reply On Own Topic Me Too Topic Post Post Announcements Post As The Group Post Moderated Post Rich Text Format Post Trusted Reply To Author

Member

Manager X X

Owner X X X

X X

X X X

Create or modify group roles

If the default roles and permissions shown above work for your team, go ahead and use them as is. If not, you can modify a roles permissions, say, to only let an Owner edit the Welcome screen. Or create an entirely new role with its own set of permissions. To do this: 1 2 Go to the groups welcome page and click the Manage button. At the left of the page click Roles.
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To change a roles permissions, click the role you want to change. To create a new role, click the Create button.

Create the groups Welcome screen

Next, we suggest you add a banner or description to your groups home page to greet people who come to browse topics. After creating the group, go to its home page and click the Edit welcome screen link. Then use the Rich Text Editor to compose and format the greeting, upload images for a banner or logo, and even add links. Note: By default, only group Owners and Managers can create or modify a welcome screen.

Collaborative Inbox: Launch it with your team

Pre-launch checklist
Before launching the group with your team, think about how your team will use a collaborative inbox: Document your teams process in a short user guide to share with members when youre ready for them to start using the inbox. Add tags and roles to support your team's processes. To add tags, select Manage > Settings > Tags. Make sure all group members have Google Apps accounts with your domain.

Add or invite members

Once your group is set up and its members all have Google Apps accounts, its time to to add team members to your group. You can either invite new members, in which case they must accept the invitation in order to join the group. Or you can add them directly without requiring that they accept. In the case of Solarmora, we'll add members directly, since we want every support rep to be in the group: 1 2 3 Select Manage > Direct add members. Enter the email addresses to add as members. Enter a welcome message, such as the one below: Welcome to the Google Group for the Solarmora Customer Support Team to review and respond to customer requests. This group is set up using a new feature in Google Groups called a collaborative inbox. The collaborative inbox will allow us to: Assign topics to group members so we can get the right person working on the requests right away Label topics using tags, so its easier for us to research and locate requests For more information on using Google Groups as a collaborative inbox, visit learn.googleapps.com/groups.
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Thanks, <Your name> 4 Click Add.

Now your collaborative inbox is ready to go!

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