Why a shared inbox
A reply that goes to one person's mailbox is invisible to everyone else, unanswerable when they are away, and lost to the contact record entirely. In the shared inbox every reply is attached to the contact and the opportunity, visible to the team, and assignable — so cover is a matter of reassignment rather than of forwarding.
Inbox
11 unassigned · 6 assigned to you
Can you send pricing for 20 seats?
Not right now, try us in September.
Please send the invoice to this address instead.
Terms look fine. Who signs?
Working it
- Assign before answering. Two people drafting the same reply is the failure mode a shared inbox is supposed to remove.
- Answer from the conversation, so the reply is attached to the contact rather than sent from a personal mailbox.
- Move the opportunity if the reply changes its state. The inbox and the pipeline are the same workflow.
- Mark done rather than deleting. Done keeps the history on the contact.
Personal email sync
Separately from the shared inbox, each user can connect their own mailbox at /crm/settings/mailbox so that their one-to-one correspondence with a contact appears on the contact record. It is per user and opt-in — a mailbox connection shares that person's mail with the workspace, which is a decision for them to make rather than for an administrator to make on their behalf.
What this does not do
There are no tickets, SLAs, or customer-facing status. Client-facing support lives in the Client Portal.
There are no saved snippets.
Nothing warns you that a colleague is typing. Assignment is the mechanism.
Age is shown; nothing escalates.
Questions
Can several people watch one inbox?
Yes. That is the point.
Do replies to a sequence stop it?
Yes, automatically.
Can we forward from an existing shared mailbox?
Yes — forward into the workspace address.