Find Your Collaborative Inbox (Google Group)

Google Groups

Google Groups makes it easy for groups of people—such as project teams, departments, or classmates—to communicate and collaborate. You can send an email to everyone in a group with one address, invite a group to an event, or share documents with a group. You can also create an online forum to discuss a popular technology or answer questions about a product.

Check out our Google Groups tips sheet for more best practices!

What is a Google Group Collaborative Inbox?

A Collaborative Inbox is a mailbox that allows group members to distribute and track responsibility for topics. (More tips here.)

In a Collaborative Inbox, group members can do any of the following from the group's Web UI:

Assign responsibility for a topic to a member of the group
Mark a topic as resolved
Edit the tags (which are similar to Gmail's labels) associated with a topic
Filter topics according to tag, resolution status, or assignee

Looking for your Collaborative Inbox?

The short tutorial below will walk you through how to access your Collaborative Inbox.

Tip: To search faster, use Ctrl +F to search this page for keywords related to the topic you're interested in.

General Questions

1. How does a collaborative inbox compare to a distribution list?

Messages that are sent to distribution lists arrive ONLY in your inbox and are not stored in a central repository for all collaborators to review. Messages that are sent to collaborative inboxes are stored in a centralized inbox separate from your inbox.

Posting in/from a Collaborative Inbox

1. Can you recall a post?

No. You can not recall a post.

2. Does Google Groups have access to our address book, or will we need to type in the full address?

Yes, groups can see the internal address book.

3. What if you need to send an email out from a Group email address?

If you have that privilege, you can “post” a message and the message will be sent as the group.

Organizing and Collaborating

1. Using Google Group, is there any way to create rules (filters) to route messages to different folders to organize the inbound messages?

Unfortunately, there are no filters in google groups. You will need to add tags manually to each message.

2. With Google Groups, how quickly does the assignment appear to other people in the group? Does it auto-refresh?

The users will need to refresh their screen to see any updates (new messages, tags, etc). Google Groups do not auto-refresh.

Settings and Managing a Google Group

1. I am receiving spam notices and pending messages in my Google Group. How do I bypass the spam feature in Groups?

For instructions on how to turn off the spam filter in Google Groups, click here.

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