Summary
Once you have set up Centralized Connect in Planhat, for either Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook, you can then add shared mailboxes to Planhat
Within Planhat, you enter the shared mailbox email address, and specify which Planhat Users are members
Emails sent from/to the shared mailbox going forward are automatically synced into Planhat. All Users associated with the shared mailbox will be listed on the Conversation record, in the "Team Members" field. You can also sync historical (existing) emails (for a specified time window)
The relevant Users can select the shared mailbox to send emails from in Planhat. Shared mailboxes are also supported in Automations for sending emails automatically (Sequence Automations / "Schedule Email" steps)
Google Groups are not shared mailboxes so don't have the same functionality, but you can add them to Planhat so that the relevant Users are shown on the relevant Conversations
Who is this article for?
Any Planhat User who is part of a shared Google or Microsoft mailbox
Planhat admins who configure their Planhat tenant for their organization
Related articles
Other articles particularly relevant to this article are:
Article contents
Introduction
"Centralized Connect" is a way of connecting the email (and calendar) of all Users, managed centrally by an admin, rather than each User needing to connect their account to Planhat individually.
In addition to regular individual-User email accounts, it's possible to configure shared Google Gmail / Microsoft Outlook mailboxes in Planhat, such as support@yourcompany.com for your Support Team. You add these within the "Settings" Tool in Planhat OS. Each mailbox is connected separately, and can be modified/removed at any time.
Once set up, you can send and receive shared mailbox emails in Planhat. Shared mailbox emails sent outside Planhat are automatically synced into Planhat. Users belonging to the shared mailbox are populated in the Team Members field on the Conversation records.
There is also some support for Google Groups, although there are limited possibilities because Google Groups are not true shared mailboxes.
📌 Definitions
"Data model" (also called simply "model") - how data is organized in Planhat, similar to the "objects" you may be familiar with from other software. For example, "Company" is the model representing organizations that are your customers or prospects
"Record" - a piece of data within a model. For example, a Company record could be "Apple" or "BMW"
"User" (sometimes called "Team Member") - the Planhat model representing users of Planhat, i.e. you and your co-workers
"End User" - the Planhat model representing people working at prospect/customer Companies, i.e. your contacts and the users of your product
"Conversation" - the Planhat model representing communications (logged activities), such as emails, tickets, chats and meetings
"Your tenant" - your organization's copy of Planhat, i.e. your organization's Planhat environment
What shared mailbox emails look like in Planhat
🚀 Tip
This is the same whether the shared mailbox is Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook.
You can send emails from the shared mailbox in Planhat (shown later in this article), and you can receive emails from the shared mailbox in Planhat, the same as with "regular" email accounts.
These emails are saved in Planhat on the Conversation model - the same as emails sent by/to individual Users.
The screenshot below shows an example of an email sent from a shared mailbox in Planhat ("Support Team") to a End User, and then a reply from the End User back to that shared mailbox.
Click the image to view it enlarged
A difference between shared mailbox emails compared to standard individual-User emails is that in the "Team Members" field of the Conversation record (first screenshot below), you will see all the Users added as Team Members in that shared mailbox's settings in Planhat (second screenshot below), not just the individual User who sent the email from Planhat using the shared mailbox.
Click the image to view it enlarged
Click the image to view it enlarged
Where you can use a shared mailbox in Planhat to send an email
🚀 Tip
This is the same whether the shared mailbox is Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook.
When you're sending an email from Planhat, you will see shared mailboxes listed to select from, as shown in the example email dialog screenshot below. Only Users who are listed as Team Members in the Settings for a shared mailbox (shown in the screenshot above) will be able to select and send from that mailbox - so you can think of that Team Members list as giving permission for those Users to use the shared mailbox in Planhat.
Shared mailboxes can be selected and used in Sequence Automations, which are how you can automatically send emails in Planhat. The screenshot below shows an example of a shared mailbox being used in a "Schedule Email" step in a Custom Automation.
Shared mailboxes are also supported in NPS emails.
They are not supported in Sequence Workflows, as that is the legacy method of automatically sending emails, which is being deprecated.
How to add shared mailboxes to Planhat
📌 Important to note
You need to have first set up Centralized Connect for Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook before carrying out these steps. For instructions on how to do this, see our separate article here.
🚀 Tip
Shared mailbox functionality is available in both Planhat OS and pre-OS Planhat. The screenshots and instructions in this article correspond to Planhat OS.
The steps are the same whether you are using Google Gmail or Microsoft Outlook.
In Planhat OS, go to the "Settings" Tool
You can get there by clicking on your name in the top left of Planhat and clicking "Settings"
You can also access this by clicking on "More" in your sidebar and then clicking "Settings"
Click on "Email Sync" and then "Email Setup"
Click on "Shared mailboxes"
Click on "Add shared mailbox"
Type or paste in your shared mailbox email address
Use the dropdown menu to select which Planhat Users (Team Members) can use this shared mailbox. (Note that you can type into the box to narrow down the dropdown options to find people more quickly)
Click on "Add shared mailbox"
You will see a confirmation modal. Click "Add mailbox"
Select the Sent and/or Inbox checkbox(es) to automatically sync new emails matching those labels/folders going forward
If you keep the "Sync existing emails" toggle switch enabled, then once you save, already-existing emails from the last [x] days will be synced in for your selected label(s). [x] corresponds to the number set as the "Email Initial Sync Period", as shown in the screenshot below. If you don't want this backward sync to take place when you save the mailbox, click on the toggle switch to turn it off
Note that if you don't want this historical sync to happen right away, or you are not sure whether to activate it at this stage, you can disable the toggle now but then initiate a manual historical sync later on, via "Sync Tools" (discussed here)
Click the image to view it enlarged
Click "Save"
Once saved, it will look similar to the following screenshot. Now, new/future shared mailbox emails matching the selected labels/folders will automatically be synced into Planhat, and the historical sync will initiate if applicable
🚀 Tip
You can add multiple shared mailboxes if you like, e.g. if you have support@yourcompany.com and sales@yourcompany.com.
Editing the shared mailbox settings
You can go back and edit the shared mailbox in Planhat if necessary. For example, this could be because you want to add an additional User to the Team Members list.
To edit an existing shared mailbox, just click on the pencil icon on the right-hand side to open up its details to change.
Manually syncing historical emails via Sync Tools
As mentioned above, it's possible to manually initiate a backward sync of existing emails.
To do this:
Go to the "Sync Tools" part of the Settings Tool. This is slightly underneath the "Email Sync" part where you set up shared mailboxes, as shown below
Click the image to view it enlarged
For "Shared mailbox to sync", use the dropdown menu to select which shared mailbox you would like to sync. (This is useful if you have set up multiple shared mailboxes)
Click "Sync Shared Mailbox"
Google Groups
It's important to note that "Google Groups" are not a true shared mailbox. They are more like an email distribution list. We recommend you use an actual shared mailbox, rather than Google Groups, wherever possible.
You can still connect Google Groups to Planhat, on the "Shared mailboxes" screen, but this is in a separate part at the bottom, as shown in the screenshot below. Like to the setup method for shared mailboxes, you type/paste in the Google Group email address, and select which Planhat Users are the associated Team Members.
Because a Google Group isn't an actual email account, you can't send emails from this email address from Planhat, and also emails sent to this email address aren't automatically synced into Planhat. Rather, one of the members of the Google Group should set things up (on the Google side) so emails to that email address are forwarded to that individual User, and as their emails are automatically synced to Planhat, that's how they are synced in.
The benefit of defining the Google Group here in Planhat is that the synced emails, which are stored as Conversation records in Planhat, will have the Google Group Users listed in the Team Members field (like we have shown above for shared mailboxes).
[Tags for search purposes: shared inbox; shared email account]