Team Inbox has become quite popular among businesses over the past decade. Here’s why:
Email was firstly designed to be used as a direct channel, very similar to physical mail. But when this channel needs to be managed by multiple people, it can get quite messy. Team members loose track of who is working on what, what has already been addressed and what has not, among other inefficiencies.
The world is becoming more collaborative, especially with internet allowing people to instantly connect across the world. As a consequence, companies have been urging for more collaboration on their business activities, so the concept of “Team Inbox” has emerged and rapidly spread across organizations.
Now, if your organization is in Google Workspace, it’s your turn to do the same, which is why we prepared five simple steps to turn your into the perfect for your – transforming it into a machine.
Step 1: understanding team inboxes
Until recently, inboxes were unknown. Employees used to rely on a single email address, copying and forwarding between teammates, or using significant external software to solve communication problems. But did it solve the problem?
Some companies, especially big enterprises, need external, comprehensive tools with enough infrastructure to manage their robust and heavy operations. On the other hand, small teams most times don’t need anything else besides email – yes, email – to solve their business problems.
Still, any business activity people deal with – whether it be a deal close, meeting arrangement, fundraising, or anything else, starts and finishes as emails. For small teams in Google Workspace, the power of a well-designed Gmail Team Inbox in Gmail should be enough to organize the mess in their lives and make them more productive, right from inside their inbox.
That’s why Shared Inboxes were created. They were made for teams that want to simplify their lives instead of adding complexity. Drag, for example, is a Gmail Shared Inbox that enables users to collaborate on emails without the burden of learning an all-new tool from scratch.
Step 2: finding the best Gmail team inbox tools
There are some ways to search and find the proper tool for your team that works in Gmail.
Look into reviews in directories
Directories are a great place to look for tools. They reunite various tools divided into categories, each tool with its reviews, containing all the pros and cons of using it.
You can search for Gmail team inbox tools in Capterra. There you will find complete reviews, containing the reviewer’s job title, industry, number of employees, and time spent using the software. This can be useful to understand the context of how they are using the software, so you can compare with how your team works and see with the tool would fill your needs.
G2 is another useful directory to look for software, and it works similarly to Capterra.
Search your pain point in the web
Try to search literally for your pain points on Google. For example, “share team inbox in Gmail”, if your pain point is the need to have a shared inbox with your team.
Step 3: downloading Drag Team Inbox
Now comes the easy part. Just click here to download the best Chrome extension that will help you share your email inbox with your team.
Drag instantly turns Gmail into a Team Inbox. And it doesn’t stop here. It also turns Gmail into a Kanban board, the best way to organize Gmail.
Now you can start collaborating in your brand new Gmail team inbox with your team. And if you need to get things done, your mailbox gets many other functionalities, such as:
- Email assignment
- Internal chat and @mentions
- Automations, from SLAs to round robin assignment
- Reports and analytics
- Tasks, subtasks, file upload
- Integrations and API
All of it, right from inside Gmail.
Step 4 – Creating shared boards
Once you’re logged in and have Drag activated, all you have to do is follow these steps:
- Click on the “+” button next to the Drag boards section on the left hand side of Gmail
- Select the type of board do you want. Boards can be Empty (so you can drag emails or create tasks into there as you want), Shared Inbox (shared emails such as sales@ or support@ with a real account and password), Google Groups (an existing Google Group in your Google Workspace account) or WhatsApp (to collaborate on WhatsApp conversations, side by side to email, in Gmail).
- Type a name for your new board.
- On the following step, invite other team members to have access to that board.
And you’re done! As simple as that.
Step 5: customizing your team inbox in Gmail
This step is for you to setup your team inbox to fit into your workflow. It will mainly include:
- Rename the columns/lists with the stages of your workflow.
- Create board shared tags.
- Create email templates (and sequences, if applicable).
- Create automations to put repetitive tasks of your workflow on autopilot.
- Integrate boards to other tools you use, according to your workflow.
And that’s it! You will be read to support customers, close deals and get more done right from inside Gmail, and collaboratively.
Conclusion
Setting up and using a Gmail Team Inbox is easier than you expected, right? The whole idea behind it is to make your experience with it as smooth as possible. At the same time, boosting your team’s productivity has to be the big idea behind it all.
It doesn’t matter if you’ll use it just like an email, or turn it into CRM, Help Desk or other workflows, shared inboxes can increase productivity and boost your teams work.
Share your inbox the right way.
Drag turns Gmail into your Team’s Workspace – One single place to support customers, manage tasks and close deals, from the place teams love: Gmail. We are a Techstars-backed Company, trusted by 30,000 users around the World.