Choose who can use an inbox

A team inbox like support@ is open to everyone on the team, and everyone can reply in it. That's the default, and most teams never change it. When an inbox is for a few people, like billing@ or hr@, keep it to them.

What people can do

Each person has one of four levels on an inbox:

• Can read: open, search and ask Rookery about its mail, write notes and @mention teammates.
• Can draft: everything in Can read, and write replies. Their replies wait in Needs your yes for someone who can reply, as Quill's drafts do. See approve a draft.
• Can reply: everything in Can draft, and send, approve drafts, assign, snooze, tag, mark Done, ask for documents and offer times.
• Can manage: everything in Can reply, and the inbox's settings: who can use it, New senders, what Quill does there.

Change who can use an inbox

1. Open Settings → Inboxes and find the inbox.
2. Under Who can use it, choose Everyone on the team and what everyone can do (Can read, Can draft or Can reply), or Only people I choose.
3. To give someone their own level, pick them under Add someone…, choose what they can do, and click Add. Change it with the menu beside their name, or click Remove.

Each change saves at once. Someone with their own level gets the higher of theirs and everyone's: "Everyone can read; Leo can reply" works.

See who can see a conversation

Under every conversation's subject, and under an inbox's name when you look at one inbox, a quiet line says who can see it: Everyone on the team, You, Leo and Ana, or Only you. Click it for everyone's names and what each can do there. It comes from the same rule as everything else, so it's always true.

Keep the helpers and Ask Rookery out of an inbox

Who can read an inbox and whether Rookery's helpers may use it are two separate choices. For an inbox like hr@ or legal@, you can let people in and keep the helpers out.

1. Open Settings → Inboxes and find the inbox.
2. Turn off Helpers and Ask Rookery may use this inbox.

While it's off:

• Scout doesn't read or sort its mail, Quill doesn't draft there (even when asked), and Fetch doesn't read its files.
• Ask Rookery leaves it out of every answer, even when you ask from one of its conversations, and nothing of it stays in Ask's index.
• Its mail is never used as context for anything else, like a draft in another inbox or your daily brief.
• Scout still checks new mail for scams as it arrives, and holds anything dangerous.

Turn it back on and the helpers pick up new mail, and Ask Rookery can answer from it again. The inbox's managers change it (for a private inbox, its owner), and the change is in the audit log.

Who can change it

• The workspace owner and admins, for every team inbox, and anyone with Can manage on it.
• Managing isn't reading. An admin who isn't on a restricted inbox's list sees its settings, not its mail. To read it, they add themselves, and that's recorded in the workspace's audit log, like every change here.
• A private inbox has no list: only its owner uses it. See keep your own inbox private.

When someone loses access

• Conversations assigned to them in that inbox go back to nobody's.
• Their drafts there close at once, and so does the conversation if they have it open.
• A reply of theirs still in its undo window isn't sent; its words come back as a draft for the inbox.
• They can't be assigned or @mentioned there, and the inbox's mail drops out of their search, Today and Ask Rookery.

Good to know

• A restricted inbox has its own client page: people who write to billing@ see only billing@'s requests there, never the rest of the team's.
• Webhooks for team inboxes hear a restricted inbox only when the person who made the webhook can read it.
• On someone's screen, a thread they can read but not reply to says so where the actions would be, like "You can read billing@."