Group / Alias emails for Teams

[RoyalGourmet]

It would be great for the group or alias functionality to allow all the users within to be able to follow the email trails that other users have sent emails or replies to. This will make for a much more coherent and professional image from a business point of view. Currently, it allows different users within a group/alias to respond to the same email without knowing it has already been responded to by someone else in the group/alias.

This would be a great feature to implement so that all the users within the group/alias can see the email trails so that everyone in it knows what's been happening and can easily follow up.

Would this feature be easy to implement?

[icrew · Accepted solution]

Hi @RoyalGourmet 

This feature already exists. Check out the Collaborative Inbox feature of Google Groups.

Hope that helps,

Ian

[icrew · Accepted solution]

Yup, it is—you can do that with the free, open source, command line “Got Your Back” tool from Jay Lee, the same person who created the indispensable GAM tool. See https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back/wiki#--action-restore-group for all the details.

Ian

[icrew · Accepted solution]

Hi @RoyalGourmet 

This feature already exists. Check out the Collaborative Inbox feature of Google Groups.

Hope that helps,

Ian

[mkwiecinski]

This is not a complete solution. We rely on alias domains and we cannot send (reply) from those alias domains. The workaround to "send-as" from user's Gmail interface is inconvenient, as it requires to pay attention to: (1) make sure I send as alias not my own account and (2) add alias on bcc so that the group can keep track of conversation and (3) my private e-mail is exposed to the receipient

[RoyalGourmet]

Oh, that's strange, Google Workspace support chat mentioned that's not available yet and I should send a feature request.  Lol.  I will take a look.  Thanks icrew!!!  Much appreciated!

[icrew]

Support is often annoyingly literal. If you ask a question about Gmail, they’re not going to suggest a solution from Groups.

BTW, if you ever do want to submit a feature idea, you should post it to the Feature Ideas section here (https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/gh-p/workspace-ideas-group) so that it can be upvoted by others and possibly considered as a future feature enhancement.

If you are submitting a feature idea, be sure to explain the problem that you're trying to solve with the feature idea, not just the idea itself. For example, saying "when my users are trying to do 'A', they often get confused by the fact that the buttons to do 'X' and to do 'Y' look quite similar to each other, which leads to this unintended consequence" is far more likely to get fixed than a feature idea that just says "change the color of the button 'Y'".

Cheers,

Ian

[RoyalGourmet]

Hi Ian,

Sorry to bring this back up again.  Is it possible to migrate old emails from my previous host to a Collaborative Inbox of Google Groups?  We have a main email address that we used for taking orders, and some users would like to be able to trace back to historical emails prior to using Google Workspace.  Thanks!

[icrew · Accepted solution]

Yup, it is—you can do that with the free, open source, command line “Got Your Back” tool from Jay Lee, the same person who created the indispensable GAM tool. See https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back/wiki#--action-restore-group for all the details.

Ian

[RoyalGourmet]

Thanks for the quick pointer Ian.  I've just installed GYB and set up all the Google Cloud permissions following the guide.  However, would I need to migrate the emails from my old host (Dreamhost.com) to a temporary Gmail account first?  I don't see instructions in setting permissions on accessing emails on the Dreamhost IMAP servers.  Can you point me in the right direction again?  Thanks a gain!

[icrew · Accepted solution]

You’ll probably need to download them from Dreamhost to a local file in mbox format, then use GYB from there. Lots of tools can do that. A really quick search turned up the fact that Apple’s own Mail client can do so, for example: https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/import-or-export-mailboxes-mlhlp1030/mac

[RoyalGourmet]

Hi Ian,

Jay from GYB has mentioned that Mac Mail's MBOX file is not compatible with GYB.  Do you know whether there are any other email clients (Mac or Windows) which can export to one compatible?  I'm not having any luck with Mozilla Thunderbird either.

[icrew]

I’m not sure. Two thoughts:

1) You might try right-clicking on the MBOX files from Apple Mail and see if the first item in the pop-up is “Show package contents” if it is, choose it—the actual .mbox  file might be in there. In other words, Apple might be bundling up the .mbox file into one of its packages.

2. A google search for “export imap to mbox” turns up a number of different tools, including some open source ones. 

[RoyalGourmet]

Sorry to be a pain Ian, I've exported the emails into MBOX format but I'm struggling to find the way to import it into the Google Group email address using GYB.  Is there a more detailed guide around?  I can't make much from the Github Wiki. 😅

I've set up all the permissions for GYB, but not sure the commands to start the importing process.  Thanks again!

*EDIT: I managed to get this command:

gyb --email groupemail@company.com --action restore-group --local-folder "/Users/myname/Documents/emailexport/INBOX.mbox/mbox"

but for some reason, I keep getting error now:

zsh: command not found: gyb

Have I broken it somehow?

[RoyalGourmet]

I've tried again using a Windows system and have got much further.  However, when I run the action restore-group command, it requires me to get the verification code for the group email address, however, the group email doesn't have it's own username/password.  How do I verify and get the OAuth token?

[RoyalGourmet]

Ah, I believe I need to use:

--service-account

 and 

--use-admin adminemail@company.com

But I now get an error of:

Groups supports restore of messages up to 26214400

 My MBOX backup is a total of 568mb, but I thought the restore limit was per email (due to GMAILS size limits).  Does my backup need to be split into individual emails?  My Mac Mail.app exports to 1 large export file.

[icrew]

I’d suggest asking on the GYB mailing list, which is linked from the Wiki…lots of helpful folks who know more about GYB than I do hang out there. 

[RoyalGourmet]

Thanks Ian, I think some of my emails within the backup were over the 26mb limit.  I've tried deleting those from the host and trying to export a new copy.  Will see if that is the problem.

Will try the Wiki forum if still have the same problem.  Many thanks!

*EDIT: Still didn't work.  It seems to be a problem with the actual command, it doesn't seem to do anything after giving that message.