Team assignment and delivery routing

Working with teammates

When your organization has teammates, you can assign a conversation to a person and leave private notes that only your team can see. Type @ in a note to mention a teammate; Shipmail emails them, marks the thread in the message list, and adds it to their Mentions view. Team ownership views are separate from your personal workflow views. See shared inbox setup for how to run a shared address like support@yourdomain.com.

Roles and mailbox access

Every person has a role and, separately, mailbox access. You choose both when you invite someone, and change them later in Settings > Team.

• Owner. One per organization. Billing, ownership transfer and organization deletion stay with the Owner. Nobody else changes the Owner's role or access.
• Admin. Manages teammates, organization settings, API keys, webhooks and newsletters.
• Member. Reads and sends in the mailboxes they have access to, and manages the rules of a mailbox only they can read. A Newsletter editor grant lets a Member edit newsletters.

Mailbox access is All mailboxes, which includes mailboxes added later, or Selected mailboxes, a list you choose. Admins and Members can have either. Domains, creating and deleting mailboxes, delivery routing, analytics and suppressions need an Owner or Admin with access to all mailboxes. Admins can manage forwarding, set passwords and remove aliases on mailboxes they read. They can add an alias only if its domain has no catch-all or they can read the catch-all mailbox. Only the Owner can change the password of a mailbox that receives an Owner login address.

An Admin with selected mailboxes grants only the mailboxes they read and never gives anyone all mailboxes. They change someone's role and access only when they read every mailbox that person reads, and never their own. When an Admin opens billing, Shipmail shows who the Owner is so they know whom to ask.

Team assignment

Team assignment is optional. It chooses a person inside the current mailbox, not another mailbox. When a new conversation arrives, Shipmail assigns it to the next available teammate in that mailbox's chosen order. If nobody is available, it remains unassigned. Team assignment never moves the conversation to another mailbox.

Open a mailbox and choose Team assignment under Mail handling. Choose the teammates who take turns, then mark each one always available, unavailable, or available during weekly hours in their own timezone.

An alias can have an explicit owner when team assignment is enabled and that owner is in the mailbox's team list. Mail sent to the alias is assigned directly to its owner even while they are off duty, but remains visible to everyone with access to the mailbox. Existing conversations keep their assignee, manual assignment always wins, and mailbox out of office only controls the automatic response.

Delivery routing

Delivery routing is optional. It chooses which mailbox receives a brand-new conversation, not which person handles it. The conversation can stay in its original mailbox, go to one other mailbox, or take turns between several mailboxes. Every later reply stays in the same destination mailbox.

Open a mailbox and choose Delivery routing under Mail handling. Messages sent to an alias or catch-all address are not routed and remain in their mailbox.

Every route has an explicit backup mailbox, and you can also select the source as a normal destination. The backup receives new conversations when no selected destination can receive mail because it is out of office, suspended, or archived. Existing conversations never move.

If team assignment is enabled on the destination mailbox, its own team settings choose the person who handles the conversation. You can use either feature on its own. When both are enabled, delivery routing chooses the mailbox first, then that mailbox assigns a teammate. If nobody assigns, notes, or replies to a routed conversation within 24 hours, the responsible people receive an attention notification in the destination mailbox. See the shared inbox guide.