How to connect Email

The Email channel turns an email address into a shared inbox. Mail sent to it becomes a thread, your reply goes back as an ordinary email, and the customer never knows anything changed.

What the Email channel is

It is an address customers write to. That is the whole idea. What Gruvi adds is what happens next: instead of landing in one person's mailbox, the message becomes a conversation your whole team can see, assign and track.

For most teams this is the channel to set up first, because you almost certainly already have a support address and customers are already using it.

Two ways to do it

Use the address you already have.

Something like support@yourcompany.com. Customers keep writing to the same place. This needs a forwarding rule and one DNS record.

Use an address we provide.

Every workspace gets one, in the form support@yourworkspace.gruvi.email. Nothing to configure, and it works immediately.

The provided address is the quicker path and fine for testing. For anything customer-facing, use your own domain: replies from support@yourcompany.com look like you, and replies from a .gruvi.email address look like a third party.

Before you start

• The address you want to use, and access to the mailbox it belongs to, so you can set up forwarding.
• Access to your domain's DNS, or somebody who has it. This is the step that makes replies come from your address rather than ours.
• About five minutes. Forwarding takes roughly two minutes on most providers. DNS changes can take longer to propagate.

How to set it up

1. 1Go to Settings, then Channels, then Email.
2. 2Click Add email channel.
3. 3Answer the first question: do you already have a support address, or not?
4. 4Enter the address customers write to.
5. 5Set the display name customers will see.
6. 6Follow the forwarding instructions for your email provider. The wizard shows the steps for common ones.
7. 7Add the DNS record it gives you to authenticate your domain.
8. 8Activate the channel, then send a test email to the address and check it arrives as a thread.

The wizard tracks where you are, so you can stop after forwarding and come back for the DNS step when whoever manages your domain is available.

What customers see as the sender

Under the channel's Sending tab you choose what appears in the From line. There are four options, and a preview shows each one.

Agent's full name

Shows as "John Smith from Acme". This is the default, and the friendliest.

Agent's first name

Shows as "John from Acme". Slightly more casual.

Workspace only

Hides who replied. Useful if you would rather customers wrote to the team than to a person.

Custom name

A fixed label whatever the reply, such as "Acme Support".

Limitations and things to watch

• Until the DNS step is done, replies come from us, not you. They will still arrive, but the From address will not be yours. Finish this step before you tell customers anything has changed.
• Cc and Bcc exist here and nowhere else. They appear at the top of the composer on email threads only.
• Forwarding loops are the classic mistake. If the mailbox you forward from also receives Gruvi's replies, you can create a loop. Forward to Gruvi; do not forward back.
• Email is slower by nature. Customers accept hours here that they would not accept on chat. They also write at length, so read the whole thread before replying.
• Chloe can be turned off for email alone. The Chloe replies here switch on the channel's Overview tab keeps this channel human-only without affecting the others.