Group email mailboxes and Trash/Archiv

[animax]

I have the following question:

In our system we use a group email mailbox. If I move an email that comes in there to the trash, it is back in the inbox a short time later.

The same thing happens if I move an email from this mailbox to the new EspoCRM archive mailbox; the email appears in the inbox a short time later.

How can I change it so that emails from group mailboxes are correctly moved to the trash or archive and remain there?

[yuri]

Not possible. You can't move an email from a group folder to a Trash. Trash is a personal folder. An email will be still related to a group folder.

https://docs.espocrm.com/user-guide/emails/#group-email-folders

> If a user moves an email from a group folder to the Trash or Archive, the email won't be unlinked from the group folder, meaning that other users will still see that email in the group folder.

Maybe consider having an additional group folder to move junk emails to. It will moved for all users.

[yuri]

Or move to the All folder. That will unrelate an email from the group folder.

Actually, it's tricky. As access control imposes complexities and limitations.

Inbox, Personal Folders, Trash and Archive are personal folders. Emails associated with the user through TO, CC fields are personal user's emails.
All and Group Folders can contain both personal and non-personal emails.

A user can have access to read a non-personal email but in the same time not have access to edit such an email. Meaning, they also cannot unlink the email from a Group Folder.

We might need to introduce an internal field to mark a group email as in-trash or in-archive. This could solve the problem that only personal emails can be put to trash/archive. Needs investigation first.

[yuri]

Some progress for the next release. Turn out to be more complex than expected.

https://github.com/espocrm/espocrm/issues/3172

[animax]

Hello Yuri, Thank you very much for your explanation. We have been using Espo for many years now, with many adjustments for our small call center. It would be really nice if the email problem could be solved differently at some point. Because it is very confusing.

Otherwise, we are very happy with Espo!

[yuri]

Group folders were added just recently (because were asked for it). Apart from not being able to move emails from a group folder to Trash I can't imagine what exactly is very confusing.

We also have received an opposite feedback, where people appreciated how Emails function in Espo. Most of confusion I witnessed was due to expecting Espo to work as a regular personal email client. But it's not of that kind. Espo works as an email hub for multiple email boxes: personal and group. There's no two-way sync for IMAP folders and it's not possible by design.

https://docs.espocrm.com/user-guide/emails/#concept

In Espo, email accounts are not private by design which aligns with the idea of the CRM in my opinion. It's not the case in many popular CRMs though. But we not just try to do things the same way others do.