Hi all,
We’re looking for advice on giving a sales team shared visibility into each member’s email, and we’d like to know how others have handled this before we build anything.
Our setup
The problem
When a sales rep is on vacation, out sick unexpectedly, leaves the company, or hands off a territory, the rest of the team or a specific user assigned as coverage needs to be able to see that rep’s customer emails, both new incoming mail and older history. Right now those emails are only visible to the rep. The issue is some reps in our org where multiple hats and we can't have sensitive emails being left out in the open. We've tested changing the read permissions to be set to team but so many of the emails don't have teams assigned to them that its almost the same as not having the teams at all.
What we’ve looked at so far
Concerns
Questions
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!
We’re looking for advice on giving a sales team shared visibility into each member’s email, and we’d like to know how others have handled this before we build anything.
Our setup
- EspoCRM version: [9.2]
- Advanced Pack version: [3.13]
- Each inside sales rep has a personal email account connected (Google Workspace mailboxes)
- Reps are all on the same team
The problem
When a sales rep is on vacation, out sick unexpectedly, leaves the company, or hands off a territory, the rest of the team or a specific user assigned as coverage needs to be able to see that rep’s customer emails, both new incoming mail and older history. Right now those emails are only visible to the rep. The issue is some reps in our org where multiple hats and we can't have sensitive emails being left out in the open. We've tested changing the read permissions to be set to team but so many of the emails don't have teams assigned to them that its almost the same as not having the teams at all.
What we’ve looked at so far
- Group Email Folders (7.3+): Sharing a group folder with the team looks like it gives us the visibility we need, and mass Move-to-Folder would handle older emails. The problem is that it relies on someone moving emails manually, which doesn’t help when someone is out unexpectedly.
- Email filters: On the surface filters can only move emails into a group folder when the filter is tied to a group email account, not a personal one. Please correct me if wrong
- Advanced Pack workflow (our current plan): A workflow on Email “After record created” that checks whether the email belongs to an inside sales user and sets the Group Folder automatically. We haven’t tested this yet and aren’t sure whether setting the Group Folder through a workflow behaves the same as moving the email manually (team access, user association, etc.)
Concerns
- Sensitive emails: With this approach, everything is shared by default. Our understanding is that moving an email back to the Inbox or a personal folder unlinks it from the group folder, but Trash and Archive don’t. Is there a better way to keep certain emails private, such as excluding them in the workflow conditions?
- Backfill: Is there a good way to apply this to existing emails per user, such as running a workflow against existing records, or is mass Move-to-Folder the best option?
Questions
- Has anyone set up something similar? Is the workflow approach reasonable, or is there a cleaner or more native way to do this?
- Are there pitfalls with setting the Group Folder field through a workflow?
- Would adjusting Teams on emails or role access levels be a better approach than group folders?
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!