Email delegation is a powerful feature in Gmail that can help you collaborate and share an email account with others. You can have emails delivered to an address monitored by multiple people. It could be a business tool when receiving customer queries.
Imagine you have a Gmail account for your business. This email is used in all your business promotions and advertising. Would it be safe to share the account password with all your employees? That’s where Gmail delegation helps. You can grant people limited access to your emails without the rights to your Google account.
In Gmail, delegated accounts and shared inboxes allow you to grant people or groups access to your Gmail account. One of the main advantages of using email delegation is that you can have someone else manage your inbox without granting them full access to your account.
Delegates can simply read, send, and delete your email messages. When they send a message, their email address appears, which allows you to keep track of who is accessing your account.
How to add a delegate in Gmail
You can allow others to read and send emails (that’s delegation) on your behalf. It’s a great options for teams that need a common email address and also for businesses. It’s also useful when a person has a secretary reading and answering his emails.
To add a delegate to your Gmail account, follow these steps:
- On your computer, open Gmail. You can’t add delegates from the Gmail app.
- In the top right, click Settings and then See all settings.
- Click the Accounts and Import or Accounts tab.
- In the “Grant access to your account” section, click Add another account. If you’re using Gmail through your work or school, your organization may restrict email delegation. If you don’t see this setting, contact your admin.
- Enter the email address of the person you want to add. If you’re using Gmail through your work, school, or other organization, and your admin allows it, you can enter the email address of a group. This group must have the same domain as your organization. External members of the group are denied delegation access.
- Click Next Step and then Send email to grant access.
The person you added will receive an email asking them to confirm their access. The invitation must be accepted within a week.
When you have a Gmail account through your work or other organization, you can delegate your Gmail account to a group. This makes it easy to manage the delegation through the group membership, rather than having to add and remove individual delegates. If you added a group (in an organization Gmail Workspace), all group members will become delegates without having to confirm. It may take up to 24 hours for the delegation to start taking effect.
An alternative to email delegation is forwarding your emails to other addresses. However, it lacks the collaboration feature. When the same email is sent to multiple people, each of them might respond to it without knowing that someone else has already responded. In delegated account, you get to act as if one person is reading and sending the emails.
Email delegation is a useful feature that can help you manage your inbox more effectively. Whether you’re delegating to an individual or a group, it’s a great way to share the workload and ensure that important messages are being handled efficiently. So, go ahead and give it a try!