Spark Introduces Shared Inboxes for Teams to Better Collaborate on Email

TL;DR: Today we’re introducing Shared Inboxes in Spark — an invaluable new feature that enables multiple team members to simultaneously access common email accounts (like sales@ or info@) & enhance collaboration by assigning emails, setting deadlines, discussing emails internally and even drafting emails together in real time.

Shared Inboxes are available to all Spark for Teams users with Gmail or Google Workplace accounts. You can enjoy this feature on Mac starting today. The iOS support follows in a few days while the Android version is being rolled out over the next two weeks. 

Download the latest Spark update and see how Shared Inboxes can benefit your team.

Readdle is delighted to introduce a major update to Spark email app today with the launch of Shared Inboxes. Our team has been hard at work on this for the last few months and we couldn’t be more excited about its release. Spark’s Shared Inboxes enable everyone from small teams to large businesses to collaborate better using email.

The Need for Sharing Email Inboxes

Shared email accounts such as sales@ / support@ / accounts@ / info@ are commonly used today in businesses of any size. Usually, there are multiple people behind the scenes who handle incoming & outgoing emails in these accounts.

The most common way of sharing access to these email accounts is by sharing the password directly with other individuals. Unfortunately, not only is sharing passwords highly risky, there’s a lot of friction involved when working with common/shared email accounts.

Unless you’re using expensive SaaS apps, you have to deal with the complexities of:

• figuring out which team member replied to an email
• losing track of emails to be responded to
• manually dealing with adding new people and removing access for old team members
• never knowing how many users are accessing the account with the shared password.

With the latest version of Spark released today, you will be able to share access to any email accounts with your team members without having to worry about or dealing with any of the complexities above. Once set up, multiple team members can simultaneously handle emails in that account, assign them to colleagues and clearly keep track of who is responsible for each email.

Benefits of Shared Inboxes in Spark:

1. Security — Share access to the inbox with anyone on your team, without sharing or revealing passwords. This ensures that the security of the Shared Inbox is never compromised.
2. Transparency — Clearly see which team members have access to the Shared Inbox, so you’re always up to date. Quickly add or remove anyone's access to the inbox from the Settings.
3. Team Productivity — All incoming emails in the Shared Inbox are automatically available to everyone with access to it, removing the need to manually share every email. Spark notifies a team member when an email is assigned to them, and also when the email is marked as done.

Shared access to email accounts lets you collaborate in a better way and enables a hassle-free experience of working with email.

Shared Inboxes in Spark also bring all the amazing features available in Spark for Teams, such as:

1. Assign Emails

Everyone with access to a Shared Inbox in Spark can assign an email, either to themselves or to other members of the team. Spark allows you to add an optional message when assigning the email to a team member.

All incoming emails arriving in the email account appear under the ‘Shared Inbox’ tab in the Spark sidebar.

Emails assigned to yourself appear under the ‘Assigned to Me’ tab, whereas emails that have been assigned to your team members appear under ‘Assigned to Others’. This way, you can quickly glimpse at which emails are pending and which ones are assigned.

2. Set Deadlines & Track Progress

Team members can set deadlines for assigned emails by enabling a Due Date & Time for each email. Spark will automatically remind you about any upcoming deadlines, so you’re always on track with your team’s email tasks. Team members can see the list of assigned emails in the Shared Inbox and keep track of when an assigned email is closed.

3. Discuss Emails Internally

Spark lets you to discuss an email internally with other team members, just like you'd IM or chat. You can leave comments on emails, share files and even react with emojis. All of this is private and stays within your team. This is a great way to discuss something with others on the team before responding to emails.

For example, if you have just received a query from your potential customer to your sales@businessname.com email account, you can chat with other team members about how best to respond to the email, and who to assign it too.

4. Draft New Emails Together in Real-Time

When using Shared Inboxes in Spark, you also get the ability to compose new emails with the Shared Account as the sender. Additionally, you can invite your colleagues to help you draft emails and also allow them to send the email on their own.

Drafting an email together with your teammates makes it easier to quickly collaborate and get this done faster. Your productivity will go up, thanks to all the incredible features of Shared Inboxes in Spark.

How to Set Up Shared Inboxes in Spark

With the Shared Inboxes functionality now available in Spark, you can go ahead and set up multiple common or team email accounts. Here’s how:

1. Launch Spark and ensure that you update to the latest version.
2. Open Spark’s Preferences and click on the ‘Accounts’ tab.
3. Click on the + button at the bottom left.
4. Click on ‘Shared Email Account’ to add a new account.

5. Choose an existing team or create a new one.
6. Sign in with your Gmail or Google Workplace account.
7. Now, you can select team members to collaborate on this Shared Inbox.

If you already have an email account that you had set up in Spark, you can easily share the account with other team members. Here’s how:

1. Launch Spark and ensure that you update to the latest version.
2. Open Spark’s Preferences and click on the ‘Accounts’ tab.
3. Under ‘Private Accounts’, locate the account you want to share.
4. Click on ‘Share Account with Team’ at the bottom right.
5. Select your team and confirm that you indeed want to share the account with that team on the next screen.
6. Now under the ‘Members’ tab on the right, you can Add/Remove team members who have access to this Shared Inbox.

Read more about setting up Shared Inboxes on all your devices in our help center.

Spark — The Best Email App for Teams

Over the last few years, Spark has proved itself to be a reliable, robust, and feature-rich email app for all kinds of users. With its intuitive user interface and loads or powerful features, it has been the best personal email app for novice & power users alike. And with the launch of Spark for Teams, Spark changed the way teams communicate & get things done with email.

The Shared Inboxes feature is part of the Premium offering in Spark for Teams. With the subscription, you don’t just get access to Shared Inboxes, but also the unlimited use of all the amazing features like email delegation, templates, unlimited collaborators in shared drafts, and lots more. Spark Premium offers a Free 14-day trial to try out all these features for your team, after which the subscription is just $7.99 per user/month or $6.40 per user/month billed annually.

At the moment, Shared Inboxes are only available for Gmail accounts and Google Workspace accounts (previously known as G Suite) and starting today, this feature is available in Spark for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, while the Android version will start rolling out over the next two weeks. We are open to adding support for other email providers in the future, so subscribe to the Spark blog and follow us on Twitter @SparkMailApp to stay updated with our announcements. 

Remember though, many of Spark’s incredible team features are available for Free.

Download Spark today and switch to the best email app out there!