Use Collaborative Inboxes and labels in new Google Groups

What’s changing 

We're launching two features in new Google Groups:
  • Collaborative Inboxes, which can be used by teams to collaborate on messages received by a group, such as a customer support team managing support queries from customers. 
  • Shared labels, which can help organize group conversations and enable you to filter and search for messages. This replaces tags and categories in classic Groups. 

Who’s impacted 

End users 


Why it’s important 

These features were available in classic Groups, but until now were not available in new Groups. We hope that adding them to the new experience will enable more users to use the new and improved interface in Groups. 


Additional details 


Collaborative Inboxes 
Using Groups as a Collaborative Inbox can be useful if you want to use a group as a mailing list for a team, where different team members can see, manage, and respond to messages sent to the group. For example, you could have a Collaborative Inbox for your support team, so the team could all see inquiries to your support email address. Once inquiries are received, team members can assign each other tasks, categorize topics with labels, and mark topics as resolved. Collaborative Inboxes in new Groups enables:
  • Advanced search, including for conversation status 
  • Filtering, including quick filters for conversation status or to help users find conversations assigned to themselves, others, or that are unassigned 

Existing collaborative inboxes will be accessible in the new Groups experience. New and existing groups can be changed to a Collaborative Inbox via Groups settings. 



Labels 
Labels is a replacement for tags and categories in classic Groups. Any tags currently used in classic Groups will be migrated to new Groups as labels, and the feature will be turned on automatically. Tags that are created under categories will also be migrated over if the Labels feature is enabled in new Groups. Note, categories will not be migrated.

When a message is posted to a group, group owners or managers can label conversations. Labels will appear in the left navigation panel of a group, and any users viewing the group can then search and filter conversations by those labels. This can make it easier to find messages, to see grouped related messages, or to manage workflows within Collaborative Inboxes. 



Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: These features will be OFF by default, but can be turned on for each group by group owners or managers. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Collaborative Inboxes and labels. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all G Suite customers and to users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources