Sharing and delegation
Working on someone else's behalf, or alongside them. A colleague can be given defined access to a mailbox and a calendar, a team address can be worked on from inside the user's own account, and the folders other people share can be taken or left — together with the group and resource directories an organization maintains for everyone else to pick from.
Deputies
Enterprise
Summary Gives another person a stated level of access to the user's inbox and calendar, and optionally the right to send email on their behalf. The level is chosen per module — none, viewer, editor or author — in a dialog reached from Advanced settings in General settings, and from the folder tree.
Why it matters Someone goes on leave, or falls ill at short notice, and the mail keeps arriving. The usual improvisation is to hand over a password, which gives away everything at once, cannot be narrowed to the inbox, outlives the absence and fails every audit it meets. A deputy is the same arrangement made explicit: a named person, a level of access stated per module, withdrawn again in one place, and with everything the deputy does still done under their own account rather than someone else's.
Description
- Add a deputy and pick a permission level per module — none, viewer, editor or author — for mail and calendar
- Optionally allow the deputy to send email on the user's behalf
- Reachable from Advanced settings in General settings, and from the folder tree
- Folders newly shared by a deputy are marked in the tree until they have been opened
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires deputy. Sending as or on behalf of another person is described under Accounts and automation.
Use a shared account
Enterprise
Summary The mailboxes and calendars of a shared account the user has been given access to appear alongside their own, in the same folder tree, and each account can be switched on or off individually. A Shared Accounts settings page lists every account the user has access to.
Why it matters An address such as support@ is answered by several people, and the usual ways of arranging that are poor ones: a second sign-in to keep switching to, or one password passed around the team. Both lose any record of who answered what, and neither can be withdrawn from one person without disrupting everybody. Access granted per user keeps that record and can be taken back individually. The switch per account matters for the people on the receiving end — someone who is on four shared accounts would otherwise have a folder tree they cannot work in.
Description
- A Shared Accounts settings page lists every shared account the user has access to
- A switch per account shows or hides its folders and calendars without giving up the access itself
- Where the account allows it, a Members button lists the people who share it
- Switching an account off falls back to the user's own inbox if one of its folders was selected
Availability Since 8.48. Requires shared_accounts, and is not available to guest users. Feature toggle sharedAccounts, on by default. Requires the Middleware's sharedaccount module. What a shared mailbox can do on the mail side — its drafts, its signatures and its Sent folder — is described under Accounts and automation.
Choose which shared folders are visible
Enterprise
Summary A dialog listing the folders other people have shared with the user, with a checkbox on each, so that only the wanted ones appear in the folder tree. It is offered for calendars, address books, task folders and file storages, per account.
Why it matters Sharing in a large context is generous: a department shares its calendar with everyone, a team shares its address book, and a user can end up with a hundred folders in their tree that they will never open. At that point the tree stops being usable for the five folders that actually matter. Unsubscribing hides them without touching anybody's sharing, so nothing has to be renegotiated with the person who shared it and a folder can be brought back whenever it is needed.
Description
- Lists the shared and public folders per account, with a checkbox each
- Offered for calendars, address books, task folders and file storages
- A Sync via DAV control per folder, where the deployment supports it
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. The equivalent for mail is IMAP subscription, described under Reading and organizing.
Manage user groups
Enterprise
Summary A settings page where a context administrator maintains the user groups of the context: creating one, editing its name and its members, and deleting it. These are the groups everybody else picks from when sharing a folder or inviting people to an appointment.
Why it matters A group is only useful while it is accurate, and the moment maintaining one requires a separate administration tool it stops being maintained — people move on and stay in the group, and a folder shared with the sales team keeps being readable by someone who left two years ago. Keeping the list in the product puts it in front of the person who already knows who belongs where.
Description
- List the groups in the context, create a new one, edit its name and members, and delete it
- The built-in groups All users, Standard group and Guests cannot be deleted, and All users and Guests cannot be edited
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires edit_group and gab.
Manage resources
Enterprise
Summary A settings page where a context administrator maintains the bookable resources — meeting rooms, equipment, anything that is invited to an appointment rather than attending it. Each resource can be given delegates, the people who answer its booking requests.
Why it matters Rooms and equipment change more often than one would expect: they are renamed, repurposed or taken out of use. If every one of those changes needs a ticket to an administrator, the list drifts out of date until people stop trusting it and go back to asking around. Delegates are the same point from the other side — a resource whose requests nobody answers is a resource nobody books.
Description
- List the resources in the context, create a new one, edit it, and delete it
- Edit a resource's delegates, who answer its booking requests
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires edit_resource.