Email inbox

What the Email inbox is

The Email area gives your workspace one shared place to work email. It does two things at once. First, it archives every message Deskie itself sends on your behalf (invoice emails, lifecycle notices, booking confirmations, and so on) so admins can see exactly what went out. Second, if you connect your own mailbox over IMAP and SMTP, it becomes a true shared inbox: your team can read incoming mail, assign messages to each other, reply, and compose brand new emails, all without leaving Deskie.

The Email area is admin-only. You need the permission to manage the workspace to open it. Members who navigate there are sent back to the dashboard. For how roles map to access, see Roles and permissions.

How this differs from Mail and Messages

Deskie has three features with similar names. They do not overlap.

Email inbox (this article) is for real email: messages sent to and from an external email address over the internet, connected through your own mail provider.
Messages is internal chat between people in your workspace. It is direct and group messaging with read tracking and push notifications, not email.
Mail handling is for physical mail and packages: logging items that arrive for members, sending scan notifications, and processing open or shred requests. It has nothing to do with email.

Connecting your own inbox

You connect a mailbox by entering its IMAP and SMTP server settings. IMAP is what Deskie uses to read incoming mail. SMTP is what it uses to send. Open the Email area and use the Connect inbox button at the top.

Choosing a provider

The connect dialog includes presets that fill in the server hostnames and ports for you:

Gmail / Google Workspace uses imap.gmail.com on port 993 and smtp.gmail.com on port 465.
Outlook / Microsoft 365 uses outlook.office365.com on port 993 and smtp.office365.com on port 587.
Fastmail uses imap.fastmail.com on port 993 and smtp.fastmail.com on port 465.
Other (custom IMAP/SMTP) leaves the server fields blank so you can type your provider's settings directly.

After choosing a preset you can still edit any field, so the presets are a starting point rather than a lock.

App passwords

If your Gmail, Google Workspace, or Microsoft account has two-factor authentication turned on, you cannot use your normal account password here. You need to generate an app password from your email provider and paste that in instead. The connect dialog shows provider-specific guidance for where to generate one. Fastmail similarly requires an app-specific password.

The connection form

You enter the email address, then the IMAP (receive) block and the SMTP (send) block. Each block has its host, its port, an SSL/TLS toggle, and a password. In most setups the IMAP and SMTP passwords are the same. The email address is used as the username for both servers. The SSL/TLS toggle should be on for implicit-TLS ports (993 for IMAP, 465 for SMTP) and off when your provider uses STARTTLS, which is common on port 587.

Connection is tested before it is saved

When you click Connect, Deskie tests the credentials against your actual mail servers before saving anything. If either IMAP or SMTP rejects the login, you see the provider's error and nothing is stored, so you never end up with a half-broken connection. Once the test passes, the account is saved and Deskie kicks off a first sync right away so you do not have to wait for the next scheduled pull.

One inbox per workspace

A workspace can have one connected inbox at a time. If one is already connected, you must disconnect it before connecting another.

Credentials are encrypted

Stored IMAP and SMTP passwords are encrypted at rest. This requires a server-side encryption key to be configured. If it has not been set up, the Email area shows a setup-required notice and connecting an inbox is blocked until a Deskie operator configures it. In that state the page still archives every email the platform sends.

Syncing incoming mail

Once an inbox is connected, Deskie polls it for new mail automatically on a regular schedule. You can also pull mail on demand:

Sync now fetches any new messages immediately rather than waiting for the next scheduled poll.
Resync wipes the locally cached copies of the synced messages and pulls your most recent mail again from the server. Use this if the inbox looks stuck on old messages. Resync does not change anything on your mail server; it only refreshes Deskie's local copy.

Each sync run pulls the most recent messages, not your entire mail history, so connecting a large old mailbox brings in your latest mail rather than years of backlog. The account banner shows when the inbox was last synced. If a sync attempt fails, the banner shows the error so you can see what went wrong.

When Deskie connects, it also looks for your provider's Spam folder and pulls from it where available, so a misfiled reply can still be found through the Email area. Spam-folder mail is kept out of the main Inbox view but remains findable.

Folders and views

The left navigation has a set of standard folders plus an expandable Categories section.

Standard folders

Inbox shows incoming mail synced from your connected account. This is the default view. Its badge counts unread messages, not the total, so the number reflects what still needs attention. Inbox has an Unread only toggle to hide messages you have already opened.
Sent shows outbound messages: both emails Deskie sent on your behalf and emails your team composed and sent from here. Sent messages are never shown as unread, since no one needs to read a message they sent.
Assigned to me shows messages assigned to you in the shared inbox. Its badge counts how many.
Failed shows messages that failed to send. The badge is shown in red when there are any.

Searching

The search box above the message list matches on subject, recipient, and sender. Search combines with whatever folder you are in.

Reading and shared-inbox read state

Because the inbox is shared, read state is tracked per person rather than globally. When you open a message it is marked read for you, but your teammates still see it as unread until they open it themselves. That means each admin has their own independent unread count, and the Inbox badge reflects what you personally have not yet read.

From the message list you can right-click an inbound message to mark it read or unread, and to move it. Opening a message shows its full contents in the detail pane, including who it is from, the recipients, any reply-to address, and, for platform-sent mail, who on your team sent it. When a platform email relates to a record such as an invoice, member, booking, or CRM lead, the detail pane shows a link straight to that record.

Message bodies are rendered in a sandboxed view, so HTML email displays normally while any embedded scripts are blocked.

Moving messages

You can move an inbound message to Spam, Archive, or Trash. This removes it from your Inbox view while keeping the record, which also stops it from being re-imported on the next sync. For mail in a connected inbox, Deskie also attempts the matching move on your actual mail server (for example, marking as spam to help train your provider's filter), so the change reflects in your other mail clients. If that server-side move cannot be completed, the message is still moved within Deskie.

Assigning messages

The shared inbox lets you assign a message to a specific teammate so it is clear who is handling it. In the detail pane, use the assignment control to assign the message to any workspace admin or owner, or to leave it unassigned. Each person can then use the Assigned to me folder to see their queue. Assignment is only available to admins, and the list of people you can assign to is limited to workspace admins and owners.

Composing, replying, and forwarding

Compose, Reply, Reply all, and Forward are available only when your workspace has an active connected inbox, since they send through that account over SMTP. If no inbox is connected, these buttons do not appear.

Compose opens a blank message.
Reply pre-fills the recipient and subject from the message you are viewing.
Reply all additionally carries over the other recipients into Cc.
Forward pre-fills the subject and quotes the original message in the body.

The composer has To, Cc, and Bcc fields (Cc and Bcc are revealed with Add Cc / Bcc), a subject line, and a rich text editor for the body. You can enter several recipients separated by commas. Outbound mail is sent from your connected address, and replies are threaded so responses line up with the original conversation.

When you send, the message is delivered through your connected account and a copy is recorded so it appears in the Sent view right away. If the send fails, you see the error and the message is not silently lost.

Drafts

While you write a brand new message, Deskie autosaves it as a draft for you, tied to your account. If you close the composer and open it again, your in-progress message is restored. Once you successfully send, the saved draft is cleared. Replies and forwards are intentionally not saved as drafts, so an in-progress new message is never overwritten by a reply.

Attachments

You can attach files to outgoing messages using the Attach button in the composer. Each file is uploaded as you pick it, and you can remove any file before sending. There is a 25MB limit per file. Attached files are sent with the message and a record of them is kept on the sent copy.

When you open a sent message that had attachments, they are listed in the message detail pane with their filename and size. Click an attachment to download it; Deskie generates a short-lived secure download link so the file streams directly to you.

Disconnecting an inbox

Disconnecting an inbox stops your team from sending or receiving through that address and clears the stored credentials. Your archived messages stay in the Email area. To use a different address, disconnect the current one first, then connect the new account, which creates a fresh connection.