Help Center
DocsConnected Support Mailboxes
Connect the support address your customers already write to, so every email becomes a ticket and replies go back from that address
You connect the support address your customers already write to, on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. From then on, every message that arrives in that mailbox opens a ticket in the Service Inbox, or threads onto the ticket it belongs to. When an agent sends a public reply, it goes out from that same address, so the customer sees the address they wrote to.
What the connection covers
- One mailbox per organization. This is a company-wide connection, not a personal inbox. It is owned by the organization, so it keeps working when the person who set it up leaves.
- Separate from your own email. The personal mailbox you may have connected under Settings, Integrations is untouched, and is a different connection with a different purpose.
- Inbound and outbound. Incoming mail creates and threads tickets. Public replies and the delivery failures that come back for them travel over the same connection.
- Internal notes never leave. Only public replies are emailed. Internal notes stay inside Laureo, exactly as they do on every other channel.
Connecting a mailbox is the whole migration: there is nothing to unpick first, and tickets already created through the forwarding address keep their full history. Once a mailbox is connected it takes over as the way replies are sent, so they go out from your own address instead of the Laureo alias the old route used. That is the part your customers notice.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Plan | The Service ticket suite, which is on Business and Ultra. The mailbox page is visible on every plan so you can always see the state of a connection and switch it off, but connecting one needs a plan that includes tickets. If a plan later stops including tickets while a mailbox is already connected, intake stops and the connection is held for 30 days. That state has its own section below. |
| Permission to manage | Connecting, disconnecting, pausing, running a backfill, and setting the default queue need the support-mailbox permission. It is granted by default to three roles, named in the role editor as Super Admin, Admin, and Service, and it can be granted to a custom role. Sales Manager does not get it by default even though it can see tickets, because connecting an organization-wide mailbox and removing its credentials is configuration rather than sales work. |
| Permission to view | Anyone who can view tickets can open the page and read the connection status, the health, and the recent activity. They see no controls and no raw provider errors. |
| Account type | A Google Workspace account, or a Microsoft 365 work or school account, that can sign in directly. Free personal accounts on either provider are refused, and the refusal names the address so you know which one was rejected. |
| The address itself | It must not already be connected in Laureo as a personal inbox under Settings, Integrations, or as an outreach sending mailbox. Free it there first, then connect it here. |
Sign in once with the support account and the watch is registered for you.
Open the mailbox page
Go to Service, Settings, Support mailbox. If no mailbox is connected yet you see two provider cards, one for Google Workspace and one for Microsoft 365.
Choose Connect Google Workspace
The whole page redirects to the Google sign-in screen. Sign in as the support account and review what is being requested. Laureo asks for access to mail on that account, so it can read what arrives and send your replies. Outside mail it asks only for the sign-in identity, so it knows which account was connected: no calendar, no files, and no contacts.
Approve and come back
Google returns you to the mailbox page. Laureo stores the connection, registers a watch on the mailbox Inbox so new mail arrives in near real time, and shows the connected address with a Live badge once the watch is running.
Pick a default queue, if you use queues
Under Intake, set the queue new email tickets should land in. Leaving it unset files them into your organization default queue. If the queue you picked is later deleted, intake keeps working and falls back to the organization default rather than dropping mail.
What Laureo actually does with it is narrower than what the screen describes: it reads incoming mail and sends your replies. It never deletes your mail, never empties a folder, and never rearranges the mailbox. Disconnecting removes the access immediately.
The same flow, with two account rules that are specific to Microsoft.
Choose Connect Microsoft 365
The page redirects to the Microsoft sign-in screen. Only work or school accounts can be used. Personal Microsoft accounts are refused at the sign-in step, because they cannot deliver the real-time mail notifications this feature relies on.
Sign in as the support account and approve
Laureo asks for access to mail on that account, so it can read what arrives and send your replies, plus the sign-in identity so it knows which account was connected. Nothing else on the account is requested. The approval screen describes the mail access in the same broad terms as it does on Google Workspace, for the same reason.
Come back and confirm the state
Laureo stores the connection, subscribes to the mailbox Inbox folder, and records a starting point so the first check knows where to resume from. The page then shows the connected address and its health.
Some tenants block third-party connections until an administrator allows them.
Both providers let an administrator restrict which applications an account may connect to. If yours does, the sign-in fails and you are returned to the mailbox page with a message that names the reason rather than a generic failure. There are two shapes to it:
- Google Workspace, application not allowed. The message names the policy that blocked it. A Workspace administrator has to allow Laureo for the support account in the admin console, then you can try again. Nothing was changed on your side in the meantime.
- Microsoft 365, administrator approval required. Some tenants require an administrator to consent on behalf of the account before a user can complete the sign-in. Ask an administrator to approve the request, then run the connect step again.
Sorting this out before you start saves a round trip. If you already know your organization locks down third-party sign-ins, get the approval lined up first.
A Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, the kind with no license and no direct sign-in, cannot be connected in this version. The connection is made as the account that signs in, so there has to be an account to sign in as. If your support address is a shared mailbox today, use a licensed support account that can sign in directly, and forward or migrate the address onto it.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Live | The real-time connection is healthy and new mail is picked up as it arrives. It says nothing about how much mail has arrived, so a mailbox connected five minutes ago is Live before anything has come in. A separate line right below shows when the last message arrived, or says that none has arrived yet. |
| Watch pending | The connection is good but real-time delivery is still being set up. Mail is still collected by the periodic check in the meantime, so nothing is lost. This clears itself, usually within a few hours. |
| Degraded | Real-time delivery is having trouble and the message says why in plain words. The periodic check keeps draining the mailbox, so mail keeps arriving, just less immediately. |
| Reconnect required | The provider has revoked or expired the connection and Laureo can no longer read the mailbox. A Reconnect button appears next to the status. Until you reconnect, no new mail is imported. |
| Paused | Intake is paused, either because somebody paused it by hand or because the loop protection paused it automatically. The connection and the watch stay alive while paused. The status sentence reads the same for both, so to tell them apart look at the description on the Pause intake control: on an automatic pause it says intake was paused after a mail loop was suspected. A plan that no longer includes tickets also stops intake, but it does not produce this badge, and it has its own section below. |
On a mailbox that is Degraded or needs a reconnect, a Provider error row can also appear, with a Show provider error control that reveals what your provider sent back, word for word. It is the one place the provider's own message is shown, which is what makes it worth opening before you raise a support request. That row exists only for people who hold the support-mailbox permission, so a colleague with read-only access never sees it.
The page also shows a renewal line. Real-time delivery from both providers expires on a schedule and Laureo renews it automatically well before it lapses, so the countdown is information rather than a task. If a renewal ever does lapse, everyone who can manage the mailbox is notified, and a recovery notice follows once it is receiving mail again.
The same event also raises one shared item in My Work that any of those people can claim, so a broken mailbox has an owner rather than sitting unread in several inboxes at once. It clears itself once the mailbox is receiving mail again, and disconnecting the mailbox clears it too.
What happens to a mailbox that is already connected when the Service ticket suite drops off the plan.
A downgrade does not quietly delete the connection, and it does not quietly keep importing either. Intake stops, and the page says so: an extra line appears above the status reading Intake is paused: your current plan does not include the Service ticket suite. The connection is kept for 30 days, with a link to your billing settings. That extra line is the signal to read, because the health badge beside it is not: it keeps reporting on the connection itself, so it can still say Live while no mail is being imported. Here is the rest of what changes.
- The connection is kept for 30 days. Nothing is deleted and you are not signed out. Upgrade inside that window and intake picks up again on its own, from where it left off, with no new sign-in.
- Two settings disappear from the page. The Default queue row and the whole Backfill row are hidden rather than greyed out, because neither describes anything that can happen while intake is stopped. They come back when the plan does. The Pause intake switch stays visible but cannot be moved, since there is nothing to pause or resume.
- Disconnect keeps working. It is available on every plan, so a billing change can never trap a connection you want to switch off.
- Mail is left in the mailbox, not lost. Intake stops before it looks at the mailbox, so most of what arrives leaves no trace in the recent-activity list at all. It is still sitting in your support mailbox, untouched.
- After 30 days, real-time delivery lapses. Laureo stops renewing it and it expires. Even then nothing is destroyed: the connection and its position in the mailbox survive, so upgrading later still resumes from where it left off rather than starting over.
Once you are back on a plan that includes tickets, the hidden settings return with it. Run a Backfill over the period the plan was short to bring in the mail that arrived while intake was stopped, up to 30 days back.
Bringing a connection back, and importing mail from before it was connected.
Reconnect uses the same address
The Reconnect button signs in again for the address that is already connected. Signing in with a different address is refused, and the message tells you so. To move the queue to a different address, disconnect first and then connect the new one.
A reconnect covers its own gap
Reconnecting a mailbox that had already been receiving mail starts an import of what arrived while it was down, up to 30 days, without being asked. So you will often come back to the page and find the Backfill row already reporting progress, and you usually do not need to run one by hand afterwards. Connecting a brand new mailbox does the opposite and imports nothing, so switching on a support mailbox never floods your queue with old mail.
Run a backfill to cover a gap
Under Intake, Backfill imports recent mail from before the connection existed, or from a window when the connection was down. Pick 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days and choose Run backfill. Nothing is selected by default, so a manual backfill only ever runs because you asked for one.
Fix the mailbox first if it is paused or needs reconnecting
A backfill is refused while intake is paused, and refused while the mailbox needs reconnecting. The button is still there in both states, but choosing it returns a message asking you to resume, or to reconnect, first. Deal with that state, then run the backfill.
It runs once and does not duplicate
A backfill skips anything already imported, so running one over a window that overlaps live intake does not create a second copy of a ticket. Progress shows on the row while it runs, then settles into a line saying how many messages were imported. If it stops early, the reason is shown with a Retry control.
A deliberate limitation worth knowing about before you go looking for a missing message.
- Your own rules and filters. A rule that archives incoming mail, or skips the Inbox, or moves it into another folder, means Laureo never sees that message. On Google Workspace, a rule that only applies a label is fine, because the message stays in the Inbox as well. It is the skip-the-inbox and archive parts that hide it.
- Provider spam and junk classification. Mail your provider routes to Spam or Junk never reaches the Inbox, so it is never imported.
In both cases there is no entry in the recent-activity list and no health warning, because from the connection point of view nothing arrived. That is why it is called out here: a missing message caused by a filter looks exactly like a customer who never wrote in. If somebody insists they emailed you and the ticket never appeared, check the mailbox rules and the spam folder first.
This is a deliberate design choice, not an oversight. Watching only the Inbox is what keeps the queue clean: it means your provider spam filtering still does its job before anything reaches your agents, and it means mail you deliberately filed away does not resurface as a ticket. The practical advice is to keep the support mailbox rules simple, and to leave incoming customer mail in the Inbox and let Laureo take it from there.
What stops two systems emailing each other forever, and what gets held instead of ticketed.
- Your own replies are ignored. A reply Laureo sent that comes back around, by a copy rule or a mailing list, is recognized and skipped rather than opening a new ticket.
- Automatic replies never start or reopen a ticket. Out-of-office notices, vacation responders, and other machine-generated auto-replies are recognized and skipped, so an away message cannot reopen a resolved ticket or trigger another reply.
- A sender flooding the mailbox is throttled. If one address sends far more than a person plausibly would in an hour, its mail is logged and skipped instead of being ticketed, and past a higher limit it is skipped without further processing. Both outcomes are recorded, so nothing disappears without a trace, but neither creates a ticket. The mail is still in your mailbox: once the sender is under control, bring it in with a backfill.
- A storm pauses intake. If the mailbox is hit by a sustained flood well beyond normal traffic, which is what a mail loop between two systems looks like, Laureo pauses intake automatically and notifies everyone who can manage the mailbox. The status sentence does not distinguish this from a pause you made yourself, so look at the description on the Pause intake control: it reads that intake was paused automatically after a mail loop was suspected. Resume with that same switch once the cause is fixed, then run a backfill covering the period the pause was active, because mail refused during the flood was logged but never ticketed.
- Mail that fails authentication is held for review. A message claiming to come from your own domain, or from one of your agents, that does not pass the sending checks is quarantined instead of being trusted. It appears in the activity list as held for review.
The Recent activity list on the mailbox page shows the last 20 messages the connection handled, newest first, with the time, the sender, and what happened. Where a message became or joined a ticket, the row links straight to it. Typical outcomes read as:
- Ticket created. The message opened a new ticket.
- Reply threaded. The message joined an existing ticket as a customer reply.
- Skipped, automatic reply. An auto-responder, ignored on purpose.
- Skipped, own message. One of your own outgoing replies coming back around.
- Held for review. Quarantined, usually because the sender could not be authenticated. This one still creates a ticket, flagged so you look at it before you trust it.
- Held, sender over rate limit. One address sending far too fast. No ticket is created.
- Dropped, message too large. Beyond the size a ticket can carry.
- Dropped, plan gate. The message reached the import at a moment when the plan did not include the Service ticket suite. See If Your Plan Stops Including Tickets above.
- Error. Something went wrong importing that one message and the reason is recorded. The message is still in your mailbox, so a backfill can bring it in.
- Importing. In progress right now, which you may catch during a busy burst or a backfill.
This list is a short-term working record, not an archive: entries older than 90 days are eligible to be cleared. Clearing them never touches the tickets themselves, so an old conversation keeps its full history in the Inbox long after its intake record has aged out. The list does not flag the difference when it runs out, so on a mailbox that has been connected a long time, an empty list can mean the entries aged out rather than that nothing ever arrived. Empty, it reads only that there is no intake activity yet, with the reminder that mail routed out of the Inbox by rules or spam filtering is not imported.
Open Disconnect and confirm
Under Danger zone, the Disconnect mailbox control asks you to confirm before anything happens. That section is shown only to people who can manage the mailbox, so it is not on the page at all for a colleague with read-only access. It is available on every plan, so a billing change can never trap a live connection you want to switch off.
Access ends immediately
Laureo stops fetching, the stored credentials are removed, and no further mail is imported. Outgoing public replies over that address stop with it.
Everything already here stays
Tickets, replies, contacts created from email, and history are all kept. The page goes back to showing the two provider cards, so it looks the way it did before anything was connected. If you connect the same address again later, and it had been receiving mail before you disconnected it, the reconnect imports the gap for you, up to 30 days. Otherwise run a backfill.