In Trupeo, a conversation is an email and every reply that belongs to it. Nothing more: two emails that do not answer each other stay two conversations, even when they carry the same subject or come from the same address.
What a conversation shows
Open an email: it fills the space to the right of the list, or the whole screen on a phone. At the top, its subject, and under it a line that says where it stands: who is on it (“You’re on it”, “Alex is on it” or “To assign”), who is waiting for a reply (“Élodie is waiting for a reply”), then its labels and its scope if it has one. On a phone, the labels and the scope are under the last email.
Below, its conversation shows the emails, the team’s notes and what happened to the email, each at its moment, from the oldest to the latest.
- A vertical line on the left links everything in the order it happened: each email carries the face of the person who wrote it, with a small arrow, ↙ if it was received or ↗ if it was sent, and every note and every event has its own dot on it. The conversation reads as a timeline, from top to bottom.
- At the top, a line counts them, for example 12 emails and 2 notes.
- The latest email is unfolded, the earlier ones are folded on one line: the person, the start of the email, a paperclip with the name of its first attachment (“+2” when it has more), and the date. Click a line to unfold or fold it. When there are many, the ones in the middle gather behind “Show 8 older emails”.
- Every email says who wrote it. A received email carries the person’s name and, under it, their address and the one it arrived at. An email from the team says “Sent by you” for yours, or “Sent by Claire”; if it was written in Gmail or Outlook rather than in Trupeo, “Sent from Gmail” or “Sent from Outlook”.
- Every attachment in one place. When the conversation has files, the header shows a paperclip and how many there are, for example 7 attachments. Click it: the list shows every file of every email, the latest email first, with who sent it and when. Open a file (images and PDFs open in Trupeo), download it, or choose “Show the mail” to unfold the email it came in. On a phone the list opens from the bottom of the screen.
- Team notes sit on a gray background: see Leave a team note.
- What happened to the email takes one quiet line, at its place between the emails: who is on it, who assigned it to whom, who marked it done, a forward, a separation, with its time on the right. So you can scroll back through what happened, for example Paul assigned it to Marie, then Marie’s reply, then Marie marked it done. Only a failure sits above the conversation, so it cannot go unnoticed.
- A person’s name or address opens their card. On a computer, rest the pointer on it for a moment, or click; on a phone, tap it. The card gives their organization, their address, how many conversations the team has had with them and the team’s note about them, then “View contact”, which opens their card in the address book.
Under the last email, a bar gathers what you can do with the email: the main button, which follows where the email stands (“I’ll take it”, “Reply to Élodie” or “Mark done”), the other buttons, then ”⋯” (“Other actions”) for the rest. On a long conversation, it stays at the bottom of the screen while you read. See Say who’s on an email.
How Trupeo knows an email is a reply
When someone clicks Reply, their email app slips an invisible reference to the original email into the reply. Every common app does this: Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, and Trupeo itself.
Trupeo reads those references, and only those:
- an email that answers another one joins that email’s conversation;
- an email that answers nothing opens a new conversation, which lands in “To assign”.
Your own replies follow the same rule, whether they leave from Trupeo, Gmail or Outlook: they show in the conversation of the email they answer.
Why it is not always the grouping Gmail shows
Gmail and Outlook also group emails that do not answer each other, for instance when they share a subject and a sender. Trupeo does not, on purpose.
Take your website’s contact form. Every request leaves from the same address,
often something like noreply@your-site.com, under the same subject, such as
New message from the website. Gmail stacks them together. In Trupeo each
request is a conversation of its own: you can hand the first to Sam and the
second to Priya, and mark each one done when it is.
Nothing changes in your Gmail or Outlook mailbox: only what Trupeo shows follows this rule.
In the same way, two people who each write Quote request get two conversations. And a reply whose subject was edited stays in its conversation, since the reference is what counts, not the subject.
Separate an email that has nothing to do with the conversation
Sometimes people answer an old email to talk about something else entirely: a parent replying to the school newsletter to report an absence, someone replying to an old order to place a new one. To their email app it is a reply; to you it is a new subject.
To take it out of the conversation:
- Open the conversation and unfold the email.
- Click ”⋯” on the right of its name (“Email actions”).
- Choose “Separate this email”.
The email moves into a new conversation, together with the replies it received. The new conversation keeps the state of the original one, and whoever was on it. You stay on the conversation you were in, and the message “Email separated: it now has a conversation of its own.” offers “Open” to go and see the other one. Both conversations record the separation in a line between their emails, with the name of the person who made it.
Replies that arrive later join the right conversation: those answering the separated email go to the new one, the others stay in the original. Trupeo never groups those two conversations back together on its own.
When “Separate this email” is not offered
The choice only shows where it makes sense:
- On a received email only. An email your team sent, from Trupeo or from your mailbox, stays in the conversation it answers.
- Never on the first email of the conversation. That email opened it: to set it apart, separate the replies that have nothing to do with it instead.
- Not when either conversation would be left without a received email. A reply is always sent in answer to a received email: without one, you could no longer reply.
- Not in the Trash.
A reply that arrived before the original email
When you connect a mailbox, Trupeo fetches the existing emails newest first. A reply can therefore arrive before the email it answers and show on its own for a moment. As soon as the original email arrives, the two end up in the same conversation, with nothing to do on your side.
The rare reply without a reference
A few email apps, and some forms, send a reply without that invisible reference. To Trupeo it is then not a reply: it opens a new conversation. You find it in “To assign”, and search brings the original conversation back by address or subject.