Trupeo does not keep a copy of your mailbox off on the side: it works inside it. What you do in Trupeo is carried over to your email provider, and what you do from Gmail, Outlook or your phone’s mail app comes back into Trupeo.
Here is the exact list, both ways, then what changes with each email provider.
What your actions in Trupeo do in your mailbox
| In Trupeo | In your mailbox |
|---|---|
| You open an email | Nothing |
| Someone takes it | Its emails become read |
| Nobody is on it any more | Its emails go back to unread |
| You choose “Mark done” | Its emails become read and leave the Inbox: they are archived |
| You choose “Undo” right after | Its emails come back to the Inbox, and the ones that were unread become so again |
| You send a reply with “Send and mark done” | The email goes out; nothing is archived |
| You reply to a done conversation | Its emails come back to the Inbox |
| You choose “Delete” | Its emails go to the trash |
| You choose “Restore” | Its emails go back where they came from |
| You move it to a folder (IMAP, Outlook) | Its received emails go to that folder |
| You put a label on it | Gmail: the label goes on its emails. Outlook: the category (not on a Microsoft 365 mailbox reached through your own account). IMAP: a tag |
| You send, reply or forward | The email really goes out from the shared address |
Four details that save nasty surprises.
Opening an email does not mark it read in your mailbox. On purpose: a shared mailbox is read by several people, and one of them opening an email does not mean the team has dealt with it. Marking it read at your email provider would also clear the unread state for the members who check the mailbox from their own email app. So Trupeo only does it at the two moments that commit the team: when someone takes the email, and when it is marked done. In Trupeo, on the other hand, the email stops showing in bold as soon as you open it.
“Mark done” archives the email, and deletes nothing. On Gmail and on Outlook, the email leaves the Inbox, exactly as if you had archived it yourself: that is what the message after it says, “Moved to Done, archived in Gmail” (or Outlook), and what “Help with these actions”, in “Other actions”, the ”⋯” menu at the end of the email’s bar, recalls. On IMAP, it goes to the server’s archive folder. The email stays reachable in Trupeo, in the “Done” view, and at your email provider, in the archive. “Undo”, while the message is on screen, puts it back in the Inbox, and turns those of its emails that were unread back to unread. An email you filed in one of your folders is not in the Inbox: so it stays in its folder; and when the email comes back to do, only the emails in the archive come back to the Inbox. See File emails in folders.
“Restore” does not necessarily mean back to the Inbox. Before moving an email, Trupeo notes where it was, and puts it back there. An email that was archived and then deleted therefore comes back to the archive, not the Inbox.
An email deleted in Trupeo keeps its content for 30 days. After that, the text and attachments are erased from our servers. The email itself stays in your email provider’s trash, under that email provider’s rules.
What your actions in the mailbox do in Trupeo
| In your mailbox | In Trupeo |
|---|---|
| An email arrives | It shows up in “To assign”, or joins its conversation |
| An email arrives on a done conversation | The conversation comes back to do |
| You read an email, or mark it unread again | Trupeo shows the same state |
| You mark an email as spam | The email moves to “Spam” |
| You take an email out of junk | The email comes back |
| You delete an email permanently | The email disappears from Trupeo, and its content is erased from our servers within 7 days |
The rest depends on your email provider.
What changes with each email provider
The difference comes down to one thing: which folders Trupeo watches.
- Gmail: the Inbox, spam, and sent emails that belong to a conversation already followed or go to someone the mailbox knows.
- Microsoft: the Inbox, Junk Email, your own folders, and sent items that belong to a conversation already followed or go to someone the mailbox knows. In Archive and Deleted Items, Trupeo only reads the categories of the emails it already has.
- IMAP: every folder on the server.
What happens in those folders comes back into Trupeo. What happens elsewhere does not. In practice, from your email provider:
You reply to someone. With all three, the reply shows up in the conversation, in its place, as long as it is already followed. It carries “Sent from Gmail”, “Sent from Outlook” or “Sent outside Trupeo”, and, in “For me”, the email’s row says so too. Members can therefore see that a reply went out, even if it was not written in Trupeo.
You archive an email. Gmail: nothing changes in Trupeo, the email is not marked done. Microsoft and IMAP: it moves to “Done”.
You move an email to the trash. With all three, the email goes to Trupeo’s Trash.
You file an email in one of your folders. Microsoft and IMAP: Trupeo finds it there, in the “Folders” section, and the email keeps its state. Gmail has no folders.
You put a label or a category on an email. Gmail: the conversation gets the label in Trupeo. Microsoft: it gets the category, except on a Microsoft 365 mailbox you reach through your own account (see below). IMAP: it gets the label whose Thunderbird tag you set, see See your Trupeo labels in Thunderbird.
So it is filing, not replies, that stays specific to each email provider.
Gmail and Google Workspace
Gmail sorts with labels, not folders. Archiving an email, for Gmail, means taking the Inbox label off it: the email stays in All Mail, nothing is lost.
Trupeo reads the Inbox, spam, and sent emails on a conversation already followed or to someone the mailbox knows. An email you had archived before connecting Trupeo is not copied, and an email you archive from Gmail is not marked done in Trupeo.
A reply written straight from Gmail does show up in the conversation, as long as it is already followed. A new email written in Gmail comes into Trupeo too, in “Done”, when it is addressed to someone the mailbox has already exchanged with or who is in its contacts. The rest stays out: the shared mailbox does not pull in all your outgoing mail. If the person replies, their email and yours arrive together.
The other way round, emails sent from Trupeo show up normally in Gmail’s Sent Mail.
Your Gmail labels come into Trupeo too. They are listed in the column on the
left, under “Labels”, on the conversations Trupeo follows, and you can filter by
label or search with label:. A label you put on or take off in Trupeo is put on
or taken off in Gmail, and the other way round. Any member can apply, create or
delete a label; deleting one removes it from every email in Gmail. An email that
a Gmail filter labels and archives straight away never reaches the Inbox, so
never reaches Trupeo either. Outlook and IMAP mailboxes have labels too: see
Sort conversations with labels.
Microsoft 365 and Outlook
Microsoft sorts with folders. “Mark done” therefore really moves the email from the Inbox to the Archive folder, and “Delete” to Deleted Items.
Trupeo follows the Inbox, Junk Email, your own folders, and sent items on a conversation already followed or to someone the mailbox knows. Your own folders show in Trupeo, in the “Folders” section, with everything they hold: an email you file there from Outlook is found there, and you can file from Trupeo with “Move to…”. The emails already in your folders when you connected the mailbox arrive in “Done”. See File emails in folders.
An email you archive or delete from Outlook moves to “Done” or to Trupeo’s Trash, as long as Trupeo already has it.
Your Outlook categories are Trupeo’s labels. A category put on or taken off in Trupeo is put on or taken off in Outlook too, and the other way round. See Outlook categories as labels.
A Microsoft 365 mailbox you reach through your own account (a shared mailbox, or one delegated to you) is the exception: its labels live in Trupeo only, with nothing written to the mailbox in Outlook, and its Outlook categories do not reach Trupeo. See Microsoft 365 shared mailbox or alias.
A reply written straight from Outlook does show up in the conversation, as long as it is already followed. A new email written in Outlook comes into Trupeo too, in “Done”, when it is addressed to someone the mailbox has already exchanged with or who is in its contacts. The rest stays out: the shared mailbox does not pull in all your outgoing mail. If the person replies, their email and yours arrive together.
Emails sent from Trupeo do show up in your Sent Items.
IMAP
An IMAP mailbox works the other way round: Trupeo reads every folder on the server, not just the Inbox.
That is good news on one point. A reply written from your email app does show up in the conversation, since it lands in the server’s Sent folder, which Trupeo reads too. Likewise, moving an email to the Archive folder moves it to “Done” in Trupeo.
Emails sent from Trupeo also land in the server’s Sent folder, so your email app keeps a trace of them as if you had written them there.
Two things to know all the same.
- Trupeo creates the archive, trash or junk folder if your server has none. “Mark done”, “Delete” and marking as spam each need their folder. If it is missing, Trupeo creates it the first time it needs it, as your email app would. If the server refuses, the email stays where it is, and a line above the list, “Some conversations didn’t move in your mailbox”, tells you which folder to create.
- Your filing folders come in too, since Trupeo reads everything. A very tidy IMAP mailbox can therefore show emails in Trupeo that you thought were filed away. The Drafts folder is the exception: an unfinished email is not an exchange and never reaches the shared mailbox. Your folders are listed in the “Folders” section, and “Mark done” leaves the emails filed there where they are: see File emails in folders.
IMAP servers have no labels of their own, so Trupeo keeps them itself and writes them on your emails as tags: see Sort conversations with labels.
What never leaves Trupeo
Everything about teamwork stays in Trupeo and never shows up at your email provider:
- team notes;
- who is on which email, of which only the effect on read is visible in the mailbox;
- an email’s history.
Nobody who opens the mailbox from Gmail or Outlook will see your notes or who is on what.
On a Gmail or Outlook mailbox, the shared contacts book is kept up to date with the account from the connection on: the contacts you added or kept, and their groups, are the same in Google Contacts or in Outlook, both ways. If the owner of the mailbox stops “Keep contacts up to date with Google Contacts” (or “with Outlook”), or the permission was not given, the book stays in Trupeo only.
Put an old history in Done, without archiving anything
When the mailbox is connected, the owner chooses which conversations already in it start in “To assign”: see step 3 of Connect your first mailbox. If “To assign” still fills up with old emails, the owner can put more of them in “Done” later, without anything moving at your email provider. “Mark done” on a selection, by contrast, would archive each of those emails there.
Open the “General” page of the mailbox’s settings, “History” section. Pick a day in “Conversations from before”: Trupeo counts the conversations it covers right away, for example “120 conversations in To assign from before this date.”. “Put in Done…” opens a confirmation, “Put 120 conversations in Done?”, which reminds you that nothing moves at your email provider. “Put in Done” starts the filing.
What goes into “Done” is the conversations still in “To assign”, that nobody is on, and whose last email is from before that day. A conversation someone is on, or a more recent one, does not move. At your email provider, no email is archived, moved or deleted.
The filing runs in the background, and the section says so: “Trupeo is putting these conversations in Done.” On a large mailbox it takes a few minutes. Each filed conversation carries the line “Put in Done with the mailbox’s history”. Emails from before that day that the first copy still brings in go into “Done” too, and the section reminds you up to when the history already goes there.
There is no undo in one go: a new reply brings a conversation back to “To assign”, and anyone can mark a conversation as to do again.
Only the owner sees this section, and not while the mailbox is paused or has never been connected.
How long it takes
The first copy runs in the background, newest emails first. The first emails appear very quickly, and a “Copy in progress” line, at the top of the list, says how far it has got: how many emails out of how many, and roughly how much time is left. A large Gmail mailbox can take several hours, because Gmail limits how fast a mailbox can be read; if Gmail asks for a pause, the line gives the time the copy resumes on its own. New emails keep arriving meanwhile.
Gmail and Microsoft notify Trupeo. A new email therefore arrives almost at once, without Trupeo having to ask the server. On top of that, a full check every 3 hours catches anything a notification might have missed.
An IMAP mailbox is checked. Trupeo keeps a connection open to the server when the server allows it, and otherwise checks every 5 minutes if the mailbox is busy, every 15 minutes if the last email is more than an hour old, and every 45 minutes if it has been quiet for more than a day. Each check reads every folder: it is also what catches anything missed.
The other way round, your actions in Trupeo are passed on to your email provider in the background, usually within a few seconds.
If something stops coming in
Emails that stop arriving altogether almost always come from lost access: a changed password, a removed authorization, a revoked application password. Trupeo then shows, at the top of the mailbox, a line saying that Trupeo no longer has access to the mailbox and that new emails have stopped arriving, with “Reconnect”. The steps are in Reconnect a paused mailbox.
Trupeo also watches for a mailbox that goes quiet without having lost access. When nothing has arrived for about three normal cycles (roughly 9 hours for Gmail and Microsoft, a little over 2 hours for IMAP), it shows “New emails have stopped arriving” above the list, with the date of the last email that arrived. Trupeo keeps trying on its own; if nothing arrives in the hours that follow, write to us.
If neither of those messages is showing and an email is still missing, give it a few hours (the 3-hourly check for Gmail and Microsoft, or the next IMAP check), then check which folder it is in at your email provider: the answer is almost always there.
“Too many actions in a short time.” at the top of the screen, with “Try again in 42 s.” counting down, is not about your mailbox. Trupeo caps how many actions one person sends in a few minutes, and a long run of clicks (deleting notifications one by one, opening many emails in a row) can reach it. Wait for the countdown: the emails come back on their own.