By default, every member of a shared mailbox sees all of its mail. That is what you want most of the time, but not always. A club’s coach needs the mail about lessons, not the mail about payroll. A volunteer handling sign-ups has no business in the exchanges with the bank.
That is what scopes are for. You create, say, a Lessons scope, file the conversations about lessons in it, and limit the coach to that scope: from then on she only sees those conversations.
As long as you create no scope, nothing changes: everyone sees the whole mailbox, and Trupeo shows nothing about it.
The principle
- “Whole mailbox” is where everyone starts. A member set to “Whole mailbox” sees everything, as before. The mailbox’s owner always sees everything: an owner cannot be limited.
- A scope is a group of conversations, with a name you choose: Lessons, Sign-ups, Accounts. There is one level only: no scope inside a scope.
- A conversation can be in several scopes at once, or in none. A conversation in no scope is only visible to the people who see the whole mailbox.
- A limited member can be limited to one or several scopes. They see every conversation filed in at least one of them, and nothing else.
Think of scopes as circles: the whole mailbox, and inside it smaller circles that can overlap.
Create a scope
Scopes are managed in the mailbox’s settings, on the “Members” page, in the “Scopes” section, under the list of people. Only an owner can create and change them: see Invite your team and choose a role for how to get there from a computer or a phone.
While the mailbox has none, the section offers a “New scope” field: type a name, then “Create”. After that, each scope shows on a line that names the members limited to it, or says “No member limited to it”, with two buttons; “New scope” adds another one.
- “Rename” opens the name in its line; “Save” changes the name without touching the conversations or the members.
- “Delete” asks for confirmation. The conversations stay in the mailbox, and the people who see the whole mailbox still see them. Members limited to that scope no longer do, and an email one of them was on goes back to “To assign”.
Two scopes cannot have the same name.
Limit a member
As soon as the mailbox has a scope, the “Who has access” list shows it: under a limited member’s name, a small padlock and their scopes, for example “Only Lessons”, or “No scope, sees nothing”.
To change what a member sees, open the button of their role, at the end of their line (on a phone, tap their line: a sheet opens at the bottom of the screen), and choose “Access…”. The window, for example “What Marie sees”, offers two choices:
- “Whole mailbox”: they see every conversation.
- “Only some scopes”: tick the scopes they should see.
Then “Save”. The change applies at once.
An owner’s menu does not offer “Access…”: an owner always sees the whole mailbox. Making a limited member an owner therefore gives them the whole mailbox back.
A limited member left with no scope, for instance because the only one they had was deleted, sees no conversation at all. They keep their access to the mailbox: give them a scope or “Whole mailbox” so they find their mail again.
Invite someone straight into a scope
The form “Invite” opens offers the same choice as soon as the mailbox has a scope, under the addresses, in the “Access” part. “Whole mailbox” is chosen by default. Choose “Only some scopes” and tick at least one: the person arrives limited to those scopes as soon as they accept the invitation, without ever having seen the rest of the mailbox.
In “Who has access”, a pending invitation’s line recalls the access it gives. If a planned scope is deleted before the person accepts, they still arrive limited, never with the whole mailbox: you will then have to give them a scope.
Invitations sent while getting the mailbox started give access to the whole mailbox. That follows: at that point the mailbox has no scope yet.
File a conversation in a scope
Open an email. Once it is filed, its scope shows under the subject, at the end of the status line, with a small padlock: click it to tick or untick scopes. While it is in none, choose “Choose a scope…” in the ”⋯” menu at the end of the email’s bar. On a phone, the scope is just under the status line, with the labels, and in the ”⋯” menu.
New emails arrive in no scope: there is no automatic filing yet. So it is someone who sees the whole mailbox who files new emails, the same way they say who’s on them. Once a conversation is filed, the replies that arrive in that conversation stay in its scopes: there is no need to file it again.
An email you write yourself can be born straight into a scope. In the “New email” window, the “Scope” field offers “Whole mailbox”, chosen by default, and each of the mailbox’s scopes. Write to the parents about lessons and choose Lessons: the coach sees their reply as soon as it arrives.
Who can file what:
- Someone who sees the whole mailbox files into any scope.
- A limited member only sees their own scopes in the list, and can only file into those. If they take the last of their scopes off the conversation, Trupeo warns them: “Removing your last scope here hides this conversation from you.” It then disappears from their view, but not from the mailbox, and Trupeo shows “This email is no longer visible to you”.
Scopes only exist in Trupeo. They create no folder or label in Gmail, Outlook or your IMAP email provider, and change nothing for someone who opens the mailbox directly at the email provider.
What a limited member sees
After the name of each view, a small padlock and the names of their scopes remind them they do not see the whole mailbox, or “No scope” if they have none left. In the mailbox’s settings, the “General” page says it again, on the “What you see” line. Everything in Trupeo that talks about emails follows the same rule: they only see the conversations in their scopes, as if the others did not exist.
- The views and their numbers: “For me”, “To assign”, “All”, Trash and Spam only hold, and only count, their conversations.
- Search only searches their conversations.
- Notifications: they are only notified about conversations they can see, and the morning summary only counts those.
- Contacts: they see the contacts the team added to the book, and the people they have at least one visible conversation with. A contact’s history only shows their own conversations, and so does the exchange count.
- A link to another conversation, from a member for instance, opens as if the conversation did not exist.
When they write a new email, the conversation is necessarily born in one of their scopes, or they would lose sight of it on sending, and the window says so (“This conversation will be filed in the scope “Lessons”.”). With several scopes, they choose the email’s one before sending. With no scope, they cannot start a conversation, and the window tells them. A forwarded email opens a conversation that takes the scopes of the original one.
Hand over an email when there are scopes
You only hand an email to someone who can see it. The “Assign to…” list only offers those people, and so do mentions in team notes. See Say who’s on an email.
If an email leaves the sight of the person who is on it (it is taken out of the scope, the scope is deleted, or the person’s access changes), it goes back to “To assign”. Under the subject, the status line says for example “Paul no longer has access to this email”, and the conversation notes “This email is back in To assign: the person who was on it can no longer see it”. So nobody is left on an email they cannot open.
When you hand several emails over at once, “Assign to…” says beside each name how many of the ticked emails that person can see. Only the ones they see are handed to them; the others stay ticked, and the message says why.
And the bill?
A limited member counts like any other person with access to the mailbox: the price depends on the number of people, not on what each one sees. See Trial, subscription, and reduced pricing.