On Monday morning, a pricing request arrives at office@. In a 12-person company, the address is handled by Ola, Kasia and Marek: Ola and Kasia both reply to the client, while Marek assumes one of them has taken the matter on. How do you get email under control in a team so that an enquiry gets a single reply and doesn't get lost after it's sent? Without a duty rota and a task with a due date, Marek still doesn't know who's preparing the quote.
How to get email under control in a team when the inbox doesn't keep track of matters?
A shared address won't decide on its own who's going to prepare an offer or by when. A list of emails shows what's come in, but it doesn't replace a task with a responsible person and a due date.
After two replies from the client, a matter can still be stuck: nobody is gathering the data needed for the quote. And when the client asks for a correction and attaches a document, the hunt begins for who has the latest version. If similar agreements keep getting lost in chat too, see the rule of a single place for team matters.
Mail doesn't have to disappear from the process. It's there for talking with the client, while the task is for establishing what follows from that conversation.
Rule 1: everyone handling office@ connects the address on their own account
In Task Manager, the shared office@ address is connected separately by each person who needs to read that correspondence. The inbox attached to a user's account is private: nobody else sees it, not even the administrator, unless they connect the same address themselves.
Ola, Kasia and Marek add office@company.co.uk, and alongside it they can have their own named inboxes. Each connected inbox appears in the left-hand column under the Mail heading. It's the same email address on three accounts, not a case queue.
You add an inbox via Settings → Mail → Add inbox. You enter the address and password, the IMAP and SMTP server details, then set the name, how much history to fetch, thread visibility and the signature. IMAP is for receiving mail, SMTP for sending it; you'll usually find both server addresses in your hosting panel. Before saving, click Test connection - the program will check receiving and sending and look for the Sent folder. For Gmail and Outlook, the instructions call for an app password, not your regular account password; in Gmail, IMAP must be enabled. You'll find configuration details in the Mail module description.
Rule 2: set up a duty rota and check the thread before replying
Simply connecting office@ won't stop two people from replying to the same email. So set a person on duty for the day and require them to open the whole thread before sending a reply.
If Kasia is on duty on Tuesday, Ola and Marek know who to pass a new enquiry to. Kasia sees in the thread the replies sent from office@, including those sent from a phone: Task Manager reads the Sent folder on the mail server and saves copies of messages sent through the app there. This helps check whether someone has already replied. It isn't, however, a way to block a second reply or a feature for assigning a thread to an employee.
For a shared address, don't enable the "Also mark as read on the server" setting - it's off by default. That way, Ola reading an email doesn't clear the unread marker for Marek in Task Manager. If matching the read status with your phone or webmail matters more to you, you can enable this setting - deliberately, once you've agreed the rules with your team.
Rule 3: if the question "who and by when?" comes up, create a task
Move any email that requires work to be done into a task with a person and a due date. You can link the email thread to that task, but the link alone won't show the team the content of the message.
On Wednesday, Ola reads an enquiry from Nord. She creates a task called "Quote for Nord" in the Sales Workspace, assigns it to Kasia and sets the due date for Thursday at 12:00. She includes the client's requirements in the description. This way, Kasia doesn't have to guess what to prepare, and the deadline isn't just a line in the correspondence.
Next, Ola opens the ⋮ menu of the mail thread, chooses Link, and selects a Workspace and a task. The menu then shows the link information and an "Open linked..." shortcut. This is a bridge between workspaces, not a way of granting access to a mailbox: a task participant without a connected office@ account won't see the subject or content of the email. If they need to know the client's requirements, paste them into the task. Break the work steps down into a to-do list in the task description. Participants can tick items off without opening the edit view, and a completed item shows who checked it. See how to run a checklist in a task.
Rule 4: gather attachments in Files instead of resending them
You can save attachments from a thread in the Files module, available in the Pro plan. The paperclip icon in the email header moves all attachments into the folder Mail / mailbox name / thread subject and opens that folder.
On Friday, a third version of the document turns up in the contract discussion. Instead of asking colleagues to send the file over again, you gather the attachments from the thread in one folder. When mail is synced, Task Manager first saves only their list; files are downloaded on request. You can open a single attachment in preview or download it to disk using the arrow next to its name.
Don't confuse a folder in Files with permission to read mail. Linking an email to a task still doesn't reveal the correspondence to other people. If they need the documents, put them somewhere they have access to, and check the rules for working with the Files module.
Rule 5: remove from the list anything that doesn't need action
A thread you don't need to return to can be hidden without deleting the message. In Task Manager you'll find it later under the Hidden tile and can restore it with the "Show again" command.
This comes in handy for confirmations that had to be read but don't need to become a task. The Unread, Read and Hidden tiles help separate such messages from new matters; a star in the header moves an important thread to the top of the list. Hiding doesn't delete anything, either in the app or on the mail server, and new messages in a hidden thread are still saved.
When unwanted mail keeps arriving from one address, the thread menu also offers "Spam / Unwanted - block sender". Threads from that address then disappear from the lists, and new messages are no longer fetched. That's a different decision from hiding a single thread - you can review and unblock blocked addresses under Settings → Mail → Spam / Unwanted.
The Board and AI help you read, but they won't replace a duty rota
The Board can make the morning review easier: each connected mailbox has its own column with threads on it, alongside the Workspace columns. AI helps you read long threads, but neither it nor the Board decides who's on duty - you agree that with your team. The "Mail on the board" toggle in the "Show only" menu lets you turn these columns on or off, and the setting is remembered.
If Ola starts her day with the office@ and Sales columns, she sees incoming correspondence and tasks side by side. The view doesn't change access rules, though, nor does it decide who should reply. That's still down to the duty rota.
You can read a long thread with the help of the Organise button, if you have AI configured. Summarise mode shortens each message to one or two sentences, and Original content mode restores the view of the emails as received. The AI result is a preview for the duration of the session, not a change to the original correspondence; if in doubt, check the source message. The private AI Assistant also lets you ask about the content of this thread without sending the question to the recipients.
AI is optional and requires your own key with the model provider. Content passed to the model then leaves the application server. The separate feature of using Mail as a knowledge source for the AI Assistant is disabled by default; an administrator turns it on. This boundary is described in the text about what reaches the AI provider.
Mail is in Pro, and the licence doesn't require a per-person subscription
The Mail module, like Files and Automations, belongs to the Pro plan. For a perpetual Task Manager licence you pay once, based on the number of seats; the price includes 12 months of updates, after which renewal remains optional.
| Pro plan | Team size | Licence price |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | up to 8 people | 1 990 zł |
| Classic | up to 20 people | 3 990 zł |
| Max | up to 35 people | 5 990 zł |
| Enterprise | more than 35 people | from 7 990 zł |
You install Task Manager on your company's server; ordinary shared hosting that meets the PHP 8.1+ and MySQL or MariaDB requirements is enough. The application's data, including the local mail copy, sits on your server. The original mailbox stays on the mail server: disconnecting it in Task Manager removes the local copy, not the emails held by your mail provider. You'll find a comparison of plans in the current pricing.
Tomorrow morning, pick the five oldest threads from office@. For each one, decide: a reply from whoever's on duty, a task with a person and a due date, or hiding it once read. If you'd like to see what working with mail alongside tasks looks like, open the Demo.
Frequently asked questions
How to get email under control in a team when everyone uses office@?
Set one person on duty for the day and have them check the thread before replying. Record matters that require work as tasks with a person and a due date, because Task Manager doesn't assign an email thread to an employee or block a duplicate reply.
Does Task Manager have a shared team inbox?
There's no team inbox in the sense of a case queue: each person connects the shared office@ address on their own account. Their mail view stays private, even from the administrator.
Will I see that a colleague has replied to an email from office@?
Yes, if the reply was sent from the shared inbox and a copy of it reached the Sent folder on the server. Task Manager reads that folder, so the message appears in the thread for the other people who have connected that inbox.
Does linking an email to a task show the message to the team?
No, Link creates a navigational shortcut and doesn't share the content or subject of the email with the task's participants. If they need to know what was agreed with the client, paste it into the task description.
Which Task Manager plan includes the Mail module?
Mail is included in the Pro variant of the Starter, Classic and Max plans, and for teams over 35 people, Enterprise is available with individual pricing. The licence is perpetual; 12 months of updates are included in the price.
Sources
The Task Manager Team - we write about teamwork, AI in business and keeping tasks organised, using examples from Task Manager, software installed on your own server. Task Manager has been developed by Blue Creation Group (Piotr Łącz) since 2013 and is used by organisations including Neonet, the Military University of Technology and Polpharma - read customer reviews. We check our articles against the user guide and the latest version of the software.
