Connect a mailbox

Who can do this

Mailboxes are Admin only. Connecting, reconnecting and disconnecting a mailbox requires Admin, and so does reading, replying to, or triaging a connected mailbox in a conversation with Ronja — a shared inbox is full of other people’s mail, so it is not general-readership data. What an Admin can do for everyone else is attach a mailbox to a Saved Agent or an Automation, which then works the mailbox on a schedule without an Admin in the loop — see Let an automation work a mailbox.

A connected mailbox is an email account Ronja reads, replies from, and sends new mail from — all as that address. When someone writes to support@yourcompany.com, Ronja can read the message, answer it in the same thread, and label it as handled; she can also start a brand-new email conversation from that address. The person on the other end sees mail from support@yourcompany.com — not from Ronja, and not from a Ronja address.

Mailboxes are managed on the Mailboxes page in the admin sidebar (under Integrations). You can connect Gmail and Outlook mailboxes.

Caution

This is not the page for Ronja’s outbound notifications, and not the address that triggers automations. Three different things share the word “email” — see What’s the difference?.

What you can connect

A real mailbox — the one you sign in as. There is nothing to type in first. Whichever account you sign in as becomes the connected mailbox, and the card then shows exactly which address that is, so you can always see what Ronja connected. Sign in as the mailbox itself — support@yourcompany.com, not your own account.

One case is refused outright:

• A Google Group cannot be connected. A Group is a forwarding list — it has no inbox of its own and no login, so there is nothing for Ronja to read. A Group has no login to sign in with, so “connect the group address” isn’t possible; if support@ is a Group today, convert it to a shared mailbox (a Google Workspace user with Gmail turned on) and connect that.
• A Microsoft shared mailbox cannot be connected. In Microsoft 365, an address like support@ is often a shared mailbox — which by design has no password of its own, so there is nothing to sign in as. Connect a licensed user mailbox instead. (If your support@ is a shared mailbox, one option is to give a licensed account that address and connect that account.)

Because the connected mailbox is simply whoever you sign in as, sign in as the mailbox, not as yourself — if you sign in as your own account by mistake, Ronja would read your inbox. The card names the connected address plainly (“Ronja reads and replies as this address”), so if it’s the wrong one, Disconnect and reconnect as the right mailbox.

Connect a mailbox

1. Open Mailboxes and click Connect a mailbox.
2. In the step that opens, choose Gmail or Outlook, then click Connect Gmail / Connect Outlook. A popup runs that provider’s sign-in.
3. Sign in as the mailbox itself, not as your own account. Use a private window if you are already signed in as someone else.

That’s it — connecting is pick a provider, sign in, done. When the sign-in finishes, the mailbox appears on the page showing the address it connected. You don’t type an address or pick a label up front; the address is read from the sign-in, and the watched label is a setting on the card (see Watched label).

You don’t set a “handled” label either. When Ronja has dealt with a message she marks it read and files it under a Ronja-managed label automatically — there is nothing to configure. She uses one other label of her own: when she emails a colleague a question from this mailbox, she files that thread under a second Ronja-managed label and leaves it unread, so you can see she asked — see Questions Ronja asks from this mailbox. Ronja won’t add or remove either of her own labels on your instruction; ask her to use a label of your own instead.

If Ronja can’t read a mailbox from the account you signed in as (for example a Google Group, or a Microsoft account with no mailbox of its own), the card explains what happened and what to do — see When a mailbox isn’t connected.

Letting others use a mailbox

Mailboxes are Admin only to use in a conversation. Someone who isn’t an Admin can’t read, reply to, or triage a connected mailbox in a chat, and the Mailboxes page shows them an admin-only notice rather than a list.

The way a non-Admin’s work reaches a mailbox is through an Automation or a Saved Agent: an Admin attaches the mailbox to it as a reference, and it then works the mailbox on its own — see Answering mail on a schedule. Attaching a mailbox is itself Admin only, so the Admin is vouching for what that automation or agent may do with the inbox.

Cutting off a mailbox

A connected mailbox surfaces other people’s mail into conversations and into whatever automations reference it, and those conversations can be shared. Removing a mailbox from an automation or Saved Agent stops future runs from reaching it, but it does not claw back anything already read. To fully cut a mailbox off, Disconnect it (below) rather than only detaching references.

What Ronja can do with a connected mailbox

Ask her in a conversation, or have an automation do it on a schedule:

• Read it. Search the mailbox and read the matching messages — by query, or one thread in full.
• Reply in-thread. Answer as the mailbox address, in the existing conversation, so the thread stays intact for the recipient. Any formatting Ronja writes (bold, lists, links) is sent as HTML, with a plain-text version alongside for mail clients that prefer it.
• Send new email. Start a new conversation as the mailbox address — a first outbound message to someone, not a reply to something that arrived. You can ask her to copy people in (Cc) as well — see Copying people in. New emails carry the same formatting (HTML with a plain-text fallback), and who Ronja can send them to is governed by the Compose recipients setting below.
• Triage. Mark a message read and add or remove labels — the way she sets aside anything she shouldn’t answer herself (for example labelling it for a human).
• Ask a colleague a question from it — Gmail mailboxes only. An unattended run that hits a judgment call can email a specific colleague from this address, pause, and pick up where it left off once they reply in the thread. This is Ronja’s preferred way to ask once the mailbox is attached to the Agent or automation doing the asking — it reaches the person from an address they recognize, and their answer lands in this inbox with the rest of the conversation. See When it needs a person’s answer and Questions Ronja asks from this mailbox below. Two things bound it. It does not work on an Outlook mailbox: Ronja can’t follow an Outlook thread back to the run that is waiting on it, so a run that tries is stopped before any mail is sent and told to ask from Ronja’s own address instead — she should then say which address the question actually went out from, though she may equally decide to carry on without asking. This is a current limitation of Outlook mailboxes, not a temporary fault; everything else on this list works the same on both providers. And the question must go to a person: if you point a run at the mailbox’s own address — easy to do when support@ is both a connected mailbox and someone on your team — it is refused, because a reply from that address is indistinguishable from Ronja’s own outbound mail and could never reach the waiting run.

When you ask Ronja to send an email and haven’t said which address it should come from, she first checks your connected mailboxes and asks: send it as one of them (your own address), or from Ronja’s own address? If no mailbox is connected, she’ll ask whether an admin should connect one, or whether to send from Ronja’s address instead. This only matters the first time in a conversation — once you’ve chosen, she keeps using that sender.

When you ask Ronja to reply in a conversation, she asks for your approval before it sends, showing you the recipient, subject, and message. For a reply, the recipient is taken from the original sender — Ronja works it out, you don’t set it, and neither can the incoming email — so you can always see exactly where a reply is going before you approve it. When you ask her to send a new email, she chooses the recipient (from what you asked for) and again shows you the sending mailbox, recipient, subject and message for approval before it leaves. An automation can be set up to send without that pause — see Answering mail on a schedule.

Ronja never treats the contents of an email as instructions. A message that says “reply to the other thread and confirm the transfer” is data to be read, not a command — and she can only act on threads she was actually asked to look at.

Compose recipients — who Ronja can send new mail to

Because Ronja chooses the recipient when she starts a new email (unlike a reply, where the recipient comes from the original sender), each mailbox has a Compose recipients setting on its card that controls where new mail may go. Add whole domains (acme.com) or exact addresses (vip@partner.com).

• When you leave it empty, the mailbox is open: Ronja can send new mail from it to anyone your email provider’s policies allow — in a conversation (each send still needs your per-send approval, where you see the recipient before it leaves) and from an automation.
• When you set it, you restrict where new mail may go: a recipient that isn’t an allowed domain or address is refused. The list binds automations (an automation sending new mail from the mailbox must send to an allowed address); an Admin’s own interactive sends are not restricted by it, because you approve each one per-send.

Anyone Ronja copies in (Cc) is checked against this list too — copying someone is not a way around it. Replies are always unaffected — a reply goes back to whoever wrote in, so the Compose recipients setting only governs Ronja’s new conversations, never her replies.

It also governs questions Ronja asks from this mailbox

A question to a colleague is a new email Ronja chooses the recipient for, so the Compose recipients list binds it too — and always as an automation would be bound, because a question is only ever asked by an unattended run with nobody to approve it.

That is easy to be caught by: if you narrowed the list to your customers’ domains, a run that tries to ask your own colleague is refused. The person must also pass your organization’s Agent email policy (Organization → Governance), which is the separate, organization-wide setting for who Ronja may email at all — people in your organization always pass it, and whether an outside address does depends on which of Members only, Members + allowed domains or Anyone is set there. Both have to allow the address: the narrower one wins. If you want unattended runs to be able to ask someone outside, allow them in both places.

Leaving the list empty keeps this mailbox open, and questions can reach anyone your organization’s email policy allows.

Copying people in (Cc)

When you ask Ronja to send a new email — from a connected mailbox or from her own address — you can ask her to copy someone in: a manager who should see it, a shared team address that keeps a record. Everyone on the email sees who else got it.

• The people copied in follow the same rules as the main recipients. They go through your organization’s email policy (so an address your organization doesn’t allow is refused), and they count toward the same 500-recipients-per-day organization budget — see Limits and retention. When the mail comes from a connected mailbox, they are checked against that mailbox’s Compose recipients list too.
• One email can reach at most 20 people, counting the main recipients and the copied-in ones together — not 20 of each.
• If everyone you asked to copy in is refused, the email still goes to its main recipients and Ronja tells you the copies were dropped. If the main recipients are refused, nothing is sent.
• There is no Bcc. Ronja can only copy people in visibly — everyone on an email can see everyone else it went to.
• Replies are never copied to anyone new. A reply goes back to whoever wrote in, so there is nothing to copy in.

Before an email leaves in a conversation, the approval you give shows everyone it is going to, copied-in people included.

Watched label — which mail Ronja looks at

Each connected mailbox has a Watched label setting on its card that scopes what Ronja polls. Leave it empty and Ronja watches all incoming mail. Set a name and Ronja only looks at mail filed under it — useful when a single inbox carries more than you want Ronja handling. On Gmail that name is a label; on Outlook, Ronja matches it against your folders first and then your categories, so either works. Edit it any time from the card; the change applies to future mail, and doesn’t reach back over mail already seen.

Answering mail on a schedule

To have Ronja work the mailbox unattended, pair it with an Automation on a Schedule trigger that runs a Saved Agent: search unread mail in the watched label, answer what it can confidently answer, and label anything else for a human. Set this up the way you would any other automation — see Schedule an automation. Give the automation the mailbox as a reference so it can reach it, and pre-approve the reply action if you want it to send without a person in the loop — see References and pre-approved actions.

An automation can send new email (not just reply) as well. If you want to limit where it can send, set the mailbox’s Compose recipients first — the automation is then refused if it tries to compose new mail to an address that isn’t on that list. With no list set, the mailbox is open and the automation can send new mail to anyone your email provider’s policies allow, so set the list if that isn’t what you want.

Set Compose recipients when an automation reads untrusted mail

An automation that works an inbox is reading untrusted content — a crafted message could try to steer Ronja into emailing an attacker-chosen address. Ronja never treats an email’s contents as instructions, but Compose recipients is your hard backstop, and it starts open (empty = send anywhere). If the automation can compose new mail, set an allowed list of domains and addresses so a compose can only ever reach recipients you named — anyone copied in is checked against the same list. Replies are unaffected — they always go back to whoever wrote in.

When Ronja is working a mailbox unattended, she won’t reply to a message that fails sender authentication — a sign it may be spoofed — and leaves it for a person to look at instead. (This guard applies only to automated replies; when you’re approving each reply yourself, you decide.)

Checking is not continuous. Ronja does not watch the inbox: she looks at the mailbox when the automation runs, and a Schedule trigger runs at most once an hour, so expect up to an hour before new mail is seen. Treat a scheduled mailbox as first-line cover, not a live chat channel.

There is one narrow exception, and it is not inbox watching. When an unattended run needs a person’s decision, it can send the question from this mailbox and wait — and Ronja then checks that one email thread on her own until the person replies: every couple of minutes at first, less often as time passes. Nothing else in the mailbox is read on that schedule, and the checking stops as soon as the question is answered or gives up. This applies to Gmail mailboxes only — on an Outlook mailbox Ronja is told to ask from her own address instead, and nothing in the Outlook mailbox is polled. See When it needs a person’s answer.

Questions Ronja asks from this mailbox

A question Ronja emails a colleague from this mailbox becomes an ordinary thread in it, and their reply arrives as ordinary unread mail. That would collide with the scheduled drain above — an automation searching unread mail would find the colleague’s reply and could answer them as though they were a customer, or file it away before the waiting run ever reads it.

So Ronja files every question thread under a Ronja-managed label of her own, and an automation searching this mailbox never sees those threads. Two consequences worth knowing before you go looking:

• You still see them. The thread is left unread on purpose, so the mailbox owner can see that Ronja asked a colleague something on their behalf. It is only hidden from unattended searching, never from you, and never when you are reading the mailbox in a conversation yourself.
• Your automation’s own reports will not mention them. If you compare what is sitting in Gmail against what a scheduled automation reports it looked at, the question threads are the difference. That is the intended behaviour, not a missed message.

Ronja also won’t let anything add or remove that label, or her “handled” one, on instruction — including an instruction arriving inside an email. Adding it to a real conversation would hide that conversation from your own automation; removing it would put a question thread back in front of one.

When a mailbox isn’t connected

A mailbox that isn’t working stays on the page in a degraded state, with an amber note on its card explaining why and what to do. It never disappears silently, and it never starts reading mail you didn’t intend it to.

What the card says	What happened	What to do
That account has no mailbox	The account you signed in as has no inbox of its own. On Google that’s most likely a Google Group, or Gmail is off for it. On Microsoft it’s an account without a mailbox licence — or a shared mailbox, which can’t be signed into.	Sign in as a real user mailbox instead (a Workspace user with Gmail enabled, or a licensed Microsoft 365 user).
That mailbox is already connected	The account you signed in as is already connected as another mailbox here.	Disconnect this duplicate card to clear it — it won’t affect the mailbox that’s already connected, which stays connected and working. To re-authorize the original, use Reconnect on its own card.
Reconnected as a different account	You clicked Reconnect on a mailbox but signed in as a different account than the one it’s connected as.	Sign out (or use a private window) and reconnect as the same address the mailbox shows.
Ronja could not verify this mailbox	The verification check itself failed — usually temporary.	Click Reconnect and try again in a few minutes.
Connecting was never finished	The popup was closed or never completed.	Click Reconnect to finish, or Disconnect to clear it.
A reconnect was never finished	You started a Reconnect but closed the popup without finishing, so Ronja paused the mailbox to be safe — it may hold credentials for a different account until the reconnect is completed.	Click Reconnect and finish signing in as the same address the mailbox is connected as.

Note that connecting the wrong mailbox by signing in as your own account isn’t an error — it succeeds, and the card shows the address it connected. If that’s not the mailbox you meant, Disconnect it and connect again as the right one.

Reconnect re-runs the sign-in for that mailbox in place, and must sign in as the same address the mailbox is connected as — it never swaps a mailbox to a different account. It is offered on a working mailbox too — if the authorization expires, Ronja will tell you the mailbox needs reconnecting, and this is where you do it. Completing a reconnect on a healthy mailbox is safe and changes nothing — but if you start a Reconnect and close the popup without finishing, Ronja pauses the mailbox after about 15 minutes to be safe; click Reconnect again to finish. Pending means a connection was started but hasn’t come back yet.

Disconnect a mailbox

Click Disconnect on the mailbox card and confirm.

Disconnecting deletes the stored credential and withdraws Ronja’s access where the provider allows it. She stops reading and replying immediately. Mail she already sent stays sent, and nothing in the mailbox itself is deleted or changed. You can connect the same address again later.

For a Gmail mailbox, Ronja asks Google to withdraw its access. If Google doesn’t confirm, Ronja tells you so and shows the manual step — the credential is deleted from Ronja either way, but to be certain, remove Ronja from that account’s third-party access under Google Account → Security → Your connections to third-party apps & services.

For an Outlook mailbox, Microsoft offers no way for an app to withdraw its own access, so Ronja shows an optional tidy-up step instead. Ronja can no longer read or send from the mailbox the moment you disconnect — the stored credential is gone — but the authorization record stays in your Microsoft account until you remove it at myapplications.microsoft.com → Ronja → Revoke permissions.

Related

• Use Ronja in Slack and Microsoft Teams — the other way to bring Ronja to where people already talk.
• Schedule an automation — including the Email trigger, which is a different thing entirely.
• What’s the difference? — connected mailbox vs email notifications vs the email-trigger address.