Mail and your Gmail inbox

The Mail page is a full email client for your Gmail, inside Claos. You read and answer your email there, and you can hand any email to one of your agents.

Your email stays in Gmail. Claos reads it from Gmail when you open it, and every change you make (read, archived, labelled, sent) happens in Gmail too.

Connecting your Gmail

1. Open the Mail page. It's at your workspace's address followed by /mail. An agent's inbox icon opens the same mail client beside the agent.
2. Click Connect Gmail and sign in to Google in the window that opens.

Your mail appears straight away.

Who can see it

A Gmail connected in a workspace belongs to the workspace. Everyone in it sees it on the Mail page, whoever connected it and whether or not an agent uses it. Members, admins and owners can read, reply, send and change Smart inbox and rules; viewers can only read. If the workspace has several Gmail accounts, pick one with the account menu at the top of the folder list.

In a workspace where you're the only person, that just means your mail is yours. In a shared workspace, connect a work mailbox rather than a personal one. See Agent inboxes for giving a mailbox to an agent.

If the workspace's Gmail accounts were all connected by other people, Connect a Gmail in the folder list adds yours.

Finding your way around

The column on the left holds Compose, your folders (Inbox, Starred, Snoozed, Sent, Drafts, Scheduled, and more under More) and your Gmail labels. Promotions, Social, Updates and Forums are folders under More, and the Inbox leaves Promotions out. On a phone, the folders are behind the Folders button.

Click a conversation to open it. Opening an unread email marks it as read.

Tidying up

Hover a row, or select several with their checkboxes, to Archive, Delete, Mark as read or unread, Snooze, Move to a label or Label as. Every action shows an Undo message for a few seconds. Nothing is deleted for good: deleted mail goes to Gmail's Trash.

Snooze hides a conversation until the time you pick (later today, tomorrow, this weekend, next week, or a time you choose), then brings it back to your Inbox as unread.

When a sender includes an unsubscribe link, the conversation shows Unsubscribe.

Searching

Type in the search box and press Enter to search your Gmail. The options panel narrows a search by sender, recipient, subject, words, size, date or attachments.

Writing

Click Compose, or Reply, Reply all or Forward in a conversation. Drafts save to Gmail as you type.

• Draft with AI: in any message you're writing, say in one line what you want to say, and the AI writes it for you to edit. Nothing is sent.
• Undo send: after you press Send there's a short window to take it back.
• Schedule send: pick a time and it's sent then. Waiting messages are listed in Scheduled.

Handing an email to an agent

Open a conversation and click Assign to agent. Choose who, and what should happen:

• Draft a reply: a reply waits in your Gmail Drafts. You send it.
• Summarise: a short summary lands as a comment on a task.
• Turn into tasks: a task for each thing the email asks of you.
• Something else: say what you want done.
• Send a reply (you approve it): the agent writes the reply and waits for your approval before anything is sent.

Claos makes a task for the work, and the agent starts on it within a couple of minutes or at the time you choose. The agent needs to be able to read this mailbox. If it can't yet, the dialog offers to connect it.

Smart inbox

Open the lightning button (Automate your inbox) and switch on Smart inbox. It sorts new mail into labels such as Needs a reply, Waiting on others, Meetings, Newsletters, Marketing, Cold pitches, Receipts, Work and Personal, and writes a one-line summary you see when you open an email.

Smart inbox only labels: nothing leaves your Inbox until you press Inbox zero, which moves sorted mail into its labels and shows you first what will move and what stays. Mail that still needs a reply stays in the Inbox. Put back in the Inbox undoes it.

With Smart inbox on, you can also switch on Draft replies. For new mail that needs an answer, it writes a reply in the voice of the agent you choose and leaves it in Gmail as a draft for you to edit and send. It writes up to 25 drafts a day. Nothing is sent for you.

Smart inbox and Draft replies both use some weekly usage as new mail arrives. It comes from the team plan if the workspace has one, and otherwise from the workspace owner's plan.

For more control, Advanced: your own rules lets you make rules, for example "email from this client goes to a label" or "email about pricing becomes a task for an agent". Rules belong to the mailbox, so any member, admin or owner can change them. A rule acts in the name of the person who made it; if that person leaves the workspace or becomes a viewer, the rule turns itself off and says why, and whoever turns it back on becomes its maker.

Settings

The gear (Mail settings) beside the refresh button sets row density, where conversations open, how long Undo send waits and whether opening an email marks it as read, and links to the keyboard shortcuts. Your signature is the one you set in Gmail for that mailbox, and it's added for you. Your settings follow you to any device. Press ? to see the keyboard shortcuts.

Related

• Agent inboxes
• The inbox