How to Handle Emails for an Absent Employee in Google Workspace

Employees may be away for a whole host of reasons from holiday (vacations) to sickness or just planned leaves-of-absence.

In order to effectively manage their inbox, for any period of time, Google’s Google Workspace offers a range of options:

  1. Delegate the inbox
  2. Set up a forward
  3. Set up a Google Group

Inbox Delegation

Inbox delegation is often used by PA’s working for a member of an executive team.

The delegated person can answer emails on behalf of the primary contact and see their full email setup.

Other people will have no idea that their emails weren’t answered by the primary contact. The primary contact themselves can see a note in the email dashboard, telling them where emails have been answered on their behalf.

How to Setup Inbox Delegation in Google Workspace

See the tutorial from Google here. You may need to contact your Google Workspace admin to switch on the delegation option.

Forwarding Emails

An email forward is easy to setup and appropriate when there are two colleagues who can perform the same work interchangeably. This can be coupled with an out-of-office reply, so that customers and partners aren’t surprised to hear from another contact.

How to Set up an Email Forward in Google Workspace

See the email forwarding setup tutorial from Google here.

Google Groups

When it’s more appropriate to forward someone’s emails to a whole team, Google Groups is the way forward.

Team members can be receive the original message as a normal email and reply from their own inbox. However, as part of the Google Groups functionality, they will also have the ability to reply from the Group email address, so all team members know when a message has been dealt with.

Example

So, for example, Tom goes away on holiday and his email are forwarded to the Sales Team: sales@yourcompany.com.

Each Sales Team member can then reply either from their normal inbox or from the sales@yourcompany.com email address, where other team members will be able to see that the message was dealt with.

How to Setup Google Groups

You can setup a Group using the tutorial from Google here.

Alternatively, contact your Google Workspace Admin to request a new group (this will have slightly different functionality as described here).

Get Help

For additional assistance with any of the above, contact Silicon Dales today.

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