A mailbox belongs to the member who connected it. Arbour reads and sends through it, keeps the conversations that involve your contacts, and leaves the rest of your mail where it is. It lives in Settings, under Communications, on the Mailboxes and signatures tab.
Open mailboxes and signatures
Connect a mailbox
- 01
Choose Import history: Nothing (new mail only), Last 30 days or Last 90 days. It is asked once, when the mailbox is first connected.
- 02
Press Connect Google or Connect Microsoft. You are sent to the provider to approve read and send access.
- 03
Approve, and you land back here with the address listed and a Connected badge beside it.
Arbour never sees your password, and never asks for permission to modify or delete mail. Your role controls which mailboxes you can use. Only the member who connected a mailbox can reconnect it, disconnect it or edit its signatures.
What syncs
Two folders per mailbox: the inbox and sent items. A message is kept only when somebody on it other than you matches a contact in Arbour. Everything else is read and dropped, never stored. That is why a fresh mailbox on a quiet week can sync and show nothing.
After the first pass, sync is incremental and runs on its own. The row reads synced with the time of the last run, or not synced yet. Sync now queues a run if you would rather not wait.
Two mailboxes, one conversation
When two connected mailboxes are on the same thread, Arbour shows it once and marks which mailbox each message came through.
Who can see whose mail
Connect and use your own email lets you connect a mailbox and work with its correspondence. View and send team emails lets you read all stored organisation emails and send from any connected mailbox, including historical conversations. You do not need to connect your own mailbox to use team mailboxes.
There is no private/shared switch. Linking a conversation does not change access. Team email access includes correspondence about restricted contacts or bookings, but opening those records still needs their own permissions. Drafts and AI writing chats stay with their author. See Team and roles.
Signatures
Each connected mailbox gets its own Signatures section under the list. Give one a Name, paste or write the signature, then press Add signature. Pasting a styled signature straight out of Gmail or Outlook brings the formatting and the images with it. The first one you save becomes the default; Make default, Edit and Delete handle the rest.
The chosen signature is copied into the message when it is sent, so editing one later never rewrites mail that has already gone out. Pick which one goes on a particular email in the composer's Signature field.
Reconnecting and disconnecting
Providers expire access from time to time. A mailbox in that state reads Needs reconnecting and swaps its buttons for Reconnect, which runs the same approval and imports nothing extra.
Disconnect stops syncing and sending. Conversations already synced stay exactly where they are, and the row drops off this page. Only the member who connected a mailbox can disconnect it.