GMail provides the ability to automatically screen incoming email and filter it. One of the benefits of this is the ability to automatically sort your incoming email based on the office it was sent to. If you have multiple offices this can help you manage your mail, and it makes it easier to hand off important email to your eventual successor.

 

Part 1: Opening up your Settings Page

Start by logging into GMail with your East Kingdom account. Locate the Settings Menu (Gear Icon) in the upper right and open up the settings.

 

Part 2: Setting up labels

When your East Kingdom Office was migrated and the previous emails brought over, some labels were created automatically. If you still have those and would like to keep them, please move on to Part 3.

Otherwise to create your label(s):

• Go to the Labels section of the Settings and press the ‘Create New Label’ link.
• Enter label name and hit create.
• Repeat as desired to set up a label for each incoming office.

Part 3: Filtering the mail.

• Go to the Filters and Blocked Address section of the settings and press the ‘Create a New Filter’ link.
• In the ‘To’ section enter in your incoming office email (e.g. office@branch.eastkingdom.org or office@eastkingdom.org – filling in your office and branch of course).
• Click the ‘Create filter with this search’ link and a new filter actions panel will open.
• Check the checkbox ‘Apply the label’ and choose the corresponding label – either one you created in Step 2, or one you would like to continue to use from when your office was migrated.
• Webministry recommends NOT checking the ‘Skip the INBOX’ checkbox because messages will then skip the inbox and only appear under the label. This can lead to inaccurate unread message counts if you use a third party email client or new mail notifier.
• Optionally check ‘also apply filter’ to process all current matching email.
• Press Create Filter to complete the filter creation.
• Repeat as desired to create filters for all incoming offices.

Once all labels and filters are created, incoming mail will automatically appear in the labeled folder, and can be found there using the GMail web interface or third party email clients. In addition, if you have followed the above steps, new mail will continue to appear in the inbox, so no change in the normal email workflow is needed. When you archive a message from the inbox, it will retain all the other labels that have been automatically applied, so you can quickly and easily return to the label to find all mail sent to an office. When you transfer your office to your eventual successor, you will be able to select all mail in the corresponding label to be transferred as well.

Bonus tip: When in the GMail settings, please also check the ‘Reply from the same address the message was sent to’ setting so that replies to email sent to your office will automatically reply from that office as well. Please see our documentation on setting that option.