Connect your shared inbox

The Inbox is where your team reads and answers every support email in one shared view: reply without opening Gmail or Outlook, assign threads to teammates, leave internal notes, and see the customer's Shopify context next to every message. This guide takes you from zero to a connected mailbox that knows your store.

Before you start

Hivenue supports three connection types. Check what you need for yours:

Connection type	Typical providers	What you need
Google	Gmail, Google Workspace	A Google account with 2FA enabled
Microsoft	Outlook.com, Hotmail, Microsoft 365	A Microsoft account
Other (IMAP)	Aruba, Libero, Fastmail, most others	Email address and password (an app password for Yahoo or iCloud)

If you want customer context next to each email, your Shopify store should already be connected to the workspace (Settings, then Stores). You can do it after, but the store link in step 4 needs it.

Step 1: Connect your first mailbox

On your first login, the onboarding wizard offers a "Connect your first mailbox" step. On the Email card, click Connect mailbox and pick your provider:

• Continue with Google: the Google consent screen opens, you authorize, and you are sent back to Hivenue.
• Continue with Microsoft: same flow with the Microsoft consent screen.
• Other (IMAP): a form opens with server auto-completion. Type your email address and Hivenue prefills the IMAP host, port and SSL settings. Enter your password and click Verify connection.

Already past onboarding? The same flow lives in Settings, Integrations, Email, behind the + Add mailbox button.

Step 2: Let the initial sync run

As soon as the mailbox is connected, Hivenue starts a backfill of the last 90 days of email. A progress bar shows the sync status; for a mailbox with around 5,000 messages it typically takes 10 to 30 minutes.

You do not have to wait. Keep using Hivenue and the emails appear in the Inbox as they are indexed. Hivenue only reads your mailbox: nothing is ever deleted or moved in Gmail or Outlook.

Step 3: Add more mailboxes

One workspace can hold as many mailboxes as your team uses:

1. Open Settings, Integrations, Email.
2. Click + Add mailbox.
3. Pick the provider, authorize, and the same 90-day backfill runs for the new mailbox.

There is no hard limit on the number of mailboxes. For very large workspaces (more than 20 mailboxes) contact support, since provider rate limits on Gmail and Microsoft can slow the sync down.

Step 4: Link the mailbox to your Shopify store

This is the step that turns a shared mailbox into a helpdesk. Once linked, every incoming email is matched against your store's customers.

1. Open Settings, Integrations, Email.
2. On the mailbox row, click Link to store.
3. A dialog lists the stores in your workspace. Select one or more: a mailbox can serve several stores, and a store can have several mailboxes.
4. Mark one mailbox as Primary for the store. That is the default "From" identity when you reply to that store's customers.
5. Click Save.

From that moment:

• Every new incoming email is compared with the store's customer records. An exact sender match links the customer immediately; if that fails, Hivenue looks for an order number in the subject line and links through the order, flagged as a probable match.
• The store appears as a tag on threads in the Inbox.
• The right-hand panel shows the customer's Shopify context: recent orders, lifetime value, addresses.
• Replies go out from your own address, so customers see your store's email, never a Hivenue domain.

If the automatic match misses someone, open the thread, click Search customer in the right panel, and link the right person manually. A manual match always wins over an automatic one.

Good to know

• Emails are organized in threads following the email standard, so replies land in the same conversation on the customer's side too.
• Changing a thread's status (Open, Pending, Closed, Spam) or assigning it to a teammate never sends anything to the customer. It is internal organization only.
• Incoming attachments download in the background and become clickable when ready. The limit is 25 MB per file, and executable files are blocked. Outgoing messages have a cumulative 25 MB attachment limit.
• Disconnecting a mailbox (mailbox row menu, Disconnect) revokes the token with your provider and stops the sync, but the already-synced history stays in your Inbox.
• For how mail data is stored and encrypted, see the privacy page.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
A new email is not in the Inbox after 5 minutes	The provider sync watch is being renewed	Wait a few minutes; if it persists, use Force sync from the mailbox menu
The 90-day backfill looks stuck for over an hour	Provider rate limit reached	It resumes on its own within the hour; contact support if it stays stuck overnight
Mailbox shows as Disconnected	The token was revoked, for example after a password change	Click Reconnect on the mailbox row
A reply fails with an SMTP error	Your provider's daily sending quota is exhausted	Wait for the quota reset or raise your provider plan
The linked customer is wrong	An order number in the subject matched by coincidence	Use Search customer in the right panel to fix it manually