Personal vs shared mailboxes
Every mailbox row in Settings → Integrations carries a Personal or Shared pill. The setting controls one thing: which account you must sign in with when you click Connect — and InboxAgent checks it, so connecting the wrong account is blocked rather than silently reading the wrong inbox.
Personal mailbox
A personal mailbox is an ordinary account’s own inbox — jane@yourcompany.com.
- Sign in as exactly that address when connecting.
- If you sign in as anyone else, the connection is refused with a message like: “This mailbox is labelled ‘jane@…’ but you signed in as ‘tom@…’. A personal mailbox must be connected by signing in as that same address.” Nothing is stored; just retry with the right account.
Shared mailbox (Microsoft 365 only)
A shared mailbox is an address that isn’t a person — info@, sales@, support@ — which people
access through their own accounts (Microsoft calls this delegated access).
- Tick “Shared mailbox” when adding it.
- Sign in as a person who has access to it (a delegate) — not as the shared mailbox itself. Signing in as the mailbox’s own address is refused with guidance to use a delegate account instead.
- The delegate’s access itself is granted in your Microsoft 365 admin center, not in InboxAgent — the person connecting must already be able to open that shared mailbox in Outlook.
Gmail and Zoho Mail have no shared mode. Those mailboxes are always personal, and the Shared option doesn’t appear for them. For Zoho, the address can also be an alias of the account you sign in with; Zoho group mailboxes can’t be connected at all, because Zoho doesn’t allow apps to read them. See Connect a Zoho Mail mailbox for the options.
Get the setting right before connecting
Set the Shared flag correctly when you add the mailbox, before clicking Connect. If it’s wrong, the sign-in check will refuse the connection and tell you why — fix the flag via Edit on the row (or sign in with the right account) and connect again. Avoid flipping the flag on a mailbox that’s already connected: the existing sign-in no longer matches, and processing for that mailbox stops until it’s reconnected correctly.
Which should I use?
For team inboxes like info@ and support@, a shared mailbox connected by a delegate is the
right shape — nobody’s personal account owns the connection. Use personal only when the
monitored inbox genuinely belongs to one person.