Who’s involved
| Role | |
|---|---|
| Owner | The person whose mailbox it is |
| Delegate | A person given access: an assistant, a colleague covering a vacation |
| App | Software given access through the provider’s sign-in, like an AI assistant |
| Admin | In a company, the person who decides whether delegation is allowed at all |
The kinds of access
The words differ by provider, but the access comes in the same few levels.
| Access | What it allows | How the recipient sees a sent email |
|---|---|---|
| Read | Open and search the mail | Nothing is sent |
| Read and manage | Also file, archive and delete | Nothing is sent |
| Send on behalf | Send from the mailbox, showing who actually sent it | Both names: the sender, on behalf of the owner |
| Send as | Send as if the owner sent it | Only the owner’s name |
Gmail. A delegate “can read, send, and delete emails in your account for you”, and can’t chat as you or change your password; when they send, their own address appears. Personal accounts can have up to 10 delegates. In a work or school account, the admin has to turn delegation on, and delegates must be in the same organization. Source: Google, Delegate & collaborate on email.
Microsoft 365. An admin can grant Read and manage (called Full Access in the Exchange admin center), Send as, and Send on behalf, separately. Full Access “doesn’t grant Send as or Send on behalf permissions”. Source: Microsoft, Give mailbox permissions to another user.
Apps work differently from delegates
An app doesn’t become a delegate. It asks for named permissions through the provider’s sign-in, the owner sees the list on a consent screen, and the app gets a token rather than a password. Reading mail and sending mail are separate permissions: see the Gmail API scopes and the Microsoft Graph permissions reference. The owner, or an admin, can withdraw them later from the account’s security settings.
Draft vs send: who approves
Having permission to send doesn’t settle when sending should happen. There are three common patterns:
| Pattern | How it works | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Preview each send | The delegate or app drafts; the owner approves every message | Anything written to a client, anything new |
| A list of allowed actions | The owner pre-approves certain kinds of action, and can take them back | Routine, low-risk actions the owner has seen many times |
| A standing automation | The owner sets up a rule once, such as “forward invoices to the bookkeeper”, and it runs on each match | Repetitive mail with a fixed destination |
Drafting is safe to hand over early, because a wrong draft costs nothing until it’s sent. Sending is the part to widen slowly.
The audit trail
Good delegation answers three questions afterwards: who read what, who sent what, and under whose name. Providers record sends in the mailbox itself. A shared-access tool should keep its own log, visible to the owner, of reads as well as sends.
Delegation is not a shared mailbox
A shared mailbox, like support@ or bookings@, belongs to the team and has no single owner. Delegation is access to one person’s own mailbox, and should start with that person’s consent. Giving a coordinator a view of the team’s shared mailboxes doesn’t give them anyone’s personal mail. See Shared inbox.
How alfred_ does it
- alfred_ as the app. When you connect Gmail or Outlook you grant read and send access at the provider. An email you ask alfred_ to write is shown to you first and goes only when you approve it. The exceptions are automations you set up yourself: an email rule that forwards mail, or a routine you’ve told to send without asking. Email rules can’t reply. See Drafts and approvals.
- A list of allowed actions. In Claude and ChatGPT, Settings → Privacy → Actions without asking lists the actions you’ve allowed to go ahead there without a preview. Revoke any of them on that page.
- Teammates. On a team, each person’s mail is private to them. A teammate can choose to share it, choose whether others may only read it or also reply, reply all and forward, and stop at any time. Every read and send through a shared inbox is logged under the name of the person who did it, and the owner can see the log. See Sharing & permissions.
