Communications
The unified email inbox
Every email residents send to the board lands in one shared inbox visible to all admins. Here's how to connect it, read, reply, and file - without the chaos of forwarding board emails to your personal account.
Last updated September 25, 2026
When a resident emails the HOA at your community’s Gmail address, that email lands in HomeHerald’s unified inbox. Every admin and board member sees it. They can reply, mark it handled, junk it, or turn it into a ticket. This is one of the higher-impact features for boards that previously did email-by-Gmail-CC chaos.
Where it lives
Email Inbox in the admin sidebar, under Communicate (the page header reads “Agent Inbox”).
You’ll see a list of incoming emails - sender, subject, date, and the AI-suggested category - sorted into four tabs: Inbox (still pending), Handled, Sent (emails you’ve replied to), and Junk.
Setup - connecting your HOA’s Gmail
The inbox reads your HOA’s own Gmail account. Until it’s connected, the Email Inbox shows Enable Inbox Scanning with a button to Email Integration Settings.
- Go to Automate, then Configuration, then Email Integration
- Turn Email Integration on
- Connect your HOA’s Gmail account with a Google App Password (the screen walks you through creating one)
Once connected, HomeHerald checks the account for new mail every hour, and Scan Now in the inbox checks on demand. If your HOA publishes a different address, set up forwarding from it to the connected Gmail account in your email host.
Reading and replying
When a new email arrives:
- It shows up on the Inbox tab
- Herald categorizes it and writes a short summary (more on this below)
- Admins can open it, read the summary and the email body, and reply
Replies go out from your HOA’s connected Gmail address, with “Re:” on the original subject, so the resident sees a normal email reply.
Replying:
- Open the email
- Type your response in the Reply box, or click AI Response to have Herald draft one you can edit
- Click Send Reply
The reply is logged under Replies on the email and the email moves to the Sent tab. All other admins see it the next time they open the inbox.
Who sent this, and their history
Every email carries a chip next to the sender that says who HomeHerald thinks they are: “Resident - 201 Cedar Bend” when the address belongs to a resident account, “Roster - 201 Cedar Bend (no account)” when the person is on the property’s contact list but has never signed up, or “Possible - 201 Cedar Bend” when it is only a suggested match. Click the chip, or use the ⋯ menu on an opened email, to slide the resident’s record open right over the inbox - View resident, View property, and All correspondence (every email, letter, notice, message, ticket, and payment tied to that person and that home, newest first). Close the slide-over and you are back on the same email, in the same place in the list. When the chip reads “Unknown sender” or “Possible”, the same menu offers Link this sender to a property: pick the home once and the inbox recognizes that address from then on, and the thread starts showing up in that property’s history.
AI categorization
When emails arrive, an AI assigns a category based on content:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Payment | Resident sending payment notification or asking about payments |
| Invoice | Vendor invoices and bills |
| Inquiry | Resident questions (“when is dues due?”, “what are pool hours?”) |
| Complaint | Resident reporting issues or violations |
| Other | Everything else |
The AI is right most of the time but not always. The category can’t be changed by hand; it only decides which filter an email sits under and which action buttons it offers.
Filtering and finding
The four tabs (Inbox, Handled, Sent, Junk) sort emails by status. Under them:
- Category: All Types / Payment / Invoice / Inquiry / Complaint / Other
- Search: the Search emails… box
Handling and junking
When you’re done with an email:
- Click Handled
- It moves off the Inbox tab onto Handled
Emails that are spam or noise go to Junk, which hides them from the app but leaves them in Gmail. Either way, Restore to Inbox brings an email back. Applying a payment, logging an expense, or creating a ticket from an email also marks it handled.
Converting an email to a request
Sometimes a resident emails about something that should be a formal request (a complaint, an ARC). Rather than re-keying it as a ticket, convert it:
- Open the email
- Click the ticket button (labeled ARC Ticket, Complaint Ticket, or General Ticket, depending on what Herald guesses from the email)
- The Create Ticket window opens pre-filled from the email
- Adjust the type and details as needed and click Create Ticket
The ticket button appears on Inquiry and Complaint emails from a sender who matches a member of your community. The email is marked handled and shows a Ticket Created tag. Further conversation with the resident happens in the ticket, not in the email.
See Email-to-ticket for the full conversion flow.
What residents see
Residents don’t see the inbox itself. From their side, it’s just normal email:
- They send to your HOA’s email address
- They get a reply from that same address
- The reply arrives as a “Re:” to their original email
They don’t know whether they’re interacting with one board member or a shared inbox. Good for them - feels professional. Good for you - no need to maintain personal-email forwarding.
Common situations
”I replied from my personal Gmail and it didn’t show up in the inbox”
If you reply outside HomeHerald, the reply goes from your personal email and isn’t tracked. Always reply from the inbox itself so the reply is logged where the rest of the board can see it.
”Two admins replied to the same email at the same time”
Possible. The email shows both replies. The resident sees both - usually a non-issue (“Thanks, the Secretary already answered, but here’s an additional thought from the Treasurer”). Agree as a board on who answers which kinds of email, and mark each one Handled as soon as it’s dealt with.
”A resident keeps emailing the same question repeatedly”
If they don’t realize they’re being heard:
- Send a clear reply with what action is being taken
- Turn it into a ticket so its status is tracked and visible to other admins
- Consider whether their question would be better as a community-wide announcement
If they’re being abusive:
- Reply once with policy (“Please consolidate questions into one email per week”)
- Escalate per your community’s complaint policy
”We’re getting a lot of spam”
Move it to Junk. That hides it from the inbox without deleting it from Gmail. For a persistent sender, set up a filter in Gmail itself.
”Can residents see other residents’ emails to the board?”
No. The inbox is visible only to admins and board members. Each email is private between the board and the sender.
”Can we get notified somewhere else?”
There’s no separate alert for new inbox mail. The emails are still in your HOA’s Gmail account, so anyone who already checks that account sees them there too. Replies should still go out from HomeHerald so they’re logged.
Where to go next
- Email-to-ticket - converting emails to formal requests
- Announcements - outbound community-wide messaging
- Herald Chat - Herald answering common resident questions before they hit the inbox