Google Groups Email: Reply to author, and let other group members see reply

Question

I'm a Google Groups user, using some paid account to access admin.google.com. I'm able to create e-mail addresses, groups and so on there.

What I have done is this:

1. Created e-mail addresses
2. Created a group and given it an e-address (let's say [email protected])
3. Added members to the group

The members are able to see new e-mails coming to [email protected]. However, let's say there are 2 members of the group. Person #1 replies to the e-mail, but person #2 won't see the reply person #1 made.

The solution for this seems to send a BCC/CC to [email protected] (and put the author in as TO), however, doing this manually every time seems like a bad move.

What I want to do:

Basically, I want all emails that are sent to go to both the author (that sent the e-mail first), as well as all members of the actual group, without the manual work with BCC/CC the group address.

All this should happen from the gmail browser client at mail.google.com.

Possible or not?

Answer 1

Short answer

Yes it's possible. It could be as simple as to train the group members to use Reply to all instead of Reply.

How to use the built-in related features in Google Groups and Gmail

Overall steps

On the admin/group side [optional]

1. As the admin of the Google Apps organization, enable Google Groups for Business for your organization.

2. In the related Google Group check that Post Replies setting is

   Users decide where their replies are sent (Default)

On the initial sender side

• Use Gmail to send the initial message to the group
• Post the initial message in the web UI of the group

On the recipient's side

• The recipient's should click on Reply to All to avoid to add manually addresses to the reply.

Note: Gmail has an option to set Reply to All as the default option when replying.

Detailed steps

Choose how Groups email replies are sent

You can choose who receives email replies to posts in your Group. Using the “Post Replies” setting, Group owners can decide if an email is automatically sent to the entire Group, or if it’s shared with a smaller group of people.

Change your Group’s reply setting

1. Open Google Groups.
2. Click My Groups > name of the group you want to edit.
3. Click Manage in the upper-right corner.
4. From the left-hand navigation menu, click Settings > Email Options > Post Replies.
5. Use the drop-down menu to select a choice, then click Save in the upper-left corner.

Set Reply to all as default reply option in Gmail

If you'd like "Reply to all" to be your default option, click the gear icon and choose Settings. Locate the Default reply behavior setting to change the option. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. You can still choose to reply to just one person in each message, but Reply to all will be the first option.

References

1. Choose how Groups email replies are sent - Groups Help
2. Reply to messages - Gmail Help

Answer 2

1. Maybe the problem is the following: You created a google group, let's call it [email protected]. One of the members sent a message to the group. You would like to make sure that everyone in the group can see a reply written by another member.

In this case, simply choose the following setting: Settings -> Email options -> Post replies (scroll to the bottom to find this): "To the entire group."

2. Maybe the problem is the following: You created a gmail address, let's call it [email protected]. Let's say two committee members, A and B, share access and responsibility for this. Now suppose a random person sends an inquiry to this address, and Committee Member A reads it and responds to it. How do we make sure Committee Member B sees the reply A sent?

In this case, we set up two forwards so that all incoming and outgoing mail to and from [email protected] gets forwarded to the personal email accounts for A and B.

If neither of these is the actual problem you're trying to solve, please clarify.

---

Thanks for the partial clarification. The only way I can imagine this scenario, where a random person can send an email to the group, and have it not bounce back, is if your setting is Basic permissions: Post = Public.

To control spam, I assume you also have Moderate messages = Moderate messages from non-members of the group.

Is this correct?

If so, I can think of two ways of accomplishing your goal.

1. When you moderate the message, you could cc the non-member author.
2. In your instructions to non-members for posting messages, you could tell people to put their email address at the top of the message's body, before their content.

Either way, group members should be instructed to respond to both the group and the non-member.

This solution is not automatic, because you're proposing to use googlegroups in an unorthodox way. It's the best I could come up with.

You may want to create a test group for playing around with. You would open two browsers, and you would log into your normal gmail account in one, and some other gmail address in the other, to simulate the non-member poster.