# Add a second mailbox

Add it on the Mailboxes screen, give it a role and a signature, and set its autonomy separately from the first mailbox's. Adding one changes nothing about existing threads: replies keep going out from the mailbox the conversation already belongs to. What changes is that new mail arriving at the second address is triaged, drafted and answered under that mailbox's own rules.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **Channels:** email
- **In the app:** #/mailboxes, #/autonomy, #/needs-you
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/add-a-second-mailbox/

## Before you add it

Decide what the address is for, because the role is not decoration — it is what tells Connect which mailbox a reply belongs to and which signature and autonomy apply. A support address that answers within the hour and a sales address that never sends without a human yes are a sensible pair; two general addresses with identical settings are two places to look for the same mail.

Check whether the address is already connected before you connect it again. A duplicate connection for one real inbox is the single most common way this task goes wrong, and it is worth thirty seconds of looking. The list is now asked with the one query that can see every row in the workspace, including any whose workspace stamp was written empty by an older code path and which used to be invisible on this screen while still answering every action addressed to it directly.

## Connecting it

1. On the Mailboxes screen, start adding a mailbox and answer which kind it is: a Google account, a Microsoft one, or any IMAP/SMTP server. Both audiences are asked the same question here; the operator's Gmail flow falls back to the platform's own Google client rather than requiring a separate one.
   - Result: Google and Microsoft take you through their own consent screen. IMAP/SMTP asks for host details instead.
2. Give it a role and a signature.
   - Result: Replies from this mailbox carry this sign-off, and the role is what the routing decision reads later.
3. Set this mailbox's autonomy deliberately rather than inheriting a habit. Autonomy resolves at four scopes with the narrowest winning, and one mailbox is the endpoint scope — narrower than the channel, wider than one contact.
   - Result: This address can be cautious while the other is autonomous, without either one constraining the other.
4. Wait for the first sync and read the mailbox's health rather than its connection state.
   - Result: "Connected" only means the credentials work. A mailbox that authenticates and returns nothing is a quiet mailbox, which is a health signal in its own right rather than an error.

## What changes about replies

| Thing | With one mailbox | With two |
|---|---|---|
| Which address a reply leaves from | There is only one | The mailbox the thread belongs to, decided by the mailbox's role and the conversation — not chosen at approval time |
| Signature | One | One per mailbox |
| Autonomy | Effectively the channel's | Per mailbox, and the narrower one wins |
| Health | One verdict | One per mailbox; one can be quiet while the other is busy |
| Daily allowance | Bounds all mail processed | Still bounds all mail processed — the allowance is the workspace's, not the mailbox's |
| Needs You | One queue | Still one queue, with the mailbox named on each item |

> **Note** The sending mailbox is deliberately not editable when you approve a held draft. Recipients, subject and body are yours to change; the address it goes out from was decided by the thread, and letting it be switched at the last moment is how a customer receives a support reply from an accounts address.

## Proving it works, and the ways it does not

The verification is a real message. Send one to the new address from an account outside the business and watch it become a conversation, then check that the draft Connect writes carries the new mailbox's signature and is held or sent according to that mailbox's autonomy rather than the other one's. Two things being right at once is what proves the role and the autonomy both landed.

**The new mailbox is not on the list after connecting** — Do not immediately reconnect. A second connection for one real inbox is worse than a missing row, and the uniqueness check and the list now read the same query. Look again after the next boot, when the schema owner's backfill repairs a row whose workspace stamp was written empty.
**Mail arrives but nothing is drafted** — Check that mailbox's own autonomy. `off` disables the channel for it and `draft_only` prepares without ever asking, which looks identical to nothing happening.
**Mail does not arrive at all** — A quiet mailbox is reported as quiet. If the daily allowance is spent, work is held rather than dropped and the read cursor deliberately does not advance, so nothing is lost — Needs You shows the refusal.
**Replies go out from the wrong address** — The thread belongs to the other mailbox. Routing follows the conversation, which is what stops a reply changing identity mid-thread.

## Questions

### How many mailboxes can one workspace have?

Several — the documented limit is practical rather than a fixed number. Each carries its own role, signature, autonomy and health verdicts, and all of them are read by one mailbox policy shared by both audiences rather than by two separate implementations.

### Can I mix Gmail, Microsoft and IMAP in one workspace?

Yes. The provider only decides how mail is fetched and sent; everything downstream reads the canonical conversation records, so mixing providers changes nothing about triage, drafting or the record.

### Does adding a mailbox double my allowance?

No. The daily allowance belongs to the workspace and bounds how much mail is processed in total. Adding an address adds work, not headroom.

### What happens to threads on a mailbox I disconnect?

The conversations, contacts and history stay — they are canonical records rather than provider state. What stops is fetching and sending through that provider connection.

## Related

- [Mailboxes](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/mailboxes/)
- [Mailbox roles](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/mailbox-roles/)
- [A quiet mailbox](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/quiet-mailbox/)
- [Autonomy on one mailbox](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/mailbox-autonomy/)
- [Send certain mail to a person instead](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/route-mail-to-a-person/)
- [A row with no workspace stamp is invisible, not missing](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/invisible-not-missing/)

## What this page is based on

- docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md §1 — mailboxes, roles, health and the three defects
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §5 — autonomy scopes
- docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md §1 — the daily allowance and the cursor
- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py) — `mailbox_roles`