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Use cases → Reporting and data

Build a reporting dashboard for a shared inbox

Aggregate and analyse message volumes, response times, and thread assignments from a shared mailbox using delegated access.

Who it is forSupport and operations teams tracking shared mailbox performance.
APIsGmail API, Sheets API
Typical scopesgmail.readonly, sheets

The problem

Shared inboxes quickly become black boxes—no easy way to measure queue length, track response times, or spot trends across multiple users. Manual reporting is error-prone and quickly outdated.

How it works

  1. Impersonate the shared mailbox account using a service account with domain-wide delegation.
  2. Use the Gmail API to page through messages, extracting metadata like received time, labels, and assignee.
  3. Aggregate metrics—volume, response SLA, open vs. closed—into a structured dataset.
  4. Write summary statistics to a Google Sheet for live dashboarding.

What changes

You get near real-time visibility into shared mailbox performance, with automated updates and no manual data pulls.

The trap in this one. Thread and message metadata in the Gmail API is eventually consistent. If you fetch messages too soon after user action (e.g., label changes or assignments), your dashboard can miss updates or double-count. The API does not guarantee order or atomicity when paging—plan for deduplication and consider a lag or checkpoint system to avoid skewed metrics.

Questions people ask

Can I see which user replied to a message?

Only if replies are sent 'as' the shared inbox. If users reply from their own accounts with delegated access, sender info will show the individual's address.

How often should I update the dashboard?

Hourly or longer intervals are safest. Updating too frequently increases the risk of inconsistencies due to the API's eventual consistency.

Want this built?

This is a pattern we run in production. We will set up the delegation and build this on top of it — $500 per hour, most of it working the same day.

Talk to us Or read the setup guide

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