The Workspace Inbox#

The Workspace Inbox is a mailbox built into Reportworq. Turn it on and Reportworq keeps a copy of every message it sends, viewable in the app through a dedicated Email Inbox screen that looks and behaves like a lightweight web mail client.

It runs alongside your real email provider. It does not replace one. That is what makes it useful in day-to-day operation, not just in a demo:

• Authors can see their own distributions, exactly what went out, with the real subject, body, and attachments, without needing access to a recipient's mailbox.
• Administrators can review delivery history from a mailbox perspective: open any recipient's inbox and see what that person received, and when.

It is also the way to run Reportworq with no mail server at all. Enable the Workspace Inbox, leave the email provider set to None, and jobs run their full distribution path with every message landing in the inbox instead of the internet. That suits trials, demos, and training.

Previously called the "Demo" email provider. In earlier releases this was a provider you selected instead of a real one, so you could either send mail or inspect it, never both. It is now a checkbox that works with any provider. If you upgrade an install that had the Demo provider selected, the Workspace Inbox is switched on for you automatically and nothing is lost.

Turning it on#

1. Go to Settings > Configuration > Email.
2. Choose your Authentication Provider as normal: Basic, Microsoft 365 SMTP, Microsoft 365 Graph, or SendGrid. Or leave it on None if you do not want anything sent.
3. Under Workspace Inbox, select Enable Workspace Inbox.
4. Save the configuration.

An Email Inbox button (an inbox icon) appears in the top-right app bar. Selecting it opens the Email Inbox screen.

• The button shows for every signed-in user, readers, authors, and administrators alike, so everyone can open their own captured mail.
• It appears the next time the page loads after saving, so refresh your browser if you do not see it immediately.
• It is hidden again if the Workspace Inbox is switched off.

You do not need a real email provider. With the inbox enabled, Reportworq considers email configured, so distribution steps, notifications, and password-reset mail all work. They just land in the inbox instead of being transmitted.

How messages get captured#

You do not capture messages manually. Running work does it for you.

1. With the Workspace Inbox enabled, run (or let a schedule run) any job or step that sends email, for example a distribution step that emails a report, or a burst that emails a report to many recipients.
2. Reportworq builds the full email, stores a copy in the Workspace Inbox, and then hands it to your email provider for delivery, if one is configured.
3. The message appears on the Email Inbox screen, newest first.

One copy per recipient. A captured message is stored once for each distinct recipient across the To, Cc, and Bcc lines. A report burst that emails three people produces three independent inbox entries, one in each person's inbox, just like real mail. Read and unread state and deletion apply per inbox, so marking a message read in one recipient's inbox does not affect the others.

Each entry keeps a complete copy of the original message (an .eml file) including all attachments, so you can open it, read the body, and download everything later.

Using the Email Inbox screen#

The screen is a two-pane, master and detail layout:

• Left, the message list. One row per captured message, newest first. Line 1 shows the sender and a relative time, line 2 shows the subject, with a paperclip icon when the message has attachments. Unread rows are bold with a leading accent dot. A message count, and unread count, sits in the footer beneath the list.
• Right, the reading pane. Shows the selected message's subject, the From, To and Cc headers and full timestamp, the message body, and its attachments.

At the top right of the screen are Refresh, Clean inbox, and, for administrators, Clear all inboxes.

Read a message#

Select any row in the list. The message opens in the reading pane and is marked read automatically. The body renders as formatted HTML, with inline images shown in place, or as plain text, matching how the email was composed.

Download attachments#

In the reading pane, each attachment appears as a chip showing its file name, size, and a file-type icon.

• Download one attachment: select its chip. The whole chip is the download button.
• Download every attachment: open the reading pane's Actions menu and choose Download all attachments. Reportworq packages them into a single .zip.

Download the whole message#

To keep or forward the raw email, open the Actions menu and choose Download .eml. This saves the complete message, headers, body, and attachments, as a standard .eml file you can open in Outlook, Apple Mail, or any mail client.

Mark read or unread#

Two ways:

• From the list: every row has an always-visible envelope toggle. Select it to flip a message between read and unread without opening it.
• From the reading pane: open the Actions menu and choose Mark read or Mark unread.

Delete a message#

• From the list: select the trash icon on the row.
• From the reading pane: open the Actions menu and choose Delete.

Deletion asks you to confirm and cannot be undone. The message and its attachments are removed permanently.

Clean the inbox#

Clean inbox permanently removes all captured messages from the inbox you are currently viewing, attachments included. You are asked to confirm, and the action cannot be undone. The button is disabled when the inbox is already empty.

Refresh#

Refresh reloads the inbox list, which is useful after running a job in another tab so newly captured messages appear.

What you can do by role#

The Email Inbox is scoped to who you are.

Reader or author: your own inbox#

A reader or author sees only their own inbox, the messages captured for the email address they signed in with. There is no inbox picker, the list header simply shows your address. You can read messages, download attachments and .eml files, mark read and unread, delete individual messages, and Clean inbox to empty your own mailbox.

System administrator: every inbox#

A system administrator gets two extra capabilities:

• Inbox picker. A menu at the top of the message list lists every recipient address that has captured mail. Pick any address to view that user's inbox. This is how an administrator answers "what did this person actually receive, and when", in production as well as during a demo or training session.
• Clear all inboxes. A destructive action that empties every inbox for every user in the tenant at once. Because it is irreversible and tenant-wide, it requires an explicit confirmation: you must type CLEAR to proceed. This is separate from Clean inbox, which only empties the one inbox you are viewing.

Where it captures from#

The Workspace Inbox captures the same mail your email provider sends, so it works with the ordinary distribution flow:

• Email distribution steps on a job.
• Bursts that email a report to a list of recipients, where each recipient gets their own captured copy.
• Any scheduled run of the above.

The subject and body come from the same message template the real transport would use, so what you see in the inbox matches what a recipient would have received.

Limits#

A captured copy is not a delivery receipt. Reportworq stores the copy before handing the message to your email provider, so a message can appear in the inbox and still have failed to send, for example if the mail server was unreachable. Check the job log for the delivery outcome. The inbox tells you what was sent, not what was received.

• Capture and view only. The Email Inbox has no compose, reply, forward, or folders. It only receives and displays the mail your jobs produce.
• Manual cleanup only. Captured messages persist until you clear them, via Clean inbox or an administrator's Clear all inboxes. There is no automatic expiry or retention window, so on a busy installation, plan to clear the inbox periodically.
• Per-recipient copies. A message to several recipients creates several independent entries. Deleting or cleaning one recipient's inbox does not touch the others.
• Optional secondary .eml folder. If an administrator has set Also Save Copies To in the email configuration, Reportworq drops a copy of each message into that folder as well. The Email Inbox works with or without it.

Troubleshooting#

Related#

• Destinations for the Email destination whose sends this captures.
• Email messages and templates for the subject and body of captured mail.
• What bursting is and when you need it for per-recipient distribution.