For reasons best known to Google, the email component of Google Apps allows users to automatically forward all email to a single email address only. Since it is not uncommon for organizations to set-up a common email ID for interacting with customers and then forwarding all email received to multiple people for action, the restriction on forwarding emails to multiple recipients is a bit of a bummer.

Sure, multiple recipients can use the ‘recent:’ tag while logging in and ensure that all of them download the emails, but it is easy enough to forget to switch on ‘Leave messages on server’ and actually delete all messages.

Recently, a friend of mine also complained of this and since he is an individual, yet affected by this issue; I felt I should figure out a workaround to this and publish it.

The simplest solution is to set-up an Email Group in google apps. Simply put, an email group is an email ID that itself comprises of multiple users. Any email sent-to the group ID is automatically replicated to all members of the group.

The solution to forward emails to multiple recipients simply consists of creating a group-ID and adding recipients to the group. Once added, configure the master account to forward emails to the group-ID and they will be forwarded to all the recipients.

To illustrate the concept:

• Let us assume that we have a real-estate project called ‘Lotus Leaf‘ and we have an email ID lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com on which we encourage prospective customers to shoot enquiries.
• The organization requires that all emails received at lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com should be forwarded to director@trustedbuilders.com, marketing@trustedbuilders.com, accounts@trustedbuilders.com & support@trustedbuilders.com.
• To achieve this, we will create an email group called team-lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com and add the email IDs of the four persons to the members list.
• Now we configure POP & Forwarding options of lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com to forward all emails to team-lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com
• All emails received at lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com will now be automatically replicated to the members of the team-lotusleaf@trustedbuilders.com group

Notes:

• If creating a group, try to set the group type to “Team”. In this mode, you can add recipients from any domains. For ex: Group members can be from Hotmail, Yahoo, Rediff or any other email service.
• In “Team” mode, emails received at the group ID are automatically forwarded to the team members who can be from any domain.
• Any member of the team can send an email to the group ID and the mail will be replicated.
• Non group members cannot send emails to the group ID since their email will be rejected instantly. This is useful to avoid spam.
• If a group member forwards a spam message to the group ID, it will be replicated to all the group members. Please avoid blindly forwarding every email to the Group ID; instead use a rule to forword emails so that only those emails which concern the group are forwarded.