Email¶

This page is for attorneys and staff who want a matter's correspondence kept with the rest of the case file. It covers connecting your Gmail mailbox, giving a matter its label, filing messages under it in Gmail, and reading them on the matter's Emails tab. If you are new to matters, read Matters first.

How email works in Kosmos¶

Kosmos does not replace your mail program. Each matter can be linked to one Gmail label, and every message that carries that label, in any connected mailbox, is copied onto the matter's Emails tab. You go on reading, writing and filing mail in Gmail. Kosmos only reads: it never sends, moves, labels or deletes a message. It works with Gmail and Google Workspace mailboxes only, and the person who runs your Kosmos server has to set it up first (see Gmail sync).

Connect your mailbox¶

Each person connects their own mailbox, once. You do not need to be an administrator.

1. Go to Settings → Integrations and find the Case Email panel.
2. Beside Your Gmail mailbox, click Connect. Google opens.
3. Sign in to the mailbox you use for case mail and allow the access Google lists.

You return to the panel, which now shows Your mailbox: and your address, with a Disconnect button. Until someone at the firm has connected a mailbox, a matter's Emails tab says "No Gmail mailbox is connected yet. Each person connects their own mailbox under Settings › Integrations."

If there is no Connect button and the panel says "Google sign-in isn't set up yet. Ask an administrator.", the server is not ready for Google connections yet. Until it is, a matter's Emails tab is hidden unless the matter already holds emails.

Google lists everything Kosmos asks for at once: reading your mail, creating labels, and also Calendar, Contacts and read-only Drive. The email copy uses only the first two. You have one mailbox at a time, and connecting again replaces it.

Once any mailbox is connected, the panel also shows:

• How many emails are copied across how many matters, or "No matters are linked to a Gmail label yet."
• A line for your own mailbox: its address, your name, and when it was "last synced" (or "not synced yet"). An administrator sees a line for every connected mailbox at the firm.
• "Reconnect this mailbox to enable automatic label setup", with a Reconnect button on your own mailbox, when the mailbox was connected without permission to create labels. The line counts the matter labels the mailbox is missing. Click Reconnect and allow the access again.
• A count of labels that "could not be created yet". Kosmos tries again every few minutes.

A label is named after its matter, so the names of the missing labels are listed under the count only if you are an administrator or can see every matter. Everyone else sees the count alone.

To stop, click Disconnect and confirm. Emails that came only from your mailbox are removed from their matters. Copies from colleagues' mailboxes and documents made from emails are kept.

Good to know:

• If you disconnect and connect again, your emails come back within a few minutes, but each returns at Low importance and no longer remembers that it was promoted to a document. Promoting it again makes a second document.

Give a matter its label¶

Nothing is copied until the matter is linked to a label. Anyone who can open the matter can do this.

1. Open the matter, click Case, then Emails.
2. Click Link Gmail Label at the right of the toolbar.
3. Click the New label button, which shows the matter's name. Or, to use a label that already exists, choose it in the list and click Link & Sync. (New label is not offered when a label with the matter's name already exists in your mailbox. Choose that label in the list.)

The page reloads and the toolbar button now shows the label's name. Kosmos creates the label in every connected mailbox that does not have it, and copies whatever is already under it.

The new label is named after the matter (a "/" in the name becomes "-"). In Gmail it sits under the parent label named on the Case Email panel, for example "Matters - Open", so it appears as "Rivera v. Northside Logistics" nested under that parent. Only labels under the parent are listed in Link Gmail Label, and the list is read from your own mailbox. If you have not connected one, the dialog says "Your own Gmail mailbox isn't connected, so there are no labels to choose from here." and you can still click New label. A label shown as "linked to" another matter cannot be chosen: one label serves one matter. That matter is named if you can see it. Otherwise the list says "linked to another matter".

To change the label, click the toolbar button again, choose another and click Link & Sync. If you click Link & Sync with no label chosen, nothing changes and the dialog says "Choose a label to link first." Unlink removes the link.

Good to know:

• Unlink removes every copied email from the matter, for everyone. Changing to a different label removes the emails that are not under the new one. Nothing changes in Gmail.
• Do not rename or delete a matter's label in Gmail. Deleting it takes the label off its messages, which removes them from the matter.
• If the toolbar shows No matching label, your own mailbox does not have this matter's label yet. It is normally created within a few minutes. If it stays, look at the Case Email panel.

File an email under a matter¶

You do this in Gmail, not in Kosmos.

1. In Gmail, open or select the message.
2. Apply the matter's label, found under the parent label.

Kosmos checks every connected mailbox every couple of minutes (a sync), and the message then appears on the matter's Emails tab. To file a whole conversation, apply the label to the conversation in Gmail. Kosmos copies message by message, so if a later reply is missing from the matter, check that it carries the label too. A message under two matters' labels appears on both matters.

To fetch new mail at once, click Refresh on the Emails tab. The button shows Syncing… until the copy finishes.

If two people at the firm have the same message under the label, the matter shows it once.

To take an email off a matter, remove the label from it in Gmail. It leaves the matter at the next sync. Moving a message to Trash or deleting it in Gmail removes it from every matter that still has a label linked. If a colleague's mailbox still has the message under the label, it stays on the matter. There is no button in Kosmos that removes a single email.

Read email on the matter¶

Open the matter, click Case, then Emails. Count at the right of the toolbar shows how many emails match. The list is on the left, newest first, and the reading pane is on the right.

Each row is one message: the sender's name, the date, and the subject underneath. A message sent from the connected mailbox shows "To:" and the recipients in place of the sender. A paperclip marks a message with attachments, and a document icon marks one that has been promoted to a document. Messages are not grouped into conversations, and there are no read or unread marks.

Click a row to read the message. The reading pane shows the subject, From:, To: (the To and Cc addresses together), Date:, the attachments and the body. Beside the subject are:

• The importance button (an arrow). Choose from Highest to Lowest. New emails start at Low. Importance tells the AI chat how much weight an email deserves, and you can sort by it.
• Gmail, which opens the original message in Gmail in a new tab. You see it only on a message that is in your own connected mailbox.
• Promote to Document, or View Document once that is done.

Attachments are listed by file name and cannot be opened in Kosmos. If you have the Gmail button, click it and open them there. Hover over an attachment to see whether its text was read.

To find a message:

• Type in Subject Search to match words in the subject.
• Click Filter to open Filter Emails. Fill in any of Subject Keyword, From, To, Date From and Date To, choose a sort in Order By (Date, From, To or Importance, each also in descending order), and click Apply. Clear Filters removes the filters and the sort.

Filters and the sort order are kept for each matter until you change them or sign out.

Good to know:

• Opening a message loads any pictures it links to on the internet, so a sender who tracks opened mail can see that it was read.

Turn an email into a document¶

Promoting makes a PDF of the email in the matter's documents. The PDF is a document in its own right: it can carry highlights, and it stays on the matter even if the email is later removed.

1. On the Emails tab, click the email.
2. Click Promote to Document, then Promote in the dialog.

The button changes to View Document, which opens the PDF in a new tab, and the email's row in the list gains the document icon. The document is on the Documents tab in the Correspondence category, named after the subject and dated with the day the email was sent. See Documents.

Attachments cannot be promoted. Download the file from Gmail and add it on the Documents tab.

Good to know:

• The PDF shows the sender, the first recipient only, the date, the subject and the body. It does not include or list attachments, and pictures the email loads from the internet are left out.

Emails and the AI¶

When your firm has set up AI, the AI chat on a matter can read the matter's emails, one conversation at a time, with the text read from their attachments. Once an email is promoted, the AI reads the document instead. The Search tab does not search emails. See AI chat.

Sending email¶

You cannot write or reply to email from Kosmos. Send mail from Gmail and file it under the matter's label. Kosmos does send some messages of its own, such as invoices and links to intake forms.

When a matter closes¶

Setting a matter's status to Complete or Closed removes its label link, so nothing new is copied. The emails already copied are kept, and nothing changes in Gmail. See Close a matter.

The Emails tab goes on listing the kept emails, under a note that begins "No Gmail label is linked to this matter. The emails synced earlier are kept." While the matter has no label, nothing done to a message in Gmail removes it from the matter: not taking the label off, not moving it to Trash, not deleting it.

Good to know:

• If you link a label to such a matter again, its emails follow that label from then on. Kept emails that are not under it in Gmail are removed from the matter.
• Kept emails still depend on the mailbox they came from. If that mailbox is disconnected, they leave the matter, and connecting it again does not bring them back.

Who can see a matter's emails¶

Everyone who can open a matter can read every email on it, whichever mailbox it came from, and can link, change or unlink its label. There is no separate permission. If you are limited to assigned matters, you cannot open the emails of other matters. See Who can see a matter.

Connecting your mailbox does not let colleagues browse it. They see the messages you file under a matter's label, on that matter. On the Case Email panel, only an administrator sees your mailbox's address, when it last synced, and the matter labels it is missing. The Link Gmail Label list shows each person the labels in their own mailbox, never yours.