Email delegation is granting another person or a piece of software the ability to read, organize, reply to, or act on email on your behalf. Email delegation can mean account-level access, like Gmail's delegate setting or Outlook's delegate permissions, or handing off a single message to a colleague with instructions.
Account-level email delegation
Gmail lets you add a delegate who can read, send, and delete email in your account; when a delegate sends a message, their email address appears on it. Outlook and Microsoft 365 offer delegate access and "send on behalf" permissions, often used by executive assistants. Gmail's delegate access covers the whole mailbox; Outlook's delegate permissions can be set separately for folders like Inbox and Calendar.
Message-level email delegation
More common day to day: forwarding one email to the person who should handle it, with a note about what you need and by when. Good message-level delegation names the outcome, the deadline, and whether you want to see the reply before it goes out.
Email delegation to software
An AI inbox assistant is also a delegate, usually connected through OAuth rather than mailbox delegation. The same questions apply as with a human assistant: what can it see, what can it send, and does it check with you first. The OAuth scopes an app requests answer the first two.
Synced works as a delegate with limits. It takes on work it can do, like drafting replies and finding files, with every drafted message waiting for your approval. Work that needs a person becomes a Task. The manual approach is in how to delegate email.
- Gmail Help: Set up mail delegation (checked 2026-09-13)