This page explains how our group’s email and collaboration tools fit together, under our own domain (9thcaulfieldscouts.org.au) via Zoho Workplace. The goal is simple: group business should live in shared, group-owned accounts — not in individuals’ personal email and Drive — so that when someone hands over a role, the next person can pick up where they left off.
Your email address
Each committee member and leader has an individual mailbox (e.g. firstname.lastname@9thcaulfieldscouts.org.au). Log in at workplace above, or the mail app: mail.zoho.com with the details you were given when your account was created. The Zoho Mail app is available for iOS and Android if you’d like it on your phone.
Please use this address for group business rather than a personal Gmail/Hotmail/etc. address — that’s what makes everything below work.
Group email addresses: distribution lists vs shared mailboxes
Beyond your personal mailbox, the group uses two different kinds of group address, and it matters which one is used where:
- A distribution list just fans incoming mail out to a set of people’s personal inboxes — it doesn’t keep a copy of its own, and nobody sends or replies “as” the list.
- A shared mailbox has its own persistent inbox that a group of people can read and reply from as that address.
Distribution lists
Use these when a group of people simply needs to be copied on incoming mail, with no need to retain a shared history or reply as the group:
committee@leaders@
Shared mailboxes (Collaborative Inboxes)
Use these when incoming mail should be retained as a group resource, and a group of people needs to be able to reply as the role/address itself:
president@treasurer@scouts@cubs@joeys@helpdesk@enquiries@
A shared mailbox has its own persistent inbox, separate from anyone’s personal email. If you have access, that mailbox appears in your Zoho sidebar alongside your personal one. You can read emails there and reply from it — replies go out as the shared address (e.g. treasurer@9thcaulfieldscouts.org.au), not as your personal address. Someone can have access to multiple shared mailboxes from the same login.
The reason we use shared mailboxes rather than simple forwarding aliases is continuity. The inbox belongs to the role, not to the individual. When a volunteer moves on and someone new steps into the role, they’re added to the shared mailbox and immediately see the entire email history — no migration, no forwarding, nothing lost. The address itself never changes, so there’s no need to update it anywhere.
To send an email from the shared mailbox address, you can change the ‘from’ address in an email to be from the shared group. see documentation on the sending mail page.
Shared Drive (WorkDrive)
Our Zoho plan includes WorkDrive — a shared team drive that replaces our old Google Drive. The key difference: files belong to the group, not to whichever individual’s personal Google account happens to host them. Access is managed centrally, so handovers don’t risk losing files or locking the next person out.
We’ll bring across the existing folder structure (Group Folder, Activities by year, Australian Scout Medallion records, Jamboree files, Mindari history, Scout Achievement Chart, TeamApp guide, etc.) — see the Administration Tasks page for what’s currently in there.
Shared Calendar
Zoho Calendar lets us keep a single group calendar for camps, meetings, working bees, the AGM and badge nights. Anyone with a group account can view it and sync it to their phone’s calendar app, so key dates aren’t just in one person’s head (or one person’s personal calendar).
Tasks
Zoho’s Tasks (ToDo) tool lets us assign tasks to a person or a role, with due dates and recurrence. Useful for:
- Annual admin — domain renewal, insurance paperwork, badge orders, AGM scheduling
- Handover checklists — when someone takes on a role, a checklist of “things to set up / know about” can be assigned to them directly
Notes & Docs — building our “how things work” library
This is the part most aimed at retaining corporate memory. Zoho Notes and Writer give us a shared, searchable space for:
- Role handover guides — one doc per role (Group Leader, Treasurer, section leaders, etc.) covering what the role involves, key contacts, and how to do the recurring tasks
- Meeting minutes — stored centrally rather than in one person’s inbox
- “How do I…?” procedures — e.g. how to book the hall, how to order badges, who to contact at Scouts Victoria
The idea is that when a volunteer moves on, the knowledge they built up doesn’t leave with them — it’s already written down somewhere the next person can find it.
Team Chat (Cliq)
Zoho Cliq gives us group chat channels for day-to-day coordination — for example a Leaders channel, a Committee channel, and a channel per section. Unlike personal text/WhatsApp threads, these are visible to everyone in the relevant group, including whoever takes over a role later.
Shared password vault
Zoho Vault is a shared password manager for logins that belong to the group rather than to one person — the domain registrar, banking portal, social media accounts, Scouts Victoria portals, and so on. Access is granted by role, so we always know who can get into what, and access can be revoked or reassigned centrally when someone steps down.
Getting help
If you’re not sure how to access any of the above, or need your account set up, contact helpdesk@9thcaulfieldscouts.org.au.