Shared Email Accounts Overview

Shared email accounts (also known as Service Accounts) are used to give departments, academic units, and other groups access to a shared Gmail inbox. They are typically used to provide a single contact point for a department or service.

Shared email accounts do not have access to Google Drive, Groups, or other standard Google Workspace apps.

On this page

Create or Delete a Shared Email Account
Add or Remove Delegates
Access a Shared Email Account
Manage shared Email Account Options

Create or Delete a Shared Email Account

PSU faculty and staff can request a shared email account by completing the Shared email or service account form. All shared email accounts require a primary and secondary owner. The primary owner should be a member of faculty or staff

Add or Remove Delegates

To access a shared email account, you must be added as a delegate by an owner. Owners are not automatically added as delegates of their shared email accounts, and can add themself and other delegates as needed. Changes to delegates can take up to twenty minutes.

Add a Delegate

Sign in to the Odin Account Manager at oam.pdx.edu.
Select Manage Service Accounts. You will be presented with a list of service accounts that you own.
Select the service account that you wish to manage.
Select Add Delegate.
Enter the Odin email address of the user you wish to add as a delegate.
Select Add Delegate.
Note: You can add up to 25 delegates to a service account.

Remove a Delegate

Sign in to the Odin Account Manager at oam.pdx.edu.
Select Manage Service Accounts. You will be presented with a list of service accounts that you own.
Select the service account that you wish to manage. The list of current delegates for the account will be listed between the Add Delegates and Add Notify Email tabs.
Select the X next to the desired user to remove that user as a delegate.

Access a Shared Email Account

Once you have been added as a delegate to a shared email account, you will be able to access it through your PSU Gmail account. Note: OIT does not provide the password for shared email accounts.

To access a shared email account's inbox:

Go to mail.pdx.edu.
Sign in using your Odin account credentials.
Navigate to your inbox.
Select your email address or profile photo in the upper right-hand corner of the window.
In the pop-up window that appears, select the shared email account.
Note: The shared email account will show "Delegated" after the email address.

Manage shared Email Account Options

In the Odin Account Manager, in the Manage Service Accounts section, you can perform the following actions for each shared email account that you own:

Transfer primary ownership of the service account.
The primary owner can add delegates, modify other owners, and update the notification email.
Add a secondary owner to the service account.
The secondary account owner can perform all of the tasks of the primary owner.
Add a description for the service account.
Add a notification email to the service account.
You can add a person or email address to be notified when account maintenance actions are required, such as the departure of the account owner.