Make client email arrive without forwarding
One rule in the mail app you already use, so the client messages you choose reach Stria on their own.
Walkthrough · 3 min read
Forwarding a client message to Stria takes about four seconds, and the problem with it is not the four seconds — it is that you have to remember, on a Friday, in the middle of answering the email. A rule in your own mail app removes the remembering. You set it once, and from then on the messages you chose arrive on their own.
The rule lives in Gmail, or Outlook, or iCloud — not in Stria. Stria is never connected to your mailbox and never signs in to it: it receives the messages your rule sends it, exactly as if you had pressed forward yourself, and it can reach nothing else. That is the same boundary as forwarding by hand. All that changes is who presses the button.
- Copy a drop address. Every client has one, on their record; each project has its own as well, which files straight against that project’s agreed scope instead of leaving the project to be picked afterwards.
- Write a NARROW rule in your mail app — one that matches this client’s address or their company domain, and nothing else. The condition is the important half; every provider’s action is some flavour of "forward a copy".
- Answer the confirmation, if your provider asks for one. Gmail and Proton send a message to the destination and forward nothing until it is answered. Stria cannot answer for you, because it has no mailbox and no way to act as you — but it does show you that message, on the client’s email thread, where you can read the link it contains.
- Test it with one real message before you rely on it. A forwarding rule that quietly does not work looks exactly like a quiet week.
Important: Do not forward your whole inbox. Most providers offer a single switch that forwards everything, and it is the wrong tool here: your accountant, your bank and your family would all become client correspondence, and the scope check would be reading mail that has nothing to do with any client. Match on a sender or a domain instead.
Then pick your provider from the list below this article. Gmail is the one with a verification step. Outlook is the one where your employer may have disabled outward forwarding entirely, so read that first if you are on a work account. iCloud has two mechanisms and only one of them is the right one. Anything else — Fastmail, Proton, a mailbox at your own domain — is covered by the general guide, including the two providers that restrict this.
Note: Nothing is ever sent to your client as a result of this, and your client cannot tell that a message was forwarded or checked. Forwarding is one-directional: mail comes in, and what comes back out is a note to you.
Copy a client’s drop address — in your Stria workspace.
Where forwarded mail shows up — in your Stria workspace.