Do we need our own domain?

No. You pick a handle and the address lives at robolyst.org — the same place the rest of your team’s portal does. A custom domain is a team-website feature; team mail runs on ours.

Who on the team can read it?

Whoever you give the permission to. Reading and sending are separate role permissions, so a student can be allowed to see what arrived without being able to answer on the team’s behalf. Managers get both by default.

Does this replace our team Gmail?

It replaces the arrangement where the password is in a shared doc and only one person ever checks it. Everyone signs in as themselves, and what they do — replying, assigning, closing — is attributed.

Can we email people first, or only reply?

Either. Compose goes to up to five recipients at a time, and there is a daily send limit so a shared address cannot be used to blast a list.

The whole toolkit One address, not one student’s Gmail

Shared inbox

Sponsors, judges, event hosts and parents all email the team, and the address they email is almost always one student’s personal account. When that student graduates, four years of correspondence graduates with them. A shared inbox puts the team’s mail somewhere the team can actually reach it.

Everything in the toolkit

Free for every team · run by a 501(c)(3)

A sponsor thread the whole team can see, with the reply that went back out under the team’s name.

cedarbots@robolyst.org sample

Hexbots 5291 2h

Re: sharing our intake CAD
Files are attached — happy to walk you through the geometry.
Ana Whitcomb Tue

Sponsorship for the 2026 season
We can renew at the gold level again this year. Assigned to Maya R.
Cedar Valley League Mon

Load-in times for League Meet 3
Pits open at 6:30am. One cart per team, please.
Ridgeview Middle School Jan 8

Demo for our STEM night
Thank you — the kids are still talking about the robot. Closed

Ana Whitcomb ana@vantagemachining.com

to cedarbots@robolyst.org · Tue 4:12 PM

We can renew at the gold level again this year — send the sponsor packet over and I’ll get it signed before the end of the month. Our logo is attached for the pit banner.

vantage-logo.svg · 42 KB Remote images blocked

Cedar Bots to ana@vantagemachining.com · Tue 6:40 PM

That’s wonderful news, thank you. The packet is attached, and the banner artwork goes to print on the 20th — your logo will be on it.

cedar-bots-sponsor-packet.pdf sent by Maya R.

Readable by anyone you grant access Attachments behind your login Kept when they graduate

An address that belongs to the team

Claim a handle and the team is reachable at it immediately — nothing to host, no DNS records to get wrong, no mail provider to pay. Replies go out under your team’s name, not a personal one.

One address per team, at robolyst.org, claimed from inside the portal
Available to teams that have verified their FTC team number
Sending and receiving are handled — no mail server, no forwarding rules
Start a new conversation as well as reply to one

Everyone can see it; one person owns it

Every conversation is visible to the people you give inbox access to, so nothing sits unanswered because one student was on holiday. Assign a thread to whoever is handling it, close it when it is done, and it reopens by itself if the sender writes back.

Replies that read like a team, not a form

The reply box is a real editor — headings, lists, links, bold — and files ride along with it. A sponsor asking for your logo gets the logo, not a link to a drive folder they cannot open.

Attachments in both directions, up to 10 files and 20 MB a message
Incoming attachments download through the portal, behind your login
Full thread history, quoted and in order
Search across subjects, senders and message text

Safe to open

Mail from strangers is the one thing in the portal you did not write. Messages render with remote images and tracking pixels blocked until you choose to load them, and the sender’s markup is stripped of anything that could act on the page. A sponsor’s formatting survives; a marketing tracker does not.

It survives the handover

The archive stays with the team, not with the account that received it. Next year’s outreach lead can read what a sponsor agreed to in October two seasons ago instead of asking around, and access is a role permission you can grant and revoke like any other.

Questions teams ask

Do we need our own domain?: No. You pick a handle and the address lives at robolyst.org — the same place the rest of your team’s portal does. A custom domain is a team-website feature; team mail runs on ours.
Who on the team can read it?: Whoever you give the permission to. Reading and sending are separate role permissions, so a student can be allowed to see what arrived without being able to answer on the team’s behalf. Managers get both by default.
Does this replace our team Gmail?: It replaces the arrangement where the password is in a shared doc and only one person ever checks it. Everyone signs in as themselves, and what they do — replying, assigning, closing — is attributed.
Can we email people first, or only reply?: Either. Compose goes to up to five recipients at a time, and there is a daily send limit so a shared address cannot be used to blast a list.

The rest of the toolkit

Shared inbox is one part of the portal.

The roster, the build schedule, the notebook, the money and your public site run on the same free account. Setting it up takes an afternoon.