Grok Bot email now takes plus aliases for sorting and routines

If your Bot has a mail.grokbot.com address, you can now hand out tagged versions of it, like yourname+receipts@mail.grokbot.com, and set routines that run only for mail sent to one tag. Sam Sokolin, who builds Grok Bot at SpaceXSI, announced it at 6:21 PM ET: "Grok @bot now supports plus aliases! Send and receive email using dedicated aliases, or set up routines that only trigger for mail to a specific alias!"

• Who: anyone who has claimed a Bot email address (one per user, shared by all your Bots).
• What's new: receive and send on +tag aliases, and filter routines by alias.
• Staff examples in the announcement image: +newsletters, +receipts, +signups, +travel.
• Docs: not updated yet as of 8:23 PM ET.

What changed#

Before tonight, you got exactly one address, and the help page still says "You can have one address. You can't rename it or delete it." Routines could watch "Mail from anyone," "Mail from specific addresses," or "Mail from a whole domain," and "Routines can't filter by subject." So every email routine had to guess what a message was from the sender alone.

Now the address you send matters too. Give a store +receipts and a newsletter +newsletters, and a routine can act on one stream without touching the other.

Why it matters#

Sender filters break the moment a receipt comes from a new shop or a no-reply address. An alias puts the label on the way in, where you control it. It also tells you who leaked or sold an address: if spam hits +signups-acme, you know where it came from.

How to use it#

1. If you have no address yet, claim one first. Ask your Bot "Get yourself an email address," or open Connect apps > Email and choose Create address (per the help page).
2. Use yourname+tag@mail.grokbot.com wherever you sign up or forward mail.
3. Ask your Bot for a routine scoped to that alias:

Set up a routine: whenever an email arrives at my +receipts alias, pull the store, date, and total, add a row to my expenses list, and tell me only if a total is over $200. Ignore mail sent to any other alias.

4. Send a test email to the alias and check the routine ran.

Good to know#

• Every outgoing email still waits for you. The help page says "nothing sends until you press Send," including routines and replies.
• Routines still only run by default for "senders that pass standard email authentication checks," so a test from an odd mail server may not fire.
• There's still "no inbox view in the apps" and no new-mail notifications. Ask your Bot what arrived.
• Team accounts need an admin to switch on Agent Email first, and Bots can't use your address in Slack threads.
• Not yet answered by staff: whether an alias has to be set up before mail to it is accepted, and how often new mail is checked (a reply asked). Test before you give an alias to anything important.
• Plus aliases are well known, so the plain address is easy to guess from any alias. Don't treat an alias as private.

What to watch#

An update to the agent email help page that replaces "one address" and "can't filter by subject," a changelog entry for the release, and any limit on how many aliases a routine can watch.