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The provider mailbox: replies that find their record

Every email Pallara sends carries its own reply address, so a learner's reply attaches itself to the right record. What cannot be placed waits for a person.

Staff portalWho: Managers and administratorsLast updated 3 September 2026
Flow

How a reply finds its record

yesnoyesnoPallara sendsemail withinbound+<token>reply addressLearner pressesReplyPostmark posts itto PallaraToken present?Attached to thelearner's timelineIn-Reply-Tomatches aMessage-ID weissued?Needs attention —a person choosesAttach to
Pallara does thisLearner actionDecisionStaff action
Never guessed from the sender's address alone: two people share a mailbox more often than anyone expects.

How a reply finds its record

  1. When you send an email from Communications or from a learner's record, it goes out with a reply address of the form inbound+<token>@<your inbound domain> and a Message-ID Pallara controls.
  2. The learner presses Reply. Their mail provider sends it to that tokened address.
  3. Postmark posts it to Pallara, which reads the token, finds the record and writes the reply onto the learner's communications timeline. Nobody does anything.
  4. If the token is missing — some corporate gateways strip a plus-address, and people reply to forwarded copies — Pallara falls back to the In-Reply-To header naming the Message-ID it issued.

Pallara will not guess from the sender's address alone. Two people share a mailbox far more often than anyone expects, and attaching a partner's or a parent's email to a learner's record is precisely the mistake this design refuses to make. Anything it cannot prove is left for a person.

Using the Mailbox

  1. Open Learner services → Mailbox. You need the mailbox permission — manager and administrator have it; facilitator and viewer cannot reach the page or its API.
  2. Three filters: Everything, Needs attention (nothing has claimed it) and Attached.
  3. The search box searches sender, subject and body together.
  4. On an attached message, Open <learner> goes to their record.
  5. On an unattached message, choose a learner from Attach to. The attach is written to the activity log with your name, and the message appears on that learner's communications timeline.
The Mailbox: everything that arrived, what still needs a person, and what has been attached.
FIG. 1The Mailbox: everything that arrived, what still needs a person, and what has been attached.

Nothing is ever discarded. Every inbound message is stored — matched, unmatched, spam-scored, addressed to nobody in particular. A reply that could not be attached is exactly the one somebody goes looking for later.

What an administrator configures

SettingWhat it is
Inbound domainThe domain replies arrive on; its MX records point at Postmark. Falls back to the sending domain.
Inbound local partThe part before the +. Defaults to inbound.
Inbound secretA shared secret. The webhook refuses every request until it is set — an unconfigured integration must not be an open door into any provider's mailbox.

In Postmark, the inbound stream's webhook points at https://<your staff host>/api/webhooks/postmark/inbound with that secret.

NotePallara deliberately does not send from, or reply inside, a provider's Microsoft 365 mailbox. Postmark handles both directions, and the reply-token mailbox is how the same need is met.

Related guides

PreviousEmail templates
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