Gmail and Outlook have lost a lot ground to real-time messaging services like Slack in recent years, but workers still perform much of their communications via email, and Front Inc. is intent on keeping it that way. The YC-backed startup this week raised $10 million in funding to fuel the development of new features for its inbox client, which attempts to stand out by making it easier to collaborate on important threads.

Front replaces the traditional “CC” and “BCC” sharing options with a commenting system that enables a user to quickly ask colleagues for input on how to handle emails. The discussions facilitated by the feature are grouped in inboxes that serve more or less the same role as Slack channels. A company’s sales department, for example, can create an inbox for messages from leads, while the support team is able to do the same with customer complaints.

From there, Front enables each group to customize the behavior of their inbox according to their specific requirements. On the customer support side, a manager might have emails from a high-value client automatically relegated to their best representative. And they could then use Front’s “Follow” option to keep track of the agent’s work so as to ensure they’re handling the deal effectively. The functionality is paired with an analytics dashboard that the startup says can improve visibility even further providing high-level statistics about team performance.

Since launching in 2013, Front has attracted more than 1,000 companies, including MailChimp Inc,. HubSpot Inc. and several other prominent technology firms. The new capabilities it’s planning to create using today’s funding should help make the list even longer. According to VentureBeat, the startup wants to integrate its service with more third party products and create a programming interface that will enable developers to extend the core feature set with custom functionality. The latter option should be particularly useful for large enterprise customers with specialized requirements, a segment that is no doubt high on the agenda for the management team.

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