Inbox triage with your approval
The situation
One mailbox, several people reading it, and a hundred messages a day that are mostly the same six things. Somebody has to open each one, decide what it is, and write back. Most replies are near enough identical; the few that are not are the ones you cannot afford to get wrong.
What you want is the first pass done for you and the veto kept for yourself: nothing leaves the building until you say so.
What you need
Your inbox connected. Admin > Messaging (/admin/channels) carries a card per service, and connect Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack or email walks it through. Say who is allowed to write in: mail from anyone else never reaches your assistant.
Somewhere for the approvals to arrive. Questions go wherever you set up under Admin > Alerts (/admin/alerts). Email is not one of the destinations that page offers, so pick a messaging app if you want the question on your phone. A copy always reaches the bell in the web app.
The process itself, which you get by describing it.
The conversation
Open a chat and say what the routine is, in the words you would use with a new colleague:
"Every message that lands in our support inbox: read it and decide what it is. A new enquiry, a customer with a problem, an invoice query, or nothing that needs us. Then write the reply you think I would send, and ask me before it goes out. Urgent means they mention cancelling, ask for a refund, or use the word solicitor. Give me four hours; if I have not answered, flag it and tell me it is still waiting. Never send anything about money without asking me first."
Two things in that paragraph do the real work: what counts as urgent, and where it must stop for you. Say both plainly and nothing is left to guess.
From there:
- Your assistant asks the questions a new starter would: which inbox, who signs off, what a reply should sound like, what to do with a message it cannot place.
- It writes the process down and shows it to you. It should sound like your business rather than software, and this is the cheapest moment to change your mind.
- It compiles that description into working software in the background, which takes a while.
- You test it on real messages whose right answer you already know, checking both the decision and what came out.
- Corrections stick. Say the tone is too stiff, or that one address always comes to you, and a rebuild honours it.
- The finished process appears under Automations > Flows (
/manage/flows), its trigger on the row. Leave that off until you are happy, and test-fire it whenever you like.
Flows are early access, so give this one a supervised fortnight before you stop watching it.
What happens when a message arrives
Mail lands and a run starts, one per message. It is read and sorted into one of your categories, with noise recorded rather than silently binned, so you can see later that it was accounted for.
A reply is written in your voice, drawing on whatever you told it to answer from. Then it stops. The question reaches you on your channel in ordinary words: what came in, who from, and what it proposes to send. Nothing has gone anywhere.
You answer in ordinary words too. "Send it." "Send it, but drop the last line." "No, tell them we cannot do that this month." An amendment is applied and the reply goes; a refusal ends the run with the message left for a person. If your answer does not settle the question, it asks again rather than guessing.
Go quiet and it does what you said: four hours on, the message is flagged and you are told it is waiting.
While it waits, the run sits in the Runs tab of Automations > Flows (/manage/flows) as suspended rather than finished, and picks up from the step it paused at whether you reply in ten minutes or three days. Open a run for a map of the process with the current step lit up, what went in, what came out, and every decision in order. Questions still waiting are also listed at the top of Admin > Alerts (/admin/alerts) under Waiting for you, where you can answer them.
Make it yours
Let the routine ones go. Once the drafts have earned it, name the cases that need no sign-off: "anything only asking about opening hours, just send it." Keep the gate on money and complaints.
Route by sender. "Anything from our two largest customers comes to me whatever it says, and invoice queries go straight to finance."
Add a second approver. Point the question at a colleague from Manage > Contacts (/manage/contacts) and it arrives on their channel, which is how refunds reach whoever runs the money.
If it stops
Nothing arriving: check the card on Admin > Messaging (/admin/channels) reads Connected, then check who is allowed to write in. A closed inbox is the usual answer, and it is closed by design.
A run suspended and no question seen: look at Admin > Alerts (/admin/alerts). If it is under Waiting for you but nothing came through, no channel is set up for that urgency.
You replied and nothing happened: with several questions outstanding on the same app, use its own reply feature on the one you meant, or none of them matches.
A run that was waiting for your answer when your installation restarted carries on once it is back. One that was in the middle of a step is not resumed, and that message needs picking up by hand.
Related
- Make it repeat: scheduled tasks, watchers and flows in the round.
- Flows and channels and communication, on their own terms.
- Write your first flow and set up a trigger.
- Build a knowledge base, so the drafts answer from your own policies.
- Stay in control, for approval gates and what an agent may do.