Communications
Inbox
Every conversation from Email, Chat and Socials plus the situations that need a decision, in one place — answered through the app each one came from.
On this page
The Inbox brings together every conversation you may need to deal with — email, team chat and social messages — plus situations: things across the workspace that need a decision, such as a failed payment, a blocked job or an approval. Each item still belongs to the app it came from, and replies go out through that app.
- Where
- Communications → Inbox (
/communications/inbox) - Who
- Every member, for the channels and items they can see
- Also needs
- At least one connected mailbox or social account for external conversations
Overview#
Inbox → Overview is the layer above the work. It tells you what to respond to rather than listing everything:
- Situations — grouped problems and decisions that need someone, each summarized once however many events caused it.
- On more than one channel — the same people reaching you in several places this week.
- Gone quiet — conversations where you had the last word two or more days ago.
- Feeding this Inbox — which mailboxes and channels are connected, and which are connected but quiet.
Interactions#
Inbox → Interactions is where you work. Conversations flow down a timeline from now, newest first. Each one carries a wait bar that grows the longer the person has been waiting, so what is going cold stands out without a filter. The open conversation docks on the right.
Filter by view — Needs you, Waiting, Unread, Resolved, All — and by channel, or search names, subjects and the latest message.
Answer from the list#
A row shows what the person is asking. Choose Answer to reply without leaving the list; if you have turned on Draft a reply when I press Answer, Donna prepares a draft for you to edit before anything is sent. Press Ctrl+Enter to send.
Deal with a conversation#
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Snooze | Hide it until later — in 3 hours, tomorrow morning or Monday morning |
| Resolve | Mark it dealt with. Chat conversations keep a one-line outcome you are asked for. |
| Archive | Remove it from every Inbox view. It stays in its own app — archiving an email here does not archive it in Email. |
| Mute / Always important | Teach the Inbox about this sender |
| Forget what I said | Undo what you taught it about a sender |
Teaching is per person and it carries over to Triage: a sender you mark important rises; one you mute stops surfacing.
Situations#
Besides conversations, the Inbox holds items raised by other modules. Each has a type (decision, approval, response, exception, risk, opportunity, task, information, escalation), a priority (critical, high, normal, low) and a status (new, open, in progress, waiting, snoozed, resolved, archived). Many related events collapse into one item with a count, so a site that fails twenty checks is one situation, not twenty.
Settings#
Inbox → Settings has two parts.
How this page looks for you (every member):
- Channels in this page — hide a channel from the Inbox. Hidden channels stay in their own apps.
- Mailboxes in the Inbox — leave a mailbox out. A mailbox left out stays in Email; its new mail never enters the Inbox.
- Senders you taught — review and undo.
- Arrange by — keep the time river, or group by what is asked (problems, approvals, questions, replies owed, waiting on them, for your information). Grouping is a personal setting, never the default.
What the organization is shown (owners and admins; everyone else can read these):
- Admission floors — how significant an item must be, per type, before it is raised at all. A single floor can turn the whole surface up or down.
- Who sees an item — only people with permission for its area, everyone, or whatever the event says. An item nobody is permitted to see falls back to the owners rather than vanishing.
- Auto-resolve open items and auto-archive resolved items after a period, and delete evidence older than a limit.
- Measurement — where items come from, how long they take to settle, who is carrying them, and how much is noise (archived or never opened). A noisy source is a signal to raise its floor.
Inbox, Triage and notifications#
The Inbox is the full list. Triage is the short list of what matters now. Notifications tell you what just happened. The same item can appear in all three.