🟠 Using the new Inbox? You'll want to use this article.

Inbox rules let you automate your team’s workflows for optimum efficiency and to ensure your customers get the best experience possible. Conversations will always be handled by the right team, and in the right order. Let your team focus on what they do best, and spend less time manually tagging and assigning conversations.

Rules can automatically:

First, go to Settings > Inbox Automation > Inbox Rules:

Then, click ‘New rule’:

Now you’re creating your rule. It’s important to give it a clear and descriptive name, so others on your team can see at a glance what this rule does:

Pro tip: Describe the conditions that trigger your rule in the title, like ‘Conversations from VIPs’

Next, select the point in a conversation when you’d like your rule to fire. Choose from when:

Tip: Learn more about how and when rules trigger in this article.

Select multiple triggers if you'd like your rule to fire when different events occur:

Note: Only one "delay based" event can be selected:

Next, add filters for any conditions that a conversation or customer must meet for the rule to apply. 👍

Along with standard filters like customer and company attributes, you can also filter your rules based on the following:

Tip: For more targeted and nuanced rules, use a combination of ‘And’ & ‘Or’ filters.

Finally, select the actions that you’d like the rule to automate for you. Rules can assign or tag the conversation, mark it as priority or set an SLA rule:

And that’s it. 🙌

Hit save, and your rule is live:

It’s possible for a conversation to match the filters for multiple rules at a time, in which case the rules are run in priority order and only the highest priority actions will be triggered.

For example, If you have two rules, both triggered at the start of a conversation with the following filters:

If a new conversation is started by a French speaking customer on the Premium plan, it would match the filters for both rules, but would only be assigned once. The assignment action highest in the rules list will apply, which in this case is the French support rule:

Important: In this example, the conversation would still be marked as priority by the VIP support rule.

Tag rules are the exception, and all tag rules will apply to matching conversations, no matter the priority.

To prioritize your rules in the list, you can drag and drop them into your preferred order:

Or, move them quickly to the top or bottom of the list from the dropdown on the right:

As you add more rules, you may want to view only a subset of them. To do this simply add filters to the list to show specific rules:

Tip: You can filter by the event that triggers a rule, its state, or the actions that it performs.

If a conversation doesn’t match any of your rules, it won’t be tagged, marked as priority or have an SLA set but it will be assigned to your default assignee, which you can select at the bottom of the rules list: