Using Rules to Increase Efficiency

Create rules for team inboxes to automatically process incoming emails. Rules are a helpful tool if your team has defined roles or more complex workflows where a first-in, first-out approach won’t work. Rules can also be used to automate acknowledgement emails, a huge time saver if your team manually sends an acknowledgement reply when a customer email is received.

Rule Elements

A rule is made up of three main parts: conditions, actions, and exceptions.

Conditions

Conditions specify criteria that must be true for a rule to execute. For example, a condition could check the message subject or body for a specific phrase, check the email address of the sender, or when the message was sent or received. If a rule contains multiple conditions, all conditions must be true in order for the rule’s actions to be carried out. If a rule contains no conditions, the rule’s actions are always performed (unless the exceptions are true).

Actions

Actions specify what to do when the rule conditions are true. For example, the message could trigger an auto-reply to go out, be assigned to a specific user or archived. A rule can contain multiple actions.

Exceptions

Exceptions specify criteria that prevent a rule from executing, even if the conditions are true. For example, an exception could prevent a rule from executing if the message is from a specific sender. Exceptions are optional. If a rule contains multiple exceptions, any one of them being true will prevent the rule’s actions from executing.

Stop rules processing

When turned on, if all conditions of a particular rule are met this will ensure no additional rules are triggered.

When rules are processed

The following are the details of exactly when each type of rule is applied.

1. When an incoming message is received by the team inbox the workflow rules are applied.

2. When a user manually moves a message to another team inbox, the incoming mail rules for the destination team inbox are applied.

3. Rules supersede all other assignment options, including: automatic assignment, assign to previous owner and any subsequent listed rules.

For more information on rules, check out our training videos!