Work the sales inbox

The sales inbox is a shared queue of inbound sales email. Each conversation is an item with a status, an assignee, an SLA, and links to the contact, lead, account, and opportunity it concerns.

Before you start: an admin needs to connect a sales inbox. Until a sales channel is receiving forwarded mail the inbox stays empty; the empty state says "No items found", which is also what a filter with no matches says. Working the inbox needs a role with Read sales inbox.

The queue

Tabs across the top: All, Open, Unassigned, Mine, Awaiting Reply, and Closed, each with a count. Most reps live in Mine; whoever triages lives in Unassigned.

Each row shows the SLA as a chip: 2h left, 45m left, or Overdue 3h. A blue dot means the customer spoke last. The filter button narrows by status, assignee, and last activity, and a Scoped to account badge appears when you arrived from an account page.

Reply, or leave a note

The composer has two tabs:

• Reply sends email to the customer, from the channel the conversation arrived on. Attach adds files; Templates inserts a saved reply.
• Note is internal and never sent. Type @ to mention a colleague and notify them. Notes show in the thread as Internal note.

AI Draft writes a reply from the conversation and the knowledge base, for you to edit before sending.

Assign, snooze, close

• Assignee is in the Properties panel. Pick a person to move it to their Mine tab.
• Snooze hides the item until a time you choose: Later today, Tomorrow morning, Next Monday, or a custom date and time. It reappears when the time comes or when the customer replies, and Snoozed Until shows in Properties. Unsnooze brings it back early.
• Close ends the conversation. Closed items stay searchable under the Closed tab.

Link it to the account

The Properties panel shows the Contact and Lead the sender matched, and an Account field. If the account is blank, search and pick one; the conversation then appears on that account's page and in its history. Click the cross to unlink. An Opportunity link appears when there is one.

Linking is what turns an inbox conversation into part of the customer record, so do it early rather than at the end.

Start a new email

New Email in the inbox header composes an outbound email that becomes an item in the queue, so the reply lands here rather than in someone's personal mailbox. Pick the channel if you have more than one, then To, Cc, subject, and body. Send stays disabled until all of those are set.

When it goes wrong

• The inbox is empty. No sales channel is receiving mail yet, or forwarding from the sales mailbox has not been confirmed. An admin checks Settings → Sales → Email Channels.
• Items are not being assigned. Assignment runs per channel under Settings → Sales → Defaults → Assignment Mode. With a fixed assignee and no one chosen, items land in Unassigned.
• A reply went out from a strange address. Until the channel's From address is verified, replies are sent from the channel's inbound address. The channel row in Settings says so.
• Something is missing from the queue entirely. Look in quarantine under Settings → Sales → Quarantine, where mail that could not be linked is held rather than dropped.