Reply on time with reply targets

A reply target is how long a conversation has for your reply, in working time. Every team inbox has them, by priority:

A conversation gets a due time as soon as it's waiting on you: their first email, or their reply after yours. Mail that needs no answer (a receipt, a sign-in code, anything marked Nothing to answer), held mail, newsletters and mail waiting in New senders don't get one.

Where it shows

• On the row: a quiet Due 3:40 pm. With a quarter of the time left it turns amber: ! At risk · 3:40 pm. Once it has passed: Overdue, in ink. At risk is never red: red is for possible scams.
• In the conversation: beside the priority, Reply due by 3:40 pm (4 working hours, High), so you can see what the target is and where it comes from. Its Why? says who set the priority (a person, a routing rule or Rookery's suggestion), the inbox's target for it, and the business hours the clock counts in.
• In Reports: the share of replies sent within target, for each inbox and each teammate.
• The order: Your turn and Up for grabs sort by priority first, then the soonest due, then whoever has waited longest. A conversation without a due time comes after those with one at the same priority.

Times are in your own time zone and clock style.

How the clock counts

• Working time only. The clock runs in the inbox's business hours. Mail that arrives on Friday at 16:00 with a 4-hour target is due on Monday at 12:00 (open 9:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday). A working day is the inbox's longest open day: 8 hours for 9:00 to 17:00, a whole day for an inbox open all the time.
• It starts at the first email you haven't answered. If they write twice, the clock doesn't start again.
• Snoozing pauses it. The time it's snoozed (in working hours) is added on. If they write while it's snoozed, it wakes and the clock carries on from there.
• Your reply stops it. So does a Send later, or Done. When they write back, a new clock starts.
• It moves with the conversation. Change the priority and the due time changes at once (counted from when the clock started, so raising it to Urgent can make it overdue straight away). A rule that moves it to another inbox, or a change to the inbox's targets or hours, moves it too.
• Rookery's unanswered High? suggestion counts, as it does for the order.

Who hears

• At risk (a quarter of the time left): whoever has the conversation, else whoever approves Rookery's drafts there (see who approves).
• Overdue: that same person and the inbox's admins (the workspace's owners and admins, and anyone the inbox gives Can manage).
• Nobody who's away is told. If that person is away, at risk goes to the inbox's admins instead.
• Each stage is told once per clock, by email, if you haven't seen the conversation in Rookery in the few minutes before it goes. Turn each one off in Settings → Notifications ("A reply that waits on you is due soon", "A reply you answer for is overdue"). Quiet hours hold them, and nobody ever hears about mail they can't see.
• Your daily digest lists anything of yours that's overdue.

Change an inbox's targets

1. Open Settings → Inboxes, find the inbox, and click Edit targets beside Reply targets.
2. For each priority, choose Within and a number of working minutes, hours or days, or Off for no clock at that priority.
3. Click Save targets. Every conversation waiting in that inbox moves to the new times at once. Back to the defaults puts the table above back.

Owners and admins change a team inbox's targets. A private inbox has no reply targets.

Business hours

The same page has the inbox's Business hours (also on its rules page): the time zone, each day open or closed with its hours, Open all the time for a desk that never closes, and Closed on public holidays in a country you pick. Holidays then don't count as working time, and rules see them as outside business hours. Until you set them, hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00, in the workspace owner's time zone. Days the clocks change are counted as they really are.

For developers

list_conversations and get_conversation return dueAt (when the reply is due, or null) and targetState (on_track, at_risk, overdue or none), and list_conversations takes targetState to list only one. See the API reference.