# Decide who takes new mail with rules Rules in plain sentences send new mail to the right person, take turns across a team, set a priority and a tag, and tell who needs to know. Getting started · Updated October 17, 2026 · https://userookery.com/help/routing-rules/ Rules decide who takes new mail in an inbox. Each one is a sentence: "When an email to `support@` is a refund request, assign it round robin to Billing, priority High." Rookery reads each new email first (what it's about, what it asks for, how urgent it is, the tone), then runs the inbox's rules in order. ## Make a rule 1. Open **Settings → Inboxes**, find the inbox, and click **Add rules** (or **Edit rules**) beside **Who takes new mail**. 2. Click **New rule** and give it a name, like "Refund requests". 3. Under **When**, pick what has to be true. Choose **All of these are true** or **Any of these is true**, then **Add a condition**: - **Who sent it:** a sender or a whole company (`acme.com`), someone new or someone you know, a VIP, a customer who already has an owner. - **Where it arrived:** the inbox's address or one of its aliases, in To or Cc. - **What it says:** words in the subject or body, an attachment (a PDF, a picture, a document, a spreadsheet), the language. - **What Rookery understood:** the topic, the intent (a question, a complaint, a cancellation, a refund request, about an invoice, a booking request), urgency, a frustrated tone, a person or an automated sender. - **When:** inside or outside business hours, the day of the week, a new email or a reply. 4. Under **Then**, choose **Who gets it**, a **Priority**, and anything under **Also**. 5. Click **Test against last week** to see what the rule would have done (below), then **Save rule**. The sentence at the top of the editor changes as you go, so you can read the rule before you save it. Rules apply to new mail from when you save; nothing already in the inbox moves. ## Who gets it - **A person.** - **Round robin:** pick the people, then **Take turns** (one each, in order) or **Least busy first** (whoever has the fewest open conversations). People who are away are always skipped. Tick **Skip anyone who already has** and a number to cap how much one person gets. If nobody can take it, it's left up for grabs and the person you chose under **If nobody can take it** is told. - **The customer's owner:** whoever looks after this customer, or last handled them, or last handled someone from their company. If that person is away or there's nobody, it can take turns instead. - **Up for grabs:** nobody yet; anyone can take it. Tick **Rookery drafts first; whoever it lands on approves** and Rookery writes a draft that waits for that person's yes. Add an instruction if you like ("Offer a credit before a refund"). Nothing goes out on its own. The conversation's history says which rule made each assignment, with a link to it: "Assigned to Maya by *Billing round robin* · Leo was skipped: away." ## Also - **Tag it.** - **Tell someone:** a mention in the conversation, so it stays their turn until they've seen it. - **Move it to another inbox:** only to an inbox nobody new can see. A rule never shows mail to someone who couldn't see it before. - **Send an acknowledgement:** your own fixed words, like "Thanks, we're back at 9:00 and will reply then." It goes through the [Outbox](https://userookery.com/help/outbox/) with Undo, at most once per conversation, and never to automated mail, no-reply addresses or confidential conversations. - **Ask Rookery to draft** with your instruction. The draft waits for a yes. ## How rules work together - Rules run top to bottom, and every rule that matches runs. **The first rule that assigns someone wins**; later rules can still add tags and tell people. The first rule that sets a priority wins too. - **Everything else** is always last: it's what happens when no rule assigns anyone. Rookery drafts a reply when one is needed, and anything else is up for grabs. - Drag a rule to change the order, or use the arrows beside it. Switch one off with its toggle. Each rule shows how many emails it matched in the last 7 days. - Rules run on new conversations. Tick **Also when a reply reopens a conversation nobody has** for a rule that should run again then. - **Held or flagged mail skips the rules** and waits in [Held](https://userookery.com/help/why-scout-held-an-email/). Only **Tell someone** still runs, so the right person hears about it. ## Test against last week **Test against last week** runs the rule over the last 7 days of new mail in the inbox, with your other rules around it, and changes nothing. It says how many emails would have matched, how many each person would have got, how many Rookery would have drafted first, and which would have skipped the rule: held as suspicious, or caught first by an earlier rule. Mail from before Rookery read intents and tone (October 2026) has none, so rules on those match only newer mail. ## Business hours On the rules page, set the inbox's **Business hours**: a time zone and, for each day, open or closed and the hours. Rules that ask "inside or outside business hours" use them. Until you set them, they're Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00, in the workspace owner's time zone. ## Away Set **Away** in **Settings → Your account**, with a last day or until you turn it off. Round robin and the customer's owner skip you while you're away. ## Who can change rules Owners and admins change a team inbox's rules; a private inbox's rules are its owner's alone. Every change is recorded in the audit log. ## Starter rules and Feathers **Start from a set** adds ready-made rules, switched off, so nothing changes until you turn one on. A Feather can add its own intents, conditions, actions and starter rules. If a rule uses something from a Feather that's switched off, the rule shows **Paused** with the reason, and doesn't run until the Feather is back on or you edit the rule. See also [priority](https://userookery.com/help/priority/).