Decide who takes new mail with 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 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. 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.