Email Management Automation: Sort and Assign Emails
Email management automation replaces the daily triage of a shared inbox with a rule: instead of reading every message and forwarding it to the right colleague, you let Planfix do the sorting. Incoming emails become tasks, and rules for creating tasks by email catch them by keyword, hand them to the right team and set their status. This two-minute video walks through the setup on a support request.
What you’ll learn: how to automate email management in Planfix
- Create an email processing rule for the address your mail arrives at.
- Set trigger conditions that catch keywords such as bug, error or not working.
- Combine several keywords with Or logic and match different word forms.
- Add the responsible team as an assignee and change the task status automatically.
- Check what the rule did in the task log and watch new email tasks in a planner.
How to automate email sorting in Planfix, step by step
Step 1. Create a new rule
Email rules live in Account management → Email. Open Virtual email addresses, select the address your mail arrives at and click New rule in the tools panel. Rules can also be set on a project email address or on an employee’s external email address. Enter a name for the rule, such as Support requests, and move on to the trigger conditions. If no mailbox forwards into Planfix yet, first connect a company email address.
Step 2. Set the trigger conditions
Trigger conditions are what an email must match for the rule to fire. Under selection parameters, choose Email body contains text and type in bug, then add the same condition for error and for not working. Partial words work too: typing a word without its ending means the rule also catches other word forms. In the filter logic, choose Or, so any one of the keywords is enough to trigger the rule. Conditions can also use Does not contain text or = (Equals), which is how custom rules for incoming email are built.
Step 3. Leave data extraction and the main operation unchanged
The rule window is split into four blocks that follow the order in which an email is processed: trigger conditions, data extraction, main operation and additional operations. For straightforward sorting, the second and third blocks can stay as they are — the rule still performs its main action and creates a task from the email.
Step 4. Assign the task and change its status
Move on to Additional operations. In the change field, select Add assignee and pick the group that handles these emails, for example, the support service. Then add an operation that changes the status to In progress. Additional operations resemble the actions of a task script, with one difference: they can use the data extracted from the email to find tasks and contacts or to fill in fields.
Step 5. See the rule at work
Here is how the finished rule behaves. A customer writes to your company address, the email arrives in Planfix, and the rule assigns it to the support service. Open the new task from a Planfix planner and read its log: it shows that the task came from an email, which rule processed it, that the support service group was added and that the status was changed. A planner is not required for rules to run, but it is a convenient place to watch email tasks arrive.
One rule per team, in the order you choose
Other rules for automatic email sorting are set up the same way, so each team can have its own keywords. Rules are executed from the top of the list down, and you can drag them by the left edge to reorder them. If two rules give intersecting instructions, the last one wins.
Rules set by the administrator always sit at the top, which means your own rule below them can act as an exception to them. The Default rule is always last and handles whatever no rule above it matched.
Who it’s for
- Support teams: emails that mention a bug or an error reach the support service with the status already set, instead of waiting for someone to triage the shared inbox.
- Sales and client managers: messages with your own keywords go straight to the person who answers them.
- Administrators: rules set by the administrator apply from the top of the list, and employees can still add their own exceptions below.
- Team leads: rules for groups apply to all employees in a group, so one setup covers a whole department.
- Companies with several projects or brands: each project email address gets its own rules and its own assignees.
FAQ
How do I automatically assign incoming emails to a team?
Create a rule on the email address the mail arrives at, set a trigger condition such as Email body contains text, and in Additional operations choose Add assignee and select the group. The same rule can change the task status at once.
What happens if an email matches several rules?
The rules run from the top of the list down, and when their instructions intersect, the last one is applied. Rules set by the administrator stay at the top, and the Default rule at the bottom processes everything the rules above did not match.
Can one rule catch different word forms?
Yes. Enter a partial word without its ending in the Contains text condition, and add one condition per keyword with Or filter logic so that any of them triggers the rule.
Start with your busiest inbox
Take the address that collects the most repetitive mail, write down the words that always mean the same kind of request, and turn them into one rule. It is a simple example rather than a one-size-fits-all recipe, so experiment with your own conditions and operations as your process becomes clearer. Rules are one piece of how email in Planfix works. New to Planfix? Start your free trial.
