Email & Inboxes

Inboxes give your workspace a dedicated email address. When someone sends an email to your inbox, it can trigger a workflow — just like a phone call or web chat. Your AI reads the email, processes it through a workflow, and can send a reply automatically.

Setting Up an Inbox

1. Go to Channels → Inboxes
2. Click Create Inbox
3. Configure:

4. Click Create

Your inbox is live — emails sent to its address will appear in the inbox view.

Viewing Emails

1. Go to Channels → Inboxes
2. Click an inbox to see its emails
3. Click any email to view the full message

The email detail view shows:

• Sender, recipients, CC — Who sent it and who received it
• Subject and body — Full message content (HTML and plain text)
• Attachments — Files attached to the email with download links
• Thread context — Related emails in the same conversation thread
• Linked chat — If a workflow was triggered, the associated chat

Replying to Emails

You can reply to any email directly from the inbox:

1. Open an email
2. Click Reply
3. Compose your response
4. Click Send

Replies are sent from your inbox's email address and maintain proper threading headers so the conversation stays linked in the recipient's email client.

AI-Powered Email Processing

When an inbox has a Default Workflow configured, incoming emails trigger that workflow automatically:

1. Email arrives at the inbox address
2. The system creates an assignment linked to the workflow
3. A chat is created for the AI to process the email
4. The AI reads the email content using its built-in read_email tool
5. The AI generates and sends a reply based on the workflow's task prompts

This works the same way as any other channel — the AI follows the workflow's tasks, collects data, and escalates when needed.

Email Rules

Filter and route incoming emails before they reach your workflow.

Creating Rules

1. Open your inbox
2. Go to the Rules tab
3. Add rules with conditions and actions

Rule Conditions

Match emails based on:

Each condition supports operators like equals, contains, starts_with, ends_with, matches_regex, greater_than, and less_than.

Rule Actions

Rules are evaluated in order. The first matching rule's action is applied.

Inbox Permissions

Control who can access each inbox through role-based permissions:

Assign permissions by linking member roles to inboxes in the inbox settings.

Email Threading

Gravity Rail maintains proper email threading using standard RFC 2822 headers (Message-ID, In-Reply-To, References). This means:

• Replies stay grouped in the recipient's email client
• Conversation history is preserved
• The AI has full context of the email thread when processing replies

Common Setups

Support Inbox

• Workflow: Support workflow with triage → resolve → follow-up tasks
• Rules: Skip workflow for auto-reply confirmations; auto-respond to after-hours emails
• Permissions: Support team has Execute access

Sales Inquiry Inbox

• Workflow: Lead qualification workflow
• Rules: Auto-respond with pricing info when subject contains "pricing"
• Permissions: Sales team has Use + Execute access

Notification Inbox

• Workflow: None (manual processing only)
• Rules: None
• Permissions: Admin-only access for monitoring

Tips

• Set a footer with contact information and legal disclaimers on your inbox
• Use rules to reduce noise — skip workflows for out-of-office replies and auto-generated emails
• Test with real emails — send test emails to your inbox and verify the workflow processes them correctly
• Check the linked chat — when an email triggers a workflow, the chat shows the full AI processing history

Related

• Channels — Overview of all communication channels
• Workflows — Building the conversation flows that process emails
• Actions — Automating responses to email-triggered events
• Template Variables — Using dynamic content in auto-responses