# Team inboxes and assignment

> Route conversations to the right people automatically, and share the work out fairly.

## How a conversation is routed

Every new conversation is routed once, as it arrives:

1. The first **team inbox**, in your order, whose sources match it takes it.
2. Anything no team inbox claims goes to the **workspace inbox**, which hands it out to everyone by round robin unless
   you change that.

Set it up under **Settings → Inbox**.

## Create a team inbox

1. Choose **New team inbox** and name it, for example "Support".
2. Add its **sources**. Each source can name a source account, a platform, a type (replies or mentions) and keywords;
   a conversation that matches any source comes here. For example: mentions on X containing "help", "bug" or "broken".
   A team inbox with no sources gets nothing automatically.
3. Choose who's in it: **Everyone in the workspace** (including people who join later) or **Only the teammates I pick**.
4. Choose how it assigns:
   - **Round robin**: each new conversation goes to the next person in turn.
   - **Balanced**: to whoever has the fewest open conversations, up to a cap you set.
   - **Manual**: nothing is assigned; people pick conversations up themselves.

Drag team inboxes to set the order. The first one whose sources match wins.

## Availability

Teammates can mark themselves **away**. Away people are skipped by routing, unless you turn on **Keep assigning to
away teammates** (round robin only). **Auto-away pauses assignment** makes people who've been idle away for routing too.

A cool-down after resolving a conversation holds the freed slot for a while before new work is assigned, so people
get a breather. Set it to 0 to turn it off.

## Hand out a backlog

Routing happens when a conversation arrives, so conversations that were waiting before you set up an inbox stay
where they are. **Assign all waiting** re-routes everything unowned under today's rules and hands it out.