STAYCHARTED BLOG · EMAIL ROUTING
AI email routing: sort a shared inbox using your team’s past decisions
Route shared inbox emails with AI trained on past decisions. Classify messages for Outlook or Gmail workflows, then review uncertainty before taking action.
What should happen to this email?
A shared mailbox often mixes sales inquiries, invoice questions, access problems and supplier messages. Someone reads each email and chooses what happens next. Those past choices are useful training data if the destination is recorded consistently.
| Incoming message | Category your team could use | Next workflow action |
|---|---|---|
| Please send a copy of invoice 4812 | Billing | Create a billing task |
| Can we discuss a deployment for 200 staff? | Sales | Assign a sales owner |
| My account stopped accepting the code | Support | Open an access ticket |
The category is the model's answer. Sending an email or creating a ticket is a separate action carried out by your automation. This separation makes it easier to test routing before enabling actions.
Build training data from resolved messages
Export the subject, the relevant message text and the final destination team from previously handled emails. Start with one mailbox and a manageable set of destinations. Ask the people who operate it to agree what belongs in each category.
Remove repeated signatures, quoted thread history and personal information that is unnecessary for routing. If a whole conversation appears several times, keep related messages together when evaluating so the model is not tested on a near-copy it learned from.
Use the destination the team ultimately accepted, not the first forward. Leave out fields created after routing, such as the final owner name, unless they will also exist when a new message arrives. A model cannot use missing future information.
Connect the model to Outlook or Gmail
- Train and check the model in StayCharted, then publish the version you intend the workflow to use.
- In Make or Zapier, choose the email trigger appropriate to your mailbox. Your mail system's access permissions still apply.
- Send the subject and relevant body fields to the published model. Format those fields the same way as the training examples.
- Read the category, confidence and review indicator returned by StayCharted.
- Send uncertain messages to a person. For accepted answers, let a later automation step label the email, create a ticket or choose a destination.
- Record the message identifier and outcome so retries do not create duplicate work. Feed approved category corrections back into StayCharted before retraining.
Follow the Make guide or Zapier guide for the connection steps. API workflows require an Essentials or Business workspace. Check the guide for current Zapier early-access setup.
StayCharted does not independently open your mailbox. The workflow you configure sends it the chosen text.
For sales inquiries, qualify leads from your reviewed CRM history, then use the predicted category in your routing rules. Confidence helps choose which predictions to review; it is not a lead-value score.
Test in suggestion mode before forwarding automatically
Run the model alongside your current process first. Compare its suggested destinations with the team's decisions, including uncommon messages and emails containing two requests. Decide which request takes precedence or route mixed messages for review.
On Essentials and Business, low-confidence API answers also enter StayCharted's Review Queue. Choose where people review to avoid duplicating work. Corrections made only in the mailbox or ticketing system need to be sent back if you want them used for retraining.
For reply selection, train on approved reply categories or templates. That is a different task from generating new response text. Your workflow selects and sends any approved response; keep a person involved where the content or action needs approval.
Microsoft also publishes an inbound-request triage example. Compare approaches using your mailbox's actual categories and reviewed messages.
Common questions
Can AI route emails from an Outlook shared mailbox?
Yes, through a mailbox workflow with the required permissions. The workflow sends selected text to a classifier and uses its result to label, assign or route the message.
Does StayCharted send replies itself?
No. It returns a classification or an approved reply selection. Your connected workflow decides whether to send a message or perform another action.
What if an email contains more than one request?
Define a consistent precedence rule in your labeling guide or route mixed requests for human review. Do not assume a single-category model will split the email into separate tasks.
What happens when the model is unsure?
Use the review indicator to hold the workflow for a person. On Essentials and Business, below-cutoff API answers also appear in StayCharted’s Review Queue.