Routing & Auto-Tasks

The agent answers first. Routing decides who on your team owns the conversation after that, and who owns the work it generates. Without rules everything lands unassigned and someone triages by hand.

Overview#

Rules live at Workspace → Routing as a table: name, type, conditions, who it assigns to, and priority. Each row has an on/off switch, so a rule can be parked without deleting it.

When routing runs#

Routing happens on arrival, as part of handling the inbound message. Rules are workspace-wide and apply to every agent. Whether a task is then created is decided per agent.

If nothing matches, the conversation stays unassigned. It is not silently given to whoever is available. Unassigned is a real state, and the inbox lets you pick those up.

What each rule matches#

Type	Looks at	Matches when
Keyword	The customer's message text	Any keyword in your list appears in it, case- and punctuation-insensitive. A rule with an empty keyword list never matches.
Channel	The channel the message arrived on	It equals the configured value exactly, so `email`, `whatsapp`, and so on.
Lead score	The lead's score	The score is greater than or equal to your minimum. A lead with no score counts as zero.
Stage	The conversation's current stage	It equals the configured stage exactly. This is an equality check, not 'at or beyond'.
Round robin	Nothing	Always, which is why it is handled separately. See below.

Keyword rules read the message, nothing else

They do not search the lead's company, industry, title or notes. If you want to route on who someone is rather than what they wrote, use lead score or route by hand. A keyword rule will never fire on data the customer didn't type.

Evaluation order#

Active rules are loaded ordered by priority, highest first. There's no drag-to-reorder, the number is the order.
Each is tested in turn and the first match wins. Later rules are never consulted.
Round-robin rules are skipped during this pass and only considered once no conditional rule has claimed the conversation.
Inactive rules are excluded before matching, so switching one off is the same as deleting it for routing purposes.

Order specific above general

A stage or channel rule at high priority will swallow conversations you meant a keyword rule to catch. Put narrow conditions above broad ones, and number in tens so you can slot a new rule in later without renumbering.

Who it assigns to#

Target	Behaviour
A person	The conversation is assigned to them directly.
A team	The conversation goes to that team's board with no individual assignee, for the team to pick up.
A team, assigned to its lead	Same, but the team lead is set as the assignee so someone specific is accountable.
Round robin	Rotated through a list of members you choose.

Round robin under load#

Round robin remembers its position on the rule itself and advances it inside a locked transaction. Two messages arriving at the same instant get consecutive members rather than both landing on the same person, so the fairness holds under real concurrency and not just in the happy path.

The rotation is per rule, so two different round-robin rules keep independent positions.
Removing someone from the list changes the cycle length. The position adjusts rather than skipping.
Use it at the lowest priority as a catch-all so nothing sits unowned.

Why a rule skips#

A rule that points at someone who left is silently skipped

Every target is re-checked against current workspace membership at assignment time. If the assignee is no longer a member, or the team no longer exists, the rule is passed over and the next one is tried. The conversation is never assigned to someone who can't see it.

Situation	Result
The assignee is no longer a workspace member	The rule is skipped, matching continues.
The team no longer exists	The rule is skipped, matching continues.
A team rule set to assign to its lead, but the lead has left	The conversation still goes to the team, with no individual assignee.
A round-robin list containing departed members	They're filtered out and the rotation continues over who's left.

This is the usual explanation for "my rule matched but nothing was assigned". Check whether the target is still in the workspace.

Creating a rule#

1Click Add rule and give it a name you'll recognise in six months.
2Pick the type and fill in its condition: keywords, channel, minimum score or stage.
3Choose the target: a person, a team, or a round-robin list.
4Set a priority. Specific rules should sit above general ones.
5Save. It's live immediately unless you leave it switched off.

There's no dry run

Rules can't be previewed before saving. Create the rule, then send yourself a real or Playground message that should match it, and confirm the assignment.

Auto-tasks#

Where the agent has auto-task creation on, what the customer asked for fans out into work: one epic per conversation, one sub-task per distinct request. Both are assigned to whoever routing chose, which is why routing is worth configuring before you turn task creation on.

Each sub-task links back to the message that produced it.
Later messages append to the open task rather than creating a second one. Dedupe is per lead, not per conversation.
The agent posts a system comment when the customer adds something new, so the task stays current.

Filter	Effect
Skip if the conversation is lost	No tasks are created for conversations already at a lost stage. Stops zombie follow-up work.
Skip if no routing rule matched	Only create tasks for conversations someone actually owns, so unqualified traffic doesn't fill the board.

Both are per agent, so a support agent can create tasks for everything while another agent only does so for routed conversations.

Designing a rule set#

A shape that works

Priority 30 - the handful of keywords that genuinely need a specific person: refunds, complaints, legal, enterprise.
Priority 20 - lead score above your qualification bar to the team that handles buying questions.
Priority 10 - channel rules, for teams organised by inbox rather than by topic. Voice to whoever is on phones.
Priority 0 - round robin across everyone, so nothing sits unowned.

Maintenance

Delete keywords that have never matched. They make the set harder to reason about without doing anything.
Re-check targets after anyone leaves. A rule pointing at a departed member fails quietly.

What routing doesn't do#

It assigns. It doesn't tag leads, change stage, escalate, or write replies.
It doesn't decide whether the agent auto-sends, that's the auto-send policy.
It doesn't reassign a conversation later. Routing happens on arrival.

For what decides whether a reply sends itself, see Auto-Send & Confidence.

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