Workflow guide
Sorting quote requests out of a shared inbox
Short answer: Each email goes to exactly one queue from a rule you write. Our 6 Oct tests: 15 of 16 triage tests right, one routing miss.
A shared quotes inbox mixes price requests with broken printers and invoice questions. A quote request filed under a billing complaint waits until someone scrolls far enough. Triage puts every email in one queue from a written rule and leaves the work to the people who own each queue. Send up to three requests your team already answered; drafts come back within 2 business days.
Updated 14 October 2026
A one-page rule with six queues does the sorting
Why a shared inbox needs sorting
A quotes@ or sales@ address collects everything: price requests, a printer that stopped working, an invoice question, a vendor selling something, a note that a new hire starts on Monday. People sort it by reading each message. The cost is not the reading. It is that a quote request sitting under a billing complaint waits until someone scrolls far enough.
Triage is the smallest useful job for an AI worker here: put every email in exactly one queue and leave the rest to the people who own each queue. It makes no promise to a customer and changes no record.
The six queues we test
Fieldstone IT, our fictional IT provider, wrote its routing rule as a one-page procedure in its brain, in plain language, and the worker reads it like a new hire would. The rule says: put every email in exactly one queue.
| Queue | Use when the email | Test message (from the Fieldstone test file) |
|---|---|---|
| service_desk | Something is broken: a device, printer, email, Wi-Fi, an app | The printer on the second floor keeps jamming and now shows an error. |
| quote | Asks for a price on hardware or project work | Can you price 8 new laptops and docks for our new hires? |
| security | A suspicious email, a phishing click, a hacked account, a lost device | I clicked a link in an email that said my mailbox was full and entered my password. |
| onboarding | A new starter or a leaver | Jim left the company today, please shut off his access. |
| billing | An invoice, a payment or the monthly plan | Our September invoice looks like it charged us twice. |
| other | Anything else: jobs, vendors, events | Do you sponsor the chamber of commerce golf day? |
These are the eight triage tests in the Fieldstone file (two queues have two tests each). Your own queues will differ. A cabinet shop might use quote, change order, delivery and accounts. The rule is yours and it lives in a note any staff member can open and edit.
Emails with two topics need a sentence saying which queue wins
Real emails mix topics. "Jim left today, shut off his access" is a leaver (onboarding) and also a security matter. The rule has to say which queue wins, and the Fieldstone test treats it as onboarding. If you do not write down which queue wins, your staff will each decide differently, and so will the worker.
A useful exercise before any tool: take your last 50 shared-inbox emails and sort them with a colleague, independently. Where you disagree, the rule is missing a sentence. Write the sentence. That exercise is the same work the free test asks you to do with 30 past quotes. See the free test.
One miss in 16 tests: a person's name where the rule wanted a queue
Across the 475 test answers on 6 October 2026 there were 11 misses. Ten were refusals to price. One was a routing miss: in the Peachtree Cabinet Works test (a fictional cabinet shop), test triage-05 went to the office manager instead of the queue called "other". The email was routed to a person's name where the rule wanted a queue. We list it here because a page about triage that shows only wins would be hiding the interesting part. On a new trade it had never seen, an electrical distributor (14 Oct, Dell test box), the default Qwen3 8B setup scored 30 of 40 and 2 of 15 on messy requests, with 8 wrong prices in 55, because per-foot units, price levels and trade shorthand are not handled yet; that is why we score your own list first (the electrical result).
The same miss appeared on the 2 October runs (one of two misses in 115 answers). It is a real, open example of the model choosing a plausible destination the rule did not offer. Every miss from the two weeks is on the misses and refusals page.
A queue choice is a label, not an action; people still do the work
Be clear about what is and is not built. The scorecard measures whether the worker picks the right queue. The draft-only mailbox door, staffbox inbox, reads request files and writes draft replies; it does not move mail between folders or apply labels in your mail system. Connecting queue choices to labels or folders in a specific mail system is per-site work, and we have not claimed a standard connector for it.
A queue label is also not a decision. The person who owns the queue still reads and replies, and for quote emails the next step is a priced draft, then human approval.
Questions
Can AI sort a shared inbox into queues?
Yes, within what we have tested. On the Fieldstone IT test it routes eight sample emails into six queues from a written routing rule, with one recorded routing miss in the separate Peachtree test. It chooses the queue; a person works it.
Can it apply labels in Gmail or Outlook?
Not as a shipped feature. The scorecard tests the queue choice, and the mailbox door writes drafts to a folder. Labels or rules in a specific mail system are per-site work.
What if an email fits two queues?
Your routing rule must say which wins. Test it by sorting past emails with a colleague first; where you disagree, add a sentence to the rule.
Sources
- Fieldstone IT routing procedure and triage tests: github.com/Staffbox-ai/staffbox, examples/fieldstone-it, read 13 Oct 2026.
- Miss counts: evals/results on GitHub, 6 Oct and 2 Oct 2026 Mac mini runs.
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