What is AI inbox automation?
AI inbox automation uses AI to classify, summarize, draft, route, and trigger actions from incoming business email. In HEIDI Workspace it connects Gmail and Outlook to company knowledge, approval flows, and operational workflows — so a message can become a grounded reply, a CRM update, a Slack escalation, or a no-code workflow without rewriting the work by hand.
Capabilities
What you can do with Process Designer
Triage that understands the work
Classify incoming messages by intent and urgency, group them into operational buckets, and route them to the right owner — designed to recognise customer questions, approvals, escalations, and document-heavy threads.
Grounded answers from your knowledge
Drafts are prepared from approved manuals, SOPs, contracts, and operational history. Sources stay visible so reviewers can verify before approving.
Approvals before automation acts
Sensitive replies and system actions can be configured to wait for human approval. Auto-replies only run where permissions and setup allow it.
Connected actions, not just email
Designed to update CRM records, raise tickets, escalate to Slack or Teams, trigger no-code workflows, or hand off to a browser agent — depending on permissions and setup.
Voice and daily briefings
Instruct HEIDI by voice to summarise, draft, or escalate. Receive a daily briefing of urgent items and pending approvals so nothing falls through the cracks.
Use cases
Where teams apply Process Designer
Real workflows that benefit from visual design, automation, and governance.
Customer A asks a technical question about Product X
HEIDI summarises the thread, retrieves the Product X manual and the support SOP, and prepares a grounded answer for review.
Customer B requests an approval for a service exception
HEIDI flags the policy, prepares the response, and routes the approval task to the named owner before any reply is sent.
A vendor sends an updated contract document
HEIDI reads the attachment, surfaces the changed clauses, and prepares an internal note for the procurement record.
Support queue receives a setup checklist request
HEIDI uses the approved onboarding documentation to assemble a step-by-step reply with sources visible to the reviewer.
An urgent customer escalation arrives outside hours
HEIDI raises the urgency in the daily briefing and can be configured to escalate to a Slack or Teams channel for the on-call owner.
How it works
From chaos to clarity in 4 steps
Inbound email arrives
From a connected Gmail or Outlook inbox.
Triage and intent detection
Classify the request, detect urgency, route to the right operational bucket.
Retrieve operational knowledge
Pull approved documents, SOPs, contracts, and previous context.
Prepare a grounded draft
Compose the reply with visible sources for the reviewer.
Approval where needed
Route to a human approver when policy or risk requires it.
Trigger the connected action
Update CRM, raise a ticket, escalate, run a workflow, or hand off to a browser agent.
Avoid these
Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)
Treating the inbox like a personal productivity tool
Most operational email is team work, not individual mail. Personal AI assistants ignore approvals and connected systems.
Use a workspace built for teams: shared knowledge, role-based approvals, and connected operational actions.
Letting AI auto-send replies for everything
Sensitive replies need policy, tone, and source review. Sending everything blindly is how AI projects fail in regulated work.
Configure auto-replies only where setup allows it, and route the rest through human approval with visible sources.
Ignoring follow-up work after the reply
The reply is one step. CRM records, tickets, escalations, and workflows still need to be updated.
Pick a workspace designed to trigger connected actions across CRM, tickets, Slack, Teams, browsers, and workflows.
The business problem behind the inbox
Modern business inboxes are operational queues, not just communication tools.
Operational email arrives as conversations: customer questions, vendor approvals, attachments, escalations, and follow-ups land in the same inbox. Answering safely usually requires manuals, SOPs, contracts, and previous context. And the reply is only one step — records, tickets, and channel updates still need to happen.
This is why generic AI email tools rarely solve the problem for teams. They lack the company knowledge, the approval flows, and the connected systems that turn an email into completed work.
AI inbox automation is the operational layer that closes that gap.
Why this matters
If a single inbox carries customer outcomes, supplier risk, and revenue decisions, it is not a productivity surface — it is a business process. Treating it that way is what makes the automation safe.
Business value
AI inbox automation is designed to release human work and keep important decisions human.
The goal is not to remove humans from the inbox. It is to remove repetitive handling and prepare the work so humans can focus on what really needs judgment.
- Release human time from triage, summarising, and document lookup.
- Reduce missed urgent messages with daily briefings and routed escalations.
- Improve reply consistency by grounding answers in approved knowledge.
- Keep CRM, tickets, and channels updated through connected actions, designed to run only with the right permissions.
- Keep humans in the loop with approval-aware automation and visible sources.