Email Triage Skills
Conversational Agents are in Beta and available on Professional, Scale and Enterprise.
Before a Conversational Agent answers an email, SendSeven checks whether the email needs an answer at all. This step is called triage. A triage skill is an optional skill with your own rules for that decision, for example "never answer job applications" or "payment reminders from our bank are not customer emails".
In the app: https://app.sendseven.com/automation/skills
What triage does
Every incoming email on a channel the agent answers is triaged, whether you picked a triage skill or not. This happens for automatic replies and when a teammate asks the agent for a draft (Assist Mode).
Triage runs in three layers:
-
Automatic mail detection (always on). Mail that only machines send is recognised straight away, without any AI: messages marked as auto-submitted or bulk, mailing-list mail, auto-replies and out-of-office messages, bounces and delivery failures, and senders such as
noreply@ormailer-daemon@. A triage skill cannot turn these back on. -
Built-in triage (always on). SendSeven sorts every other email into one of six categories:
Category Meaning Answered? support A person asks a question, reports a problem or needs a response Yes invoice Invoices, receipts, payment confirmations and reminders sent by a company No newsletter Marketing, promotions, product updates, digests No automated Notifications, alerts, delivery reports, auto-replies, bounces No spam Unsolicited sales mail, phishing No unknown Can't tell Yes -
Your triage skill (optional). If you picked one, its rules are added on top of the built-in triage. Your rules can stop the agent from answering more kinds of email, or tell triage how to recognise your own customers and senders.
Without a triage skill, SendSeven still detects automated mail, newsletters, invoices, notifications, auto-replies, bounces and spam. A skill only adds the rules that are specific to your business.
What the result means
For each email, triage decides three things:
- category: one of the six categories above.
- is a customer email: a customer or prospect who expects an answer. Invoice, newsletter, automated and spam are never customer emails, whatever a skill says.
- should be answered: only customer emails can be answered, and your skill can say "do not answer" for specific kinds of customer email.
| Result | What happens |
|---|---|
| Customer email, should be answered | The agent writes a reply (draft or automatic send, depending on your reply mode) |
| Not a customer email, or "do not answer" | No reply, no draft, no AI credits charged. The email stays in your inbox for your team |
| Triage could not run (for example a temporary service problem) | The email is never skipped: the agent writes a reply and always saves it as a draft |
| Assist Mode (a teammate asked for a draft) | The draft is always written. For non-customer mail the agent writes a short neutral draft and shows that a reply is probably not needed |
Triage itself is always free.
Set it up
- Go to Agents & Bots → Skills and create a new skill. Give it a clear title such as "Email triage – support inbox".
- Set its mode to Flows only, so the agent does not load your triage rules as reply instructions in chat conversations.
- Write the rules (see below) and save.
- Open your agent, go to Channels & schedule → Email replies, and pick the skill under Triage skill. Choose None – built-in detection to go back to the default.
- Publish the agent.
Only the skill text is used for triage. The first 4,000 characters count, so keep it focused.
How to write a triage skill
A triage skill describes which emails your agent should answer and which it should leave alone. It does not write replies, and it does not need to explain the output format: SendSeven takes care of that.
Recommended structure
- Who writes to this inbox. One or two sentences about your business and its customers.
- Customer emails: answer. The kinds of email your agent should answer. Name your products and typical questions.
- Not customer emails: do not answer. Your bank, payment providers, suppliers and tools that email you; newsletters you subscribe to; sales pitches and recruiting.
- Special rules. Edge cases, such as "legal requests: do not answer, a person handles them", and what to do when unsure.
Where it helps, name the category you expect (support, invoice, newsletter, automated, spam).
Do
- Name real senders and topics: "Payment reminders from our bank", "Notifications from our payment provider", "Invoices our suppliers send us".
- Say what counts as a customer even when it looks like something else: "A customer asking about their invoice with us is a customer email".
- Say which customer emails must not be answered by the agent: "Press and legal requests: do not answer."
- Say what to do when unsure. "Prefer answering; my team reviews drafts" is a good default while you use draft mode.
- Keep it short: bullet points work best.
Don't
- Don't ask for a particular output format, JSON or extra fields. They are ignored.
- Don't invent new categories. Use the six above; anything else is treated as unknown.
- Don't try to answer auto-replies, bounces or newsletters. Those protections always stay on.
- Don't put reply instructions here (tone, greetings, what to say). Those belong in the agent's instructions and reply skills.
- Don't rely on triage to forward or assign emails. Triage only decides "answer" or "leave alone". Emails the agent leaves alone stay in your inbox for your team.
Example triage skill
This is the triage skill for a messaging-software company's support inbox. Adapt the names and topics to your business.
# Email triage – support inbox
This inbox ([email protected]) belongs to a messaging platform for businesses
(WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, SMS, email, Live Chat, campaigns, API).
## Customer emails – answer (category support)
- A customer, trial user or prospect asks a question or reports a problem about
our product: connecting or using a channel, WhatsApp templates, the Live Chat
widget, conversations, contacts, campaigns, the API, webhooks, the mobile app,
login or team members.
- A customer asks about THEIR plan, invoice, payment, refund, plan change,
cancellation or data deletion with us. This is support, even when the subject
contains "invoice" or "payment".
- A customer replies in an existing support thread ("thanks, that worked").
- A business asks about buying or trying our product (pricing, demo, features).
## Not customer emails – do not answer
- Mail from our bank and payment providers (payment reminders, card and transfer
notices, statements). Category invoice.
- Notifications from services we use (payment provider, cloud and ad accounts,
social networks, app stores): alerts, verification, policy or security notices.
Category automated.
- Invoices, receipts and payment requests that suppliers send us. Category invoice.
- Newsletters, product updates, webinars and event invitations from other
companies. Category newsletter.
- Job applications, recruiting, agency, SEO, lead-generation or "partnership"
sales pitches that don't ask about using our product. Category spam.
- Auto-replies, out-of-office messages, bounces and delivery failures.
Category automated.
## Special rules
- If a mail looks like a notification but a person clearly asks us a question
about their account in their own words, it is a customer email.
- If you are unsure whether a person is a customer, prefer support: a teammate
reviews drafts.
- Legal, authority or press requests: category support, do not answer
(a person handles these).
- Do not answer emails from our own company domain.
Related
- Conversational Agents overview
- Skills API: create the triage skill via the API (
default_mode: "flow_only"). - Agents API: set it on an agent as
email_settings.triage_skill_id(top-level field or insidesettings).