The shared inbox and AI drafts

One inbox for every channel

Customer conversations arrive from everywhere: email, marketplace messages, store chat, social comments, YouTube. Communications Center pulls them into one shared inbox so your team works from a single queue instead of six logins.

Each conversation shows who the customer is, what they have bought, what they have asked before, and which team member is handling it. Assign, tag, add internal notes, and reply, all in one place.

Channels and inboxes

A channel is a source of messages, such as a support email address, a helpdesk like Gorgias or Zendesk, or a Shopify contact form. A channel appears when its connector module is installed.

An inbox is a group you organize conversations into. You might have Sales, Support, Wholesale, and Returns. Each inbox has its own:

• Source channels that feed it.
• Default tags.
• Send-as address, so replies come from the right name.
• AI behavior setting (explained below).

Routing rules decide which inbox a new conversation lands in. Exact rules based on sender, domain, subject, or source always win. When no rule matches, AI categorization can sort by intent.

AI drafts

When AI drafting is on, the assistant reads the conversation and proposes a reply. The draft appears beside the message. A team member can send it, edit it, or discard it.

Drafts are written in your voice using skills you configure. Common ones include order status, returns and exchanges, product questions, and complaint handling. Each skill sets the tone, the rules, and the information the AI may use.

How order data grounds replies

The difference between a helpful draft and a generic one is context. Before drafting, the AI looks at what the workspace already knows:

• The customer's recent orders, shipping status, and refunds from your connected store.
• Their CRM record, including past conversations and notes.
• Your product catalog and policies.
• Any rules the inbox or skill defines.

So when someone asks "where is my order," the draft names the order, the carrier, and the expected date. It does not guess. If the information is missing, the draft says so and the AI flags it rather than filling the gap.

Every draft keeps a source trace. You can see which records and rules it used. Your AI assistant in Claude or ChatGPT can also preview what the workspace AI would say to an email you paste, along with its sources.

Approval gates and auto-send

You decide how much the AI is allowed to do, one inbox at a time.

1. Off. No drafts. Use this for legal, executive, or sensitive inboxes where every reply is hand-written.
2. Draft only. The AI proposes, a person sends. This is the default and the right choice for most inboxes.
3. Auto-send. The AI writes and sends without review. Use this sparingly and only for narrow, predictable categories like order-status lookups where the grounding data is strong and a person is watching for outliers.

A workspace-wide master switch sits above all of this. Turn it off and AI drafting stops everywhere, regardless of inbox settings. It is your kill switch.

Some marketplace channels add their own layer. A reply may be held as pending until the marketplace's rules, quota, or approval requirements are satisfied. The inbox shows you when that happens and why.

Escalation

Not everything should be answered by a draft. The complaint-handling skill recognizes frustrated customers, adjusts its language, and can route the conversation to a person. Team members can escalate by assigning to a colleague, changing the inbox, or raising a task in Projects that links back to the conversation.

Alerts can also go to Slack so the right person sees a hot conversation without living in the inbox.

Automated follow-ups

Communications Center is also the sending arm for storefront follow-ups such as back-in-stock alerts, welcome emails, and cart-rescue offers. These messages only go out when the CRM confirms the person's consent at send time and the offer is still valid. An unsubscribe after signup blocks the later message.

Working with your operator

Orkie operators can staff your inbox, tune skills, and review draft quality over time. Many clients start with drafts only, measure how often drafts are sent unchanged, then move a category or two to auto-send once they trust it.

See it with your own messages: talk to us or contact us.

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Last reviewed 2026-09-20. Something unclear? Tell us and we will fix the article.