Create Folders Using Workflows to Organize Conversations

Folders are a way to organize conversations into a common view. In other words, a folder is a custom view of conversations that already exist in one of your other top-level folders. This article will help you create your first folder.

Why Folders Are Helpful

Folders are created via rule-based Workflows, which allows you to define folder conditions to suit your needs. These folders are displayed in your inbox's sidebar and can be quickly accessed by your team.

Conversations are copied into folders when they meet the workflow’s conditions. A matching conversation will be found in both the workflow Folder as well as its top-level folder. To clarify, conversations are not moved into folders, but are copies of a conversation.

Folders are helpful when needing to group conversations based on specific criteria. For example, you might want to group conversations based on the conversation topic, or group conversations based on how long the customer has been waiting for a reply. There are a variety of workflow conditions that can be used to define your folders.

Note: Conversations that appear in a folder view have not been moved, so they remain visible in both locations. In other words, a conversation can be removed from a workflow folder and it will still be found in the top-level folder.

Create a Folder

Create a Workflow to copy conversations to a folder. You may use either an Automatic Workflow or Manual Workflow to create folders to organize your conversations.

The example below demonstrates the conditions for an Automatic Workflow to copy Active and Unassigned conversations tagged with urgent to a folder named Urgent Issues.

Head to Manage > Inbox(es) > Your Inbox > Workflows or open your Inbox and click the gear icon to open Settings and select Workflows. Click New Workflow.

1: Choose Automatic and give it a name.
2: Set the conditions to find the conversations you want to see in the folder. Our example is using:
Tag(s) Is urgent
AND
Status Is equal to Active
AND
Assigned to User Is equal to Unassigned
3: On the Actions page, select Copy to Folder from the drop-down menu. Name the folder and set your visibility options. You can select from everyone, just you, or specific people.
4: Activate the workflow and head back to your inbox. The new Urgent Issues folder is in the sidebar.
5: The workflow copies conversations that match its conditions into the Urgent Issues folder. The original conversation is also still found in the top-level Unassigned folder.

Best Practices When Creating Folders

Keep your workflow folders as strictly defined as possible.
Workflow Folders that copy thousands of conversations can lead to poor performance, such as incorrect folder counts or folders that are slow to refresh. If you've given it a bit of time and the numbers still seem off, get in touch.

Have a clear idea of what types of conversations you want to see in a Folder.
Folders perform best when you need to group specific conversations and the workflow has very focused conditions. Be precise with your workflow conditions to help improve your folder performance. Avoid setting up workflow Folders that are too broad.

A common way to strengthen your workflow is to add a Status condition — such as Status is not equal to Closed — and focus your workflow folders to Active and/or Pending conversations.

Feel free to reach out if you have an idea for a workflow folder, and would like help brainstorming workflow conditions.

Manage Folders

Conversations are copied into folders as long as they match the workflow’s conditions. Conversations cannot be drag-and-dropped into a folder, they must meet the workflow’s conditions.

Folders can only be managed by a single Workflow. You cannot reference the same Folder in multiple Workflows. You will see an error The folder listed below has been taken by another workflow if you attempt to set up two workflows that use the same folder.

To delete a folder, head into Inbox Setting > Workflows and delete the Workflow that's being used to create the folder or to edit the Workflow and remove the Copy to Folder action from the Workflow.

Remove Conversations From Folders

Automatic Workflow

A conversation is automatically removed from the folder when it no longer meets the workflow’s conditions.

Manual Workflow

To remove a conversation from a folder created with a manual Workflow, head into the folder view and select the conversation(s) you wish to remove. Click the lightning bolt on the multi-select menu and choose Remove from Folder.