Assigning priority to a thread, end to end

The flow, stage by stage#

1. Trigger — a message lands on a thread, or a person changes the thread's priority by hand.
2. User or external event — an arriving message classified by triage, or a deliberate correction on the Conversations screen.
3. Authentication and workspace resolution — a correction is a scoped write on a canonical row, so the thread must belong to the session's workspace.
4. Ingest — for an arriving message, the canonical message is written before it can influence anything.
5. Canonical record — priority lives on the thread itself, beside the person's other marks, rather than in a separate queue.
6. Classification and reasoning — triage weighs what the message asks for, who it is from and what the thread has already been through.
7. Knowledge, memory and rules — standing instructions about a contact or a channel are part of what triage reads, so 'this account always comes first' can be stated once.
8. Autonomy and approval — unaffected. Priority orders work; autonomy decides whether Connect may act on it.
9. Action through a provider — none. Priority is internal and nothing is sent because of it.
10. Result — the engine's choice of next work changes, and the Conversations list reflects the same value.
11. Relationship, timeline and memory — a manual correction is the person's own mark on the thread, not a fact about the customer.
12. Audit, usage and Needs You — the change is recorded, and a thread raised high enough to need a person can surface in the queue.

Automatic and manual, and how they meet#

The third row is the one worth using. Correcting the same customer's priority every week teaches Connect nothing; recording it as a standing instruction changes how the next conversation is classified before anybody has to look at it. A correction is a decision about one thread; an instruction is a lesson.

What the override changes#

• The order work is chosen in. The engine reads priority when it picks the next thread, so this is a change to behaviour rather than to a view.
• Where the thread sits for a person. The same value orders the Conversations list and ranks what appears in Needs You.
• Nothing about permission. A held draft stays held; a suppressed recipient stays suppressed; a spent allowance still refuses. Priority moves a thread up the queue, not through a gate.
• Nothing about the customer's record. A priority is your workspace's mark on a conversation, not a fact recorded against the person.

Using it well#

1. During a backlog, raise the few threads that genuinely cannot wait.

   Result Those threads are worked first. This is the single most effective correction available while mail is queued.

2. Lower a thread that is noise rather than deleting it.

   Result The history stays, and the thread stops competing for attention. Deleting is a person's mark too, and it is a heavier one.

3. If a customer is always urgent, record that as a standing instruction against the contact.

   Result Triage applies it to future conversations, including ones that start on another channel.

4. Check the thread is actually held rather than merely low, if raising it changes nothing.

   Result A draft waiting for approval, a suppressed recipient or a spent allowance will not move for any priority.

When a raised thread still does not move#

The reply is waiting for a person

The autonomy rule for that mailbox holds it. Approve it, or change the rule for the scope that matters.

The recipient is suppressed

Compliance is checked before any outbound message, and priority is not consulted at that gate at all.

The allowance is spent

The work is held with its reason shown; the reset, not the priority, is what releases it.

The thread needs nothing

Triage may have decided correctly that no reply is due. Guidance on the thread is how you disagree with that.

Ingest is behind

If the message you are prioritising has not been taken in yet, the priority is on a thread that does not have it.

Questions#

Related#

• Triage and priority
• Giving guidance on a thread
• Ingesting a burst of mail, end to end
• Held drafts
• Structured business memory instead of a longer prompt