Guide
Work the inbox
Read, reply, attach, and archive client mail, then move through it fast with keyboard shortcuts on the desktop and swipes on your phone.
Before you start
- At least one connected email account.
- For a shared inbox, anyone on the team can read and reply.
Pick a conversation on the left, read and reply on the right.
Find your way around the list
The sidebar says where you are, and the controls above the list decide what it shows and in what order. Both remember what you chose the next time you open the inbox.
The sidebar
Triage views come first: Inbox, Mentions, Starred, and Snoozed. Below them are your mail folders, Sent, Drafts, and Scheduled. Below those is every connected account, each with its own color and unread count, with All accounts at the top and Add account at the bottom. Channels and the shared pool sit under that.
Search
The search box searches mail and chat together. Press / to jump into it without reaching for the mouse.
Filter
Filter opens every filter in one popover: unread only, has an attachment, assigned to me, whether you want mail, the things needing your attention, or everything, and then status, priority, assignee, label, entity, and type. Each one you switch on shows as a pill next to the list, and clicking the pill takes it off again.
Sort
Choose newest first, oldest first, or unread first. Unread first keeps everything you have not read at the top, newest within it.
Group
The Group chip switches the list between chronological, grouped by date, and grouped by the client, project, or invoice each conversation is linked to.
Work on several at once
The checkbox button turns on select mode: every row swaps its avatar for a checkbox, and the bar that appears archives, snoozes, stars, or assigns everything you tick. Archive and Snooze also take the rows needing your attention, while Star and Assign need at least one conversation in the selection and say so when there is none. Archive, Snooze and Star each offer an Undo; assigning does not. Esc clears the selection.
More room for the list
The first button above the list folds the sidebar away when you want the full width, and leaves it folded until you bring it back.
Read and reply
Open a conversation
Click any conversation in the list. It opens in the reading pane and is marked as read.
Reply, reply all, or forward
In an email thread, choose Reply to answer the sender, Reply All to include everyone, or Forward to send it on. Write in the composer, where you can make text bold or italic, add lists or a link, drop in a saved template, and include your signature.
Attach files
Click Attach to add a file, or drag one onto the composer and drop it. You can add several files to one message, and the people you write to can preview or download them.
When a message does not arrive
If a mail server sends back a permanent failure, the conversation shows it. The sent message picks up a "Delivery failed" line naming the address that could not be reached and what the receiving server said, the report itself appears in the thread in plain words instead of raw server output, and the row in the list is marked so you can see it without opening anything. A follow-up reminder you set on that message is never cancelled by the failure notice, so you still get reminded.
A slow delivery is not treated as a failure. When a server is still retrying, WorkWiser keeps the report but raises no warning, because the message may well still get through.
Send
Click Send. If you have turned on undo send, a short window appears with an Undo button so you can pull the message back before it goes out.
Start a new email
Open a fresh compose
Click New email above the conversation list to write a brand-new email rather than a reply. The keyboard shortcut is c. On a phone the same control is the round button in the bottom right corner of the list. If no account is connected yet, the button is not there, because there would be nothing to send from.
Address it and write
Pick which connected account it sends from, add your recipients and a subject, and write your message.
Send it
Click Send. WorkWiser starts the conversation for you, so the new thread shows up in the inbox alongside the rest.
Who can see a conversation
Visibility follows the mail itself, not a choice somebody made once. The rule is worth a minute, because it is what decides whether the reply you are about to write is the team’s or your own.
A thread on a team mailbox belongs to the team
If any message in a conversation arrived at, or was sent from, a shared team mailbox, everyone in the organization can read that conversation and work it: reply, archive, snooze, assign. It stays that way even when the thread started somewhere else, because what decides is the mail on the thread, not where the thread began.
A thread on a personal mailbox stays yours
Mail that only ever touched a personal mailbox is visible to the person who owns that mailbox, and to anyone taking part in the conversation, such as somebody assigned to it or mentioned in it. Nobody else in the organization sees it in their list.
Being copied in counts
If a message was addressed to a colleague as well and reached their own connected mailbox, the thread is theirs to see too, and they are told about it. That is what keeps a client copying two of you in from leaving one of you out of the conversation.
The composer says so before you send
When you reply on a thread the whole organization can read, a quiet line above the send controls reads “Visible to everyone in the organization”. It asks nothing and stops nothing. It is there so that a private aside is never written in the belief that it was private.
Keep personal, as you send
Beside that line is a Keep personal toggle. Switch it on and the message you are about to send can be read only by you. It starts off every time, so it never quietly hides your team’s work, and it comes back with your draft if you undo the send.
Keep personal, afterwards
Open the menu on a message and choose Keep personal to withhold it, or Make visible to give it back. You can do this to a message you wrote, and to one that arrived at your own personal mailbox. Not to one that arrived at a shared team mailbox: that mail is the team’s.
A hidden message leaves a mark, not a gap
Everyone else sees a line where the message sits, reading “1 message hidden by” and the name of whoever hid it, with the time it was sent. The conversation keeps its shape and nobody is left wondering whether something is missing. Only the person who hid it can read the message itself, and an admin with oversight turned on cannot read it either. A message that simply never reached your mailbox gets the same kind of line, worded differently: it names whose mailbox holds it rather than who hid it, because nobody hid anything.
The thread does not disappear with it
Keeping a message personal hides that message and nothing else. If it was the only one on the thread from the team mailbox, the conversation is still there for the team, exactly where it was.
Mentions and assignments
Not every row is an email. When a teammate mentions you in a thread, or assigns you a conversation, it arrives in the inbox as its own row with a short line saying who and what. Its actions touch only your copy of it.
Open
Opens the conversation the mention or the assignment is about. Opening it does not clear it, so it waits in the list until you say you are done with it.
Done, just for you
Marks it handled for you alone and takes it out of your list. The conversation itself is untouched for everyone else, and an Undo appears in case you change your mind.
Snooze
Hides the row until the time you pick, then brings it back. This is yours too. Nobody else sees it leave or return.
The Mentions view
In the sidebar, Mentions lists every mention still waiting on you and nothing else. Assignments stay in the main list alongside the mail.
Triage with the keyboard
Most of the everyday moves have a key. Shortcuts work when you are reading, not while you are typing in a field, and they need a keyboard, so they are a computer thing. On a phone you triage by swiping instead.
j / k
Move down and up the list, opening each conversation as you land on it. The arrow keys do the same, and the cursor walks the rows needing your attention alongside the mail.
o or Enter
Open the conversation the cursor is on. Press g then i to come back to the unified Inbox from a folder, a label, or a single account.
r
Reply to the open conversation and jump straight into the composer.
a
Archive the conversation and clear it out of the inbox. On a row needing your attention it means done, just for you.
s
Snooze it to come back later, then pick when.
e
Star or unstar the conversation. Press d to assign it to a teammate.
c
Write a brand-new email. It opens the same composer the New email button does.
x
Tick the row the cursor is on and turn on select mode with it. While anything is ticked, a, s, e, and d act on the whole selection rather than on one conversation.
/
Jump into the search box without reaching for the mouse. Press ? any time to see the full list of shortcuts.
Esc
Step back out one layer at a time: close the shortcut list or the command menu, clear a selection, clear search, then leave the thread.
The command menu is for the inbox
Press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) to open the inbox command menu, or click the small key button at the end of the search box, which reads ⌘K on a Mac and Ctrl K everywhere else. It runs inbox actions on the conversation you are looking at, like Archive, Star, Snooze, Assign, Reply, and Send & Archive, and it can jump you to a label or a connected account.
It opens from wherever you are, including while you are part-way through writing a reply, and Esc closes it again.
It is not an app-wide search. It does not look across your projects, invoices, or time. To search your mail, use the search box in the inbox or press the / key.
On the phone, swipe a conversation to triage it.
Triage on your phone
Swiping is the phone answer to the keyboard, and it runs the same two verbs the a and s keys do. Both directions work on the rows waiting on you as well as on the mail, and what a swipe changes depends on which of the two it lands on.
Swipe right on an email
Archives the conversation for the whole team, the same as the a key or the Archive button. An Undo appears in case you change your mind, and a thread linked to live work still asks before it goes.
Swipe right on a row waiting on you
Marks that mention or assignment done, for you alone. The conversation itself is untouched for everyone else, and there is an Undo here too.
Swipe left to snooze
Brings up the snooze times for whichever kind of row you swiped: an email goes quiet for the team, a mention or an assignment only for you. The swipe itself picks no time, so closing the sheet without choosing changes nothing.
Tap to open
Tap a conversation to read the full thread, then reply from the bar at the bottom.
Start a new message
The round button in the bottom right corner of the list opens the composer for a brand-new email. Filter and Switch mailbox sit at the top of the list, beside the name of the view you are in.
Details in a sheet
Open Details on a thread and a sheet rises from the bottom with the same four sections the details panel has on a computer: the conversation and its status, the participants, the records it is linked to, and every attachment, each with a Download.
More on each card
Open the menu on any conversation for the rest of the triage actions.
Mentions on the phone
Mentions and assignments sit at the top of the list under Needs attention. Swipe them like anything else, tap one to open it, or use the buttons on the row to mark it done or snooze it.
About this screen
The phone inbox has just changed: a bar of tabs along the bottom of the app, a compose button in the corner of the list, a real details sheet, and swiping on the rows waiting on you as well as on the mail. The phone screenshot above still shows the previous layout and is being refreshed.
A tablet held upright gets this same phone layout now, and the desktop one when you turn it on its side.
Good to know
New mail arrives on its own. You do not need to refresh, and read and archive stay in step with your provider both ways.
Archive clears a conversation out of the inbox without deleting it. If you need it back, open it and choose Move to Inbox.
The keyboard shortcuts above act on the row your cursor is on, and a and s reach the mentions and assignments as well, where they mean done and snooze just for you. Starring and assigning are for mail only. The buttons on each row do the same jobs if you would rather click.
Images in a message do not load until you say so
A picture in an email is fetched from the sender’s server when the message is drawn, so simply opening a marketing mail tells whoever sent it that you read it, and from where. WorkWiser blocks those fetches and puts a small bar above the message: Remote images are blocked, with one button to load them.
Tapping Load images shows them straight away and remembers that conversation, so coming back to the thread never asks you again, on that device or any other. If you would rather never be asked about a particular correspondent, the bar then offers Always from, which trusts that address everywhere.
Both kinds of answer are yours alone: a colleague on the same shared mailbox keeps their own. Settings, then Email accounts, lists every address you have trusted with a way to remove any of them, and lets you forget the conversations you have approved so they start asking again.
Ready to see it on your own work?
WorkWiser is in early access. Tell us where to reach you and we will send an invite when it is your turn.