Team inbox assignment

Every team inbox can decide who owns a conversation the moment it arrives. Assignment happens automatically for routed conversations, and can always be overridden manually.

Manual assignment

With manual assignment:

Routed conversations arrive unassigned and sit in the inbox queue until a teammate picks one up (open it and take ownership) or assigns it from the conversation actions menu.
Anyone in the inbox can assign the conversation to any inbox member, including themselves.

Manual mode suits queues where judgment matters — triage-heavy flows, or teams that prefer to pull work.

Round-robin assignment

With round-robin assignment:

When a conversation is routed into the inbox, Helpin automatically assigns it to the next member in rotation.
The rotation includes only active inbox members and cycles evenly, so the workload spreads.
Assignments still count as normal ownership — the assignee can reassign, resolve, or snooze like any manually assigned conversation.

Round-robin suits predictable, evenly-sized queues — billing requests, routine bugs, standard questions.

Assignment on AI handoff

When the AI support agent escalates a conversation to humans, the AI to human handoff assignment setting decides what happens next (Settings → Inboxes & Routing → Routing & Assignment):

Destination inbox — which inbox receives the handoff (for example, the Shared Inbox or a specific team inbox).
Assignment behavior — either leave unassigned (a human picks it up) or assign automatically to the next available teammate via that inbox's assignment mode.

You can configure both choices in one place, so an AI escalation lands in the right queue with a clear owner — or deliberately without one.

Taking ownership

Opening an unassigned conversation and replying typically assigns it to you automatically ("took" events). If you are just reviewing without replying, use the assignment control to claim it explicitly so teammates know it is handled.

Unassignment

Conversations can be unassigned from the actions menu — useful when a conversation is reassigned to a different team's inbox or when ownership should reset after a snooze.

Tips

Prefer round-robin for inboxes where every conversation needs exactly one owner quickly.
Prefer manual for inboxes where first-response quality matters more than speed; pairing manual assignment with small teams still keeps handoffs visible.
Keep the AI handoff destination pointed at the inbox whose members actually monitor their queue.

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