AI for operations inboxes
Operations email is process email: orders, confirmations, exceptions. Your assistant extracts the details into fields, keeps statuses current, and surfaces the exceptions humans should look at.
What you'll end up with
- Every order or request tracked as a card with the key details (number, quantity, dates) in proper fields — not buried in prose.
- Statuses that follow the process: Received → Confirmed → In progress → Shipped/Done.
- Exceptions — part-shipments, mismatches, angry threads — flagged for a human instead of slipping through.
Before you start
- Sortd set up in Gmail — an Operations board whose lists mirror your process stages, with custom fields for the details you track (order number, value, due date).
- Your assistant connected — two minutes, one browser approval: Connect your AI. Everything below works in Claude, ChatGPT, or any connected assistant.
- The right permissions — when you connect you tick what the assistant may do — send permissions start unticked. For this guide: reading email, reading and updating the board.
Set it up by talking to your assistant
Each step is something you type (or say) to your assistant — copy them as they are, or change the names to match your own boards and lists. You don't need to know what happens behind the scenes, but we explain it anyway.
1. Capture and extract
The typing-things-into-fields job, done by the assistant.
Check for new order emails. Make each one a card on Operations / Received, and fill in the custom fields: order number, customer, value, requested date — read them from the email.What happens: The assistant reads each email and sets the board's custom fields, so the table view becomes a real orders register.
2. Advance the process
Confirmations and updates arrive by email; the board should follow automatically.
Look at replies on cards in Received and Confirmed. Move cards forward when the thread shows a confirmation or shipping notice, and update the dates if they changed.What happens: Cards move through your stages based on what the threads actually say.
3. Surface the exceptions
The judgement calls stay human — the finding doesn't have to.
Flag any card where the thread mentions a partial shipment, a quantity mismatch, or the customer sounds unhappy, and put those at the top of their list with a note explaining what you saw.What happens: Exception cards float to the top with a plain-language note — your team starts the day with the right five, not all fifty.
4. The morning report
The state of the operation in one message.
Give me the morning picture: how many new orders yesterday, what's due to ship today, and every flagged exception with one line each.What happens: A digest built from the live board — the same numbers a stand-up would take twenty minutes to assemble.
Put it on autopilot
Once a run works when you ask for it, schedule it — run capture-and-advance hourly, the report each morning.
Every hour, capture new order emails onto Operations / Received with fields filled in and advance cards whose threads moved on. At 7:30 each weekday, send me the morning picture with exceptions flagged.Claude (Cowork scheduled tasks) and ChatGPT (scheduled tasks) can both do this — cadences, tips and more recipes are on AI Schedule.
You stay in control
- Drafts by default. Unless you granted a send permission, the assistant can only prepare replies — they wait in Gmail for a human to send.
- Everything is visible. Every card the assistant creates or moves shows up on the board instantly, exactly as if a teammate did it — same statuses, same history, same audit trail.
- Easy to undo, easy to unplug. Moves and statuses can be changed back on the board, and you can disconnect the assistant at any time from the same place you connected it.
More: AI for finance inboxes · every action the assistant can take, with example prompts: AI Reference · all use cases: AI guides