AI email triage for small businesses

Email becomes a task queue, a CRM, and a filing cabinet. It is also where time disappears.

Most small teams do the same thing every day. They scan inboxes, forward threads, search for attachments, and retype the same answers.

With a private memory layer connected to Gmail and your files, you can triage faster and respond with context. See Gmail and Drive, Features, Privacy.

Workflow

Define a triage taxonomy

Create four buckets: urgent, today, waiting, archive. Add simple rules based on sender, subject keywords, and age.

Summarize threads before replying

Ask for a one paragraph summary plus the last decision, the open questions, and the next action.

Auto draft replies with sources

Pull the relevant file or past email, then draft the response. Keep the citation links so you can verify fast.

Create follow up reminders

When a message is waiting on someone else, schedule a follow up and store the context so you do not re-read the thread later.

What to automate first

• Thread summarization on open conversations
• Auto draft replies for common questions
• Attachment and file lookup across Gmail and Drive

Common failure points

• No taxonomy, everything stays in one inbox state
• Prompts that ask for writing but do not ask for the decision and next action
• Missing access to the source files, drafts become generic
• Over automating before the rules are stable