From correspondence to clarity
Making ashared inboxtalk to Asana
in here.Shared inbox / client request
Clearer picture.
And one more thing…
this belongs somewhereClient requests were arriving in a shared inbox. The work was much harder to see. I connected the tools we already had and built a clearer way for the team to manage what came in.
Follow the requestClient email. Internal brief. Human judgement throughout.
Two ways in. Client email becomes a task with replies attached. An internal brief gives colleagues a clearer starting point.
One principle.
A human still makes every call.
01 / The situation
The conversation
was there.
The visibility wasn’t.
The inbox held the conversation. Asana wasn’t seeing the whole picture. And colleagues across the business didn’t have one consistent place to brief Marketing. Three connected problems, with a slightly different way in for each.
- INBOXHeld the conversation.
- ASANAWasn’t seeing the whole picture.
- INTERNALNeeded a consistent front door.
02 / A correspondence laboratory
Follow
the request.
Two ways in.
One clearer view of the work.
You move the story along.
A fictional demonstration of the process, not the live system. No requests are sent.
- 01Arrived
- 02Captured
- 03Replied
- 04Reviewed by a person
From: Example client
Updated event campaign artwork
We’ve approved a new image. Could you use it in the next campaign?
The work needs a shared home.
A reply, waiting to find its work.
Client request · Step 1 of 4
An email is a perfectly good way in.
A client message arrives in the shared inbox. The conversation has started, but the team still needs a shared view of the work.
Read both pathways without playing
Client request
- Arrived. A client message arrives in the shared inbox. The conversation has started, but the team still needs a shared view of the work.
- Captured. The client email becomes an Asana task. The request and its source are visible together, awaiting a person’s review. The displayed labels are illustrative.
- Replied. The follow-up reply finds the existing task. The conversation stays associated with the work it belongs to, rather than becoming a second, disconnected request.
- Reviewed by a person. A person reviews the request and determines scope, priority, ownership and next steps. The automation hasn’t approved, prioritised or completed the creative work.
Internal request
- Started. A colleague opens the structured request pathway. There is a defined front door for briefing Marketing.
- Briefed. The request information is collected consistently. These fictional sample fields illustrate a clearer brief; they do not reproduce the actual internal form.
- Received. The team receives an organised brief to assess and manage. This shows the process handoff, without specifying an unverified backend integration.
- Reviewed by a person. The team confirms scope, priority, an owner and what happens next. Receiving a brief does not mean the work or proposed timing is automatically approved.
03 / Start with the evidence
10weeks of
inbox history.
The business case began here.
Ten weeks of actual correspondence.
Understand the arrival.
Then design the handoff.
I looked at ten weeks of inbox traffic, built the case for changing the process and developed a new request system. The starting point was understanding how work arrived, before deciding how it should move.
I brought Power Automate, Asana, SharePoint and the shared inbox / Outlook environment into conversation. The opportunity was to make better use of the tools we already had.
Client emails now generate Asana tasks, and replies are associated with the work they belong to. For the wider business, we introduced a more consistent briefing process and a single request pathway.
04 / Build, break, better
It ran once.
Lovely.
Now test it.
My team tested it, broke it and helped me find what needed rebuilding. Which is a much more convincing process than declaring victory the moment an automation runs once.
- Build
- Test
- Break
- Revise
- Launch
Testing and team feedback shaped the rebuild before the new process went live.
05 / The handoff that matters
A human
still makes
every call.
The technology gets the information to the right place; the team decides what to do with it. Scope, priority, ownership and approvals stay with people.
06 / In everyday use
12 OCT
2026Launched.
The new process went live on 12 October 2026. There’s less copying and pasting, and less hunting through long forwarded threads. Those are qualitative observations, not measured time savings.
Implemented
- Client messages become trackable work
- Replies stay associated with existing work
- Colleagues have a defined briefing route
- Human review remains in place
Still to measure
Request completeness, follow-up volume, turnaround time and how reliably the team can see incoming work. These are future evaluation questions, not results claimed here.