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Triaging submissions

Each Contact submission lands with AI-applied tags. Use them as the starting point, not the conclusion.

Who this is for: anyone who holds the Contact Inbox capability (owners and admins always do). The messages arrive whether or not AI is on; the tags, summary and suggested reply need AI turned on in Settings → Organization → AI.

What AI tags

  • Priority — Low / Medium / High / Urgent
  • Category — General / Donor / Volunteer / Gift Request / Complaint
  • Sentiment — Positive / Neutral / Negative
  • Likely gift request (boolean) — AI suspects it should be a Request record, not a Contact one. See Bridge to Requests.

Steps

  1. Open Contact. The page is headed Messages: everything sent through your website’s contact form, newest first.

  2. Each message shows in full, with its AI tags, an AI summary and, if AI master is on, a Suggested reply.

  3. To answer inside CartonCrew, click Reply here at the bottom of the message. An editor opens in the message with the Suggested reply in it (empty when there is none).

    • The AI buttons rewrite the draft: Regenerate, Shorter, Friendlier, More formal, or type a request into Ask AI to change… and press Ask AI. The AI reads the whole conversation and your current draft. It only changes the draft; it never sends.
    • Under Send a private copy to, tick any owners or admins who should get a copy. Nobody is ticked by default. Each gets a separate Copy of reply sent to … email; the person you are replying to never sees who was copied.
    • Press Send. The email goes from your organization’s name via CartonCrew to the sender alone, with a reply address that belongs to this one conversation.

  4. Or click Reply by email, unchanged: a mailto: link that opens your own mail program with the address and the subject (“Re: …”) filled in, and the Suggested reply as the body when there is one. You send it from there; CartonCrew does not send that reply or keep a copy. Copy puts the suggested reply on your clipboard instead.

    Both buttons are on every message that has a sender address, whether or not AI has written a suggested reply.

  5. Set the message’s status from its dropdown: New, In progress or Resolved. Sending a reply does not change it. When the sender replies to a Reply here email, the message goes back to In progress on its own.

The conversation

After a Reply here reply, the message has Show conversation: the original message, every reply sent from CartonCrew (who sent it, who was copied, when, and Sent / Not sent), and every reply that came back, oldest first. A reply that came back shows a new reply badge until someone opens the conversation, and the person who sent the last reply plus everyone copied on it get an email about it. Quoted history is trimmed, replies are shown as plain text, and attachments are not kept (the reply says attachment not shown). 6. Spam or a test? Delete the message with the ✕ at the top of it. That is permanent, and deletes its conversation too.

What you’ll see

Common issues

  • No AI tags and no suggested reply — AI is off, or not included on your plan. The submission still lands, untagged; Reply by email is still there and opens with an empty body.
  • No Reply by email button — the message has no usable sender address, so there is nobody to reply to.
  • AI tag is wrong — the tags are a starting point. There is no control to change them; use the status and your own judgment.
  • Suggested reply has the wrong tone — the reply is a suggestion; rewrite freely, or use Reply here and the Friendlier / More formal / Ask AI to change… buttons.
  • The sender says they replied and nothing came back — only answers to a Reply here email come back to CartonCrew. An answer to a Reply by email email went to your own mailbox.
  • Send says the reply could not be sent — the mail service did not take it; nothing was sent and the draft is still there. Try again.

Last updated: 2026-06-01 · Applies to: CartonCrew v1.56+

Form settingsBridge to Requests