Inbox and Team Queue
Understand personal assignments, unread work, team handoffs, and routing.
Inbox and Team Queue answer two different questions: what needs me, and what needs someone on my team. Keeping them distinct is what stops work sitting unclaimed.
Inbox is personal
Inbox collects what changed for you specifically: tasks assigned to you, mentions, and approvals waiting on your decision. It is a notification surface rather than a task list, so the goal is to empty it by acting, not to keep it as a backlog.
Team Queue is role-aware
A team queue holds work that belongs to a group of people rather than one named person. Anyone in the team can see it, and a team lead governs membership and routing. This is the right place for incoming work that has not been assigned yet, because it stays visible instead of landing in one inbox and stalling there.
Route work with context
When you move a task from a queue to a person, carry the context with it. Set the owner, confirm the due date, and make sure the description says what done looks like. Routing without those three is how a task comes back a day later with a question attached.
Use My Work as the daily list
My Work is the counterpart to Inbox. Inbox tells you what changed, My Work tells you what you owe across every project and workspace. Most people start in Inbox to catch anything new, then work from My Work for the rest of the day.
Keep notifications meaningful
If notifications get noisy people stop reading them, and the useful ones get missed. Automations should notify on things that genuinely need a human, such as an approval request or a missed date, rather than on every stage change. Tuning this early protects the value of Inbox.
Worth remembering
- Treat Inbox as something to clear, and My Work as the list you work from.
- Unassigned work belongs in a team queue, never in a personal inbox.
- Fewer, better notifications get read. Broad ones get ignored.
Common questions
Inbox shows what recently changed and needs your attention. My Work shows everything currently assigned to you.
Team leads govern their team's membership and routing, and Managers and above can manage teams generally.
Related guides
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