How to sort and triage your business inbox with AI in GoHighLevel
By The Ten Minute Agents Team · 18 October 2026
Short answer: when a new email or message lands in Conversations, a workflow can label it, save that label on the contact, and text you if it is urgent. Replies stay as drafts until you send them.
Newsletters get a tag and no chase. A booking or a new lead gets a tag so the right follow-up can pick it up. Support questions wait for you to approve a draft.
Why it is worth setting up
A booking request sits under a newsletter. A complaint about today sits under a receipt. Sorting by hand slips when you are with a customer. A short workflow does it every time, and you only open what needs a person.
Before you start
- A GoHighLevel account. Try GoHighLevel (affiliate link)
- Your business email showing in Conversations. For Gmail or Outlook, connect it under Settings → My Profile → Email (2-way sync). Mail from people who are already contacts syncs in. Replies to email you send from the account also show in Conversations once Settings → Email Services is set up.
- Two contact custom fields. Go to Settings → Custom Fields, choose Contact, stay on Fields, and click Create field. Name them Triage Category and Triage Urgency. Single line text is enough.
- A short list of your services, prices and opening hours, so any draft sticks to the facts.
Step 1: a draft-only assistant
- Go to AI Agents → Conversation AI and create a bot, or open one you already have.
- Set the response mode to Suggestive mode. The bot writes a suggested reply. You read it, edit it if you need to, and send it. Nothing goes to the customer until you do.
- Add your FAQs, hours and prices under AI Agents → Knowledge Base. Open the bot's Bot Training tab and select that knowledge base.
- In the instructions, keep the tone warm, brief and in plain UK English. Say it must never promise a refund, a price or a date that is not in the knowledge base. If it is unsure, it should say someone will reply within one working day.
If a suggestion card also lists actions, leave on only the ones you want, then use Send & run.
Step 2: the sorting workflow
Go to Automation → Workflows → Create Workflow → Start from Scratch. Name it Inbox Triage.
Click Add New Trigger and choose Customer Replied.
Add a filter: Reply Channel = Email. For website chat or texts as well, add another Customer Replied trigger and set Reply Channel for that channel. Website chat is listed as All-in-One Chat.
Open the workflow Settings and switch on Allow Re-entry, so the next message from the same person is sorted too.
Add GPT powered by OpenAI. Pick a model suited to sorting and short replies. If you see temperature, keep it low so the label stays steady. Prompt:
Reply with one word only: lead, booking, support, billing, spam or other. Message: {{contact.message}}
Add Update Contact Field and save that reply into Triage Category. Help shows the first GPT step's reply as
{{chatgpt.1.response}}. The value picker can insert it.Add a second GPT powered by OpenAI step:
Reply with one word only: high, normal or low. High means a complaint, a cancellation, a payment problem, or anything about today or tomorrow. Message: {{contact.message}}
Save it into Triage Urgency. Insert this step's own reply from the value picker. Do not reuse the first step's code.
Add If/Else and branch on Triage Category. On each branch, Add Contact Tag:
- booking:
triage:booking - lead:
triage:lead - support:
triage:support - billing:
triage:billing - spam:
triage:spam - other:
triage:other
- booking:
Booking and lead stop after the tag. Another workflow can start when that tag is added. On billing, add Send Internal Notification and, if someone else handles the money, Assign To User. On spam, stop after the tag. Do not send a reply.
Add an If/Else on Triage Urgency. When it is high, Send Internal Notification by SMS and In-App Notification to yourself: "Urgent message from {{contact.first_name}}. Please check Conversations."
Publish. Draft workflows do not run.
Support and other messages are the ones to answer from the Suggestive draft. Skip drafts on anything tagged as spam.
A 5pm nudge for you
This second workflow reminds you. It does not email customers, and a Scheduler run is not tied to one contact, so it will not count each label for you.
- New workflow, trigger Scheduler, interval Daily at 5pm. Use Skip Weekends if you close then.
- Send Internal Notification, type Email, to yourself: "Check Conversations for anything still marked urgent."
- Publish.
Test it, and if it isn't working
From another inbox, send three messages: a booking for next week, a complaint that mentions today, and a newsletter. Check the tags and the two fields. The complaint should text you. The newsletter should not. The draft should be waiting, not already sent.
If nothing happens, check the workflow is published, and that the test came from an existing contact to the inbox you connected. Open Execution Logs. If they never entered, look at Reply Channel. If a later email is ignored, check Allow Re-entry.
Want it ready-made?
The AI Inbox Triage agent from Ten Minute Agents sets this up for you:
- it labels each message as lead, booking, support, billing, spam or other, and marks how urgent it is
- it saves the label and urgency on the contact
- bookings and leads are passed to the booking and lead agents
- support questions get a draft reply for you to approve
- urgent messages text you with a one-line summary
- a 5pm daily digest shows what still needs you
It comes with a plain-English guide designed to take about ten minutes. You can buy it on its own for £29, or get it with all five agents in the Small Business Agent Pack.
Not sure it's the right one to start with? Take the 2-minute quiz.
FAQ
Will it reply to customers on its own? Not in Suggestive mode. You get a draft, and you send it.
What counts as urgent? A complaint, a cancellation, a payment problem, or anything about today or tomorrow.
Will the 5pm workflow email my customers? No. It notifies you. Customer mail goes out only when you send a draft, or from another workflow you build on purpose.
Sources
- HighLevel Help: Workflow Trigger - Customer Replied (updated 25 Feb 2026)
- HighLevel Help: Workflow Action - GPT Powered by OpenAI (updated 1 Oct 2026)
- HighLevel Help: Suggestive mode in Conversation AI
- HighLevel Help: How to set up a Conversation AI bot
- HighLevel Help: Workflow Trigger - Scheduler
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