Overview of Triage

Learn how to best navigate your Triage

Erin Jamison avatar
Written by Erin Jamison
Updated over a week ago

The first thing you will see when you open Karbon is your Triage. This is your main inbox for emails, notifications, work items and notes, where you can reply, forward and comment as well as assign emails to yourself or a team member.

Index

Integrating with your email provider

Karbon integrates with Gmail, Office 365 (Business Plan or Business Premium) and Microsoft Exchange (version 2010 or newer). Due to the tight integration with your email provider, what happens in one is replicated in the other.

  • If you clear an email in Triage, it will archive the email in your inbox

  • If you archive the email in your inbox, it will clear it in Triage

  • If you move an email back to your inbox, it will appear in Triage

  • If you read the email in Triage, it will be marked as read in your inbox

You cannot, however, delete an email from your account. To start you off, your 20 most recent emails in your inbox will be synchronized with Karbon.

Video: How to use Triage?

Watch this quick 2-minute introduction video to find out how Triage works and how to best take advantage of its functionality.

Anatomy of an email notification

Your emails and notifications display various information that allows you to scan your Triage and action emails faster.

  • Avatar of the sender of the most recent email (for emails), author of the original item (for notes), or work assignee (for client tasks and tasks)

  • The subject (for emails), or title (for other items)

  • Assignee (if there is one)

  • Related work item (if there is one)

  • Contact (if there is one)

  • Number of emails in the thread (for emails only)

  • Number of comments

  • Number of attached files

  • Blue dot if unread

  • Time of most recent activity


Read and unread items

If you haven't read an item yet, it will appear with a bold title/subject line and a blue dot and timestamp on the right. Once you click on it to read it, the blue dot will disappear and the title/subject line will no longer be marked in bold.

If you wish to mark an email as unread, click on the emails option menu (...) and click Mark as unread. If there are unread emails or comments in the item, this will also display under the item.

Client task notifications will display any comments and/or an activity if they have been completed or a file uploaded. If a client task has been completed and has an unread comment, the comment is displayed. Once you read that comment, the item will default to display the latest item in the conversation—the comment or completed activity.


Navigate Triage by color

Each notification in Triage has its own color code, so you can easily get an overview of what is in your inbox.

  • Light grey: Work assignment

  • Orange: Note

  • Dark grey: Email

  • Green: Task

  • Pink: Client Task

Filtering your Triage items

To help you sort through Triage quickly, the filter option lets you choose to either see all items, unread items, only emails, only mentions or only notifications.

All: Every Triage item will appear
Unread: Any items you have not yet read will appear

Email: Only emails are shown
Mentions: Any item (Task, Email, Note) where a comment has been added that includes an @mention of you, or a team you are involved in
Notifications: All Triage items, excluding emails (Client Tasks, Work assignments, Notes and Tasks where you have been @mentioned)

Involves Contacts: Involves contacts you have saved as contacts in Karbon
Doesn't Involve Contacts: Doesn't involve contacts saved in Karbon

Click on the numbers on the top right corner of the screen to view your emails from the last page first

Actioning your emails

The goal of Triage is to clear out every item and quickly take action on emails. With emails in Triage, you can:

  • Reply to an email as you would in your email inbox. Once you have replied and actioned the email, clear it by clicking the cleared icon. If you have attached the email to a contact or a work item, you will still be able to find it on that timeline.


  • Add an email to a contact's timeline. Timelines are similar to email folders as they store all communication between your team and the client.

  • Add an email to a piece of work if the email is part of a job you're working on (i.e. monthly bookkeeping, sales tax, etc.), so your team can see all relevant communication tied to it.

  • Assign an email to yourself or a team member if you want them to take ownership and action it. Once assigned, clear it. The assigned email will show up on your colleague's to-do list where you can track the status.

  • Have an email you need to action later? Plan when you want to action your email, by clicking on 'Plan for This week'. The email will now show up in 'My Week' where you can action it or move it to the week you want to do it in. Go ahead and clear the email from Triage afterward.

  • Accept a meeting invite directly from Triage when you have your calendar connected to Karbon.


Eliminating Triage clutter

There are several options to help you declutter and reduce the noise in your Triage.

  • Use the Low Priority for emails that you may want to read later

  • Turn off email notifications for conversations that are no longer relevant to you

  • Have certain emails skip Triage

  • Clear the items individually or in bulk

Low Priority

You should consider marking any emails that are not of high importance to you (such as newsletters, event invitations or system updates) as low priority. Click the email's options menu (...) and select Low Priority. By doing this, that email, and all future emails from that sender, will automatically be delivered to your low priority section.

Later

Any item in your Triage that you don't have the capacity to look at currently or that doesn't relate to your immediate work, can be moved to the Later section.

You can still perform the same actions within Later as you would in your Triage, such as assigning, mentioning colleagues etc., apart from moving them to Low Priority.

Items will remain in Later unless you:

  • Clear the email

  • Return it to Triage

  • Activity moves it back to Triage (within the guidelines of the notify me rules)

Turn off Notifications

If you are part of or have been brought into an email conversation with an @mention, you will be notified in your Triage with all further activity on that email. If you do not wish to be notified of new comments, you can turn off notifications by clicking on the notification toggle for that email.

Have emails skip Triage

You can choose for certain emails to skip Triage by creating rules and folders in your email client. When you've done this, reach out to support by clicking on Help & Feedback - Still can't find what you need? Let us know which folders you would like to skip and we will set that up.

Clearing items from Triage

When an email is cleared it will be removed from Triage, and archived in your inbox.

If you do not need to take any action with an email or have already actioned it, you should clear it from Triage.

Depending on the type of emails you wish to clear, you will have a few options to clear an email.

  • Clear an item

  • Clear in bulk

  • Multi-select items

Clear an Item

To clear an email, click on the clear icon from your email actions menu:

Note: The clear icon is now a box with a tick

Clear in Bulk

To clear an email in bulk, find the period of time that you’d like the emails cleared from (Today, This Month, etc.) click on the square button on the left-hand side of Triage under the preferred time period and click Clear.

Multi-select items

With the multi-select option, you can pick and choose the items you would like to delete. Just hold the Shift key and select the first email you’d like to clear and select the last item, all the items in between will be selected as well, and select Clear.

When an email is cleared from Triage, it will be located in your Cleared Items, found under 'Triage' in your main menu on the left.

Triage shortcuts

The quickest way to get back to Triage from anywhere else in Karbon is to click the Triage icon at the top right corner.

When you have clicked on an email to read it, you can hit the Escape (Esc) button to quickly collapse the email again.

Triage Icons

Here are the Triage Icons that allow you to action your items in a faster way.

Later: This icon allows you to send items to your Later bucket within Triage.

Assign to Colleague: This icon allows you to assign emails directly to a colleague.

Add to Work: This icon allows you to add an item to a Work Item.

Clear: This allows you to clear any items from your Triage.

Notifications

What can you expect to show up in Triage?
Here's a complete list of actions in Karbon, that will generate a notification:

Assignments:

  • When you are assigned an email

  • When you are assigned a note

  • When you are assigned a work item (by an automator or colleague - excludes via a repeat work schedule)

  • Client task comments (if you are the work assignee, the person who has sent out the client task or you have manually opted into notifications)

If you are assigned a note or work items, it will show up under the 'notifications' filter in Triage. If you are assigned an email, it will show up in the 'emails' filter.

Mentions:

When you or a team you're in is @mentioned in an email
When you or a team you're in is @mentioned on a note

When you or a team you're in is @mentioned on a comment

When you or a team you're in is @mentioned on a client task

These will show up in the Mentions filter of your Triage.

Keep in mind that you will get a notification for each new comment that's added, once you've been @mentioned on an email, a note or a comment.

Toggle notifications on / off

Sometimes you might want to follow an email thread, note an activity or a client task that you are not a part of or explicitly mentioned in. In that case, you can opt into notifications.

This also holds true if you do not want to follow a thread any longer. If you do not wish to be notified of new comments and activity, you can turn notifications off by clicking the notification toggle. You will now only be notified if you are explicitly @mentioned.

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