Categories and teams

What a category is, how to create one, how categories map to teams, and which team gets an email when Autopilot is unsure.

Last updated 30 Oct 2026

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Categories describe what customers write about, such as "Account opening" or "Complaints". Teams are the groups of people who handle the work. Each category routes to one team, so when Mailnitio Autopilot puts an email in a category, the email goes to that category's team.

What a category is

A category has:

a name and a description of what customers ask about, in one or two sentences
the team it routes to and a default priority
phrases that point here: words and phrases typical of these emails
phrases that point elsewhere: signals that look similar but belong to another category

Autopilot uses the description and phrases to decide when an email belongs to a category, so clear descriptions give better routing. Your workspace starts with categories suited to your industry.

Create or edit a category

Go to Settings then Autopilot then Categories.
Select Add category, or the pencil next to a category to edit it.
Fill in the Name, Description, Routes to team and Default priority, and add phrases.
Select Add category or Save category.

New categories start in Shadow: Autopilot sorts emails into them, but no tickets or replies are created until you set the category live in Settings then Autopilot then Replies. See Autopilot replies.

Only owners and admins can change categories.

Create a team

Go to Settings then Teams and routing. The Teams tab lists each team, its email alias, how it assigns work and the categories that route to it.
Select Create team and enter the Team name.
Optionally add a Team email alias, the address customers use for this team.
Under Assign new tickets, choose Leave unassigned (agents pick from the queue) or Round robin across team members.
Select Create team.

Then select Manage members to choose who is in the team. For each member you can switch on the channels they receive work from. Members only receive work for the channels switched on. Supervisors and admins see every team's work.

Map categories to teams

Each category's team is set in the category itself, under Routes to team. To move a category to another team, edit the category in Settings then Autopilot then Categories. The Teams tab shows the result: each team card lists the categories that route to it, or "No categories route here yet".

The default team

Some emails do not get a confident category: Autopilot is unsure, it fails, or it returns a category you do not have. These go to a default category, and so to that category's team:

Each mailbox has its own Default category, set in Settings then Mailboxes. Its team is the mailbox's default team.
The workspace Default category in Settings then Teams and routing then Routing and escalation is used when a mailbox has none.

These emails are also marked Needs review, so a person checks them. The default category carries a Default label in the category list.

Escalation team

The Escalation team, set on the Routing and escalation tab, receives every escalated email, whatever its category. See How auto-routing works.

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