> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.inboxmate.psquared.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Best practices

> How to get InboxMate sorting and drafting accurately, and how to graduate rules to autopilot without regretting it.

## Start on Vorsichtig, not Aggressiv

It's tempting to pick the most hands-off aggressiveness level on day one. Don't. **Vorsichtig** suggests everything and fires nothing automatically — every categorization, archive, and draft waits in **Entscheidungen** for your click. That's exactly what you want for the first week: it lets you see how InboxMate reads your real mail before you hand it any autonomy.

**Do:**

* Run at least a few days on Vorsichtig or Standard before moving to Aggressiv
* Watch a full week of traffic first — most inboxes have weekly patterns (Monday backlog, Friday newsletters) that a single day won't show you

**Don't:**

* Jump straight to Aggressiv "to save time" — a wrongly auto-archived customer email costs more time than the clicks you saved
* Turn on auto-reply (Business plans) before you've reviewed dozens of drafts manually

## Treat Entscheidungen as the real workflow, not a chore

Every suggestion — a category assignment, an archive, a draft reply — lands in **Entscheidungen** until a person acts on it. Click **Ja** to approve, **Anders** when it's close but needs a tweak, **Ignorieren** to dismiss it outright.

<Info>
  **Anders is more valuable than Ja.** Approving with no changes tells InboxMate it got something right; editing tells it *exactly* what "right" looks like for your business. In the first weeks, favor a quick edit over a rubber-stamp approval.
</Info>

## Let it learn from your edits — then check in on KI-Reife

Approvals and edits aren't just clearing your queue, they're training data. Once you've approved the same kind of action several times, InboxMate offers to graduate it: a prompt titled *"Ab jetzt automatisch?"* asks whether that specific action should run on its own from now on.

* Click **Ja, automatisch** for rules you've reviewed enough times to trust blindly (e.g., "always archive this newsletter sender")
* Click **Weiter fragen** if you want a few more reps before handing it over
* Check **KI-Reife** ([AI maturity](/user-guide/inbox/ai-maturity)) periodically to see which categories have earned enough trust to graduate, and which are still shaky

Graduate rule by rule, not all at once. A category that's 100% reliable ("Spam") and one that's borderline ("Kundenanfrage") don't belong on the same autopilot switch.

## Keep customer-facing replies human until you're confident

Draft-and-suggest is safe by default — InboxMate writes the reply, you decide whether it goes out. Auto-send (Business plans, via **Mit KI antworten** in auto mode) skips that review, so treat it as the last thing you turn on, not the first:

* Prove the draft quality first. Read a few weeks of drafts for a category before considering auto-send for it
* Start auto-send on your lowest-stakes category (an FAQ-style category with a stable answer), not your highest-value customer segment
* Even after graduating, spot-check sent replies occasionally — auto doesn't mean unmonitored

## Connect Outlook, not just forwarding

Forwarding gets emails into InboxMate, but it's a one-way copy — InboxMate can't act on the original mailbox. Connecting Outlook / Microsoft 365 via OAuth unlocks the parts that make automation actually useful:

* Archiving in InboxMate moves the message in your real Outlook Archive folder, so the mailbox stays in sync with what your team sees
* Replies send from your real address and land in your Sent folder
* AI drafts mirror into your Outlook Drafts folder, so anyone can review and send from Outlook itself, mobile included

If you're stuck on forwarding for now (unsupported provider, no admin buy-in yet), it still works for triage and drafting — you just lose the two-way sync. See [Email integration](/user-guide/inbox/email-integration) for the full comparison and the Microsoft 365 admin-consent steps if your tenant blocks self-serve OAuth.

## Keep categories tight and re-check them

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Fewer, sharper categories beat a long list">
    A handful of categories that map to real actions (draft a reply, open a ticket, archive) work better than a long taxonomy nobody looks at. Start from the AI-proposed categories or a template, then prune.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Re-run categorization if your traffic shifts">
    New product line, new support process, seasonal spike — revisit your categories in the [flow editor](/user-guide/inbox/flow-editor) rather than letting a stale rule silently mis-sort mail.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Use trace mode to debug a surprising outcome">
    If an email lands somewhere unexpected, open it and click the category badge → **Im Flow ansehen** to replay exactly which rule matched and why.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Monitor and improve

* Check **KI-Reife** ([AI maturity](/user-guide/inbox/ai-maturity)) to see which rules are ready to graduate and which need more supervision
* Watch **Usage & Billing** if you've turned on several drafting categories — AI drafts and auto-replies consume credits, rule-based sorting and routing don't
* Revisit categories after any real change to your business — a stale category is worse than no category