> ## 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.

# Categorizing your inbox

> Set up automatic email sorting in one step right after connecting a mailbox — pick a business template or let AI read your inbox and propose categories.

Once you connect a mailbox, InboxMate offers to set up inbox categorization for you — so the very first email that arrives is already sorted, drafted, or ticketed without you touching the rules screen. This is the **Kategorisieren** step in onboarding (and you can re-run the same flow later from the visual editor).

You have three ways through it:

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="AI analysiert" icon="sparkles">
    InboxMate reads your recent mail and proposes categories that match what's actually in your inbox.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Vorlage wählen" icon="layout-template">
    Start from a hand-built template for your line of business.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Überspringen" icon="forward">
    Skip for now — a careful default categorizer is created so nothing is left unsorted.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Option 1 — Let AI analyse your inbox

Pick **AI analysiert** and InboxMate samples your most recent inbound emails (up to 30), summarises them, and asks the model to propose a small set of categories that fit your real traffic. It's read-only — nothing is saved until you confirm.

When the scan finishes you land on the preview screen with:

* **Proposed categories** — each with a name, a one-line description, and a cluster of **Beispielsender** (example senders the AI saw for that category) so you can sanity-check the proposal at a glance.
* An editable card per category — rename it, rewrite the description, or remove it before saving.

<Info>
  If the mailbox is brand-new and empty, the AI has nothing to read. You'll see an "empty inbox" notice with a **Erneut versuchen** button that re-syncs recent mail and tries again — useful right after connecting Outlook, where the first sync can lag a few seconds.
</Info>

## Option 2 — Pick a business template

Prefer to start from a known-good set? Choose **Vorlage wählen** and pick the template closest to how your team works:

| Template             | Best for            | Categories                                                                |
| -------------------- | ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Allgemein**        | Most inboxes        | Wichtig · Newsletter · Spam                                               |
| **Customer Success** | Support teams       | Kundenanfrage · Bug-Report · Newsletter · Spam                            |
| **Sales & Einkauf**  | Sales / procurement | Angebot / Anfrage · Rechnung / Buchhaltung · Lieferanten / Einkauf · Spam |

Each template comes with sensible default actions per category (for example, *Kundenanfrage* pre-arms a reply draft and opens a ticket; *Newsletter* and *Spam* archive). You land on the same preview screen as the AI path, where you can edit category names and descriptions before saving.

## Choosing an aggressiveness level

Below the category cards is the **aggressiveness** selector — this is the single most important choice on the screen. It controls how much InboxMate does on its own versus how much it merely *suggests* and waits for you to approve.

<Tabs>
  <Tab title="Vorsichtig">
    The safe default. Nothing fires automatically — every action is suggested and waits in your inbox for a click. Best while you're learning to trust the rules.
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Standard">
    Low-risk actions auto-fire (archiving Spam, opening tickets). **Newsletter archiving is only *suggested*** here — you approve it with a click — and anything that reaches a customer (replies, forwards) still waits for you.
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Aggressiv">
    The most hands-off level. On top of Standard, **Newsletter is auto-archived** and obvious Spam is permanently deleted automatically. Customer-facing replies are *still* never auto-sent from onboarding — those always keep a human in the loop.
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Anpassen">
    Fine-grained control. Toggle auto-fire on or off per category yourself, instead of using a preset.
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

The action chips on each category card update live as you change the level: a green chip means the action will **auto**-fire, a grey chip means it will be **suggested**. Replies and other customer-facing actions stay grey at every preset by design — InboxMate will draft them, but a person always presses send.

## Apply

Hit **Übernehmen**. InboxMate saves the categorizer scoped to the mailbox you just connected, then immediately runs it over your recent inbox (the last \~14 days) so you see real results right away instead of waiting for the next email to arrive.

From here you can fine-tune everything — add conditions, change actions, test a sample email — in [the flow editor](/user-guide/inbox/flow-editor).

<Note>
  The onboarding step always sets up an **email** categorizer scoped to one mailbox. To cover several mailboxes, or to categorize widget chats too, adjust the scope later in the editor — see [Categorizers](/user-guide/inbox/categorizers#scope).
</Note>