Triaging Your Inbox

The Inbox works best as a habit: open it, work the queue top to bottom, and get it as close to zero as the day allows. This article gives you a practical rhythm for doing exactly that — what to click, when to pin, when to resolve, and a suggested daily routine that keeps leads from going cold.

Step 1: Open an item

Click any row and the full request or appointment opens in the detail pane beside the list. Opening an item marks it read for you — the unread dot and bold title go away on your screen, but your teammates keep their own unread indicators, so nobody loses track of what they haven't seen yet.

Start with the unread items at the top: those are the newest, and speed matters most on fresh leads.

Step 2: Work the issue

The reason chips on the row tell you what kind of work you're looking at. The detail pane gives you everything you need to do it without leaving the Inbox.

For a request

Read the summary — what the customer said, in their own words.
Fill in anything missing: contact details, the service address, the appointment type, booking-question answers. Everything saves automatically as you type.
Check the Sessions tab if you want the source material — call transcripts, texts, and form sessions tied to the request.
When it's ready, click the action button:
- Schedule — for a clean request with no open issues.
- Approve & Schedule — for a flagged request (failed qualification, out of service area, needs approval). Approving overrides the flags and books in one step.

Driive creates the appointment and the issue clears on its own. If you'd rather the customer fill in their own details, you can share a request link instead — see Sharing Request Links. The full request workflow lives in The Request Detail Page and From Request to Appointment.

For an appointment that needs scheduling

The detail pane shows the appointment itself, ready to book:

Pick a time — use the Find a Time picker to choose from your team's real availability, then confirm.
Or let the customer choose — Share Booking Link sends them a personalized link to your live availability.

Either way, once a time is on the calendar the appointment moves to Scheduled and leaves your Inbox automatically. See Scheduling an Appointment for the details.

Tip: You never have to "close" an item you've handled. Fix the underlying need — gather the info, approve, schedule — and it disappears from the queue on its own.

Step 3: Pin what you can't finish yet

Not everything can be handled on the first touch. Waiting on a callback about a leaking roof? Need the owner to weigh in on a commercial job? Hover the row and click Pin to top. Pinned items stay at the top of the list no matter how much new work arrives, so they can't drift out of sight. Unpin when you're done.

Step 4: Resolve what doesn't need action

Some items just don't need anything from you — a duplicate request, a dropped call from someone who called right back, a lead you've decided to pass on. Hover the row and click the checkmark to Resolve it. Driive asks you to confirm:

Resolve this issue? This removes it from your inbox. The underlying request or appointment isn't deleted and stays accessible elsewhere.

That's the key promise: resolving only dismisses the Inbox entry. The request stays in your Requests history and any appointment stays in Appointments, so nothing is lost if you need it later.

Important: Use Resolve for "no action needed," not as a to-do checkoff. If the item needs work — scheduling, approval, missing info — do the work and let the issue clear itself.

A suggested daily routine

Every business runs differently, but this rhythm works well for most home-service teams:

Morning triage (10 minutes). Open the Inbox with coffee in hand. Click All Issues and skim every unread item so nothing surprises you later. Approve or resolve the judgment calls — Failed qualification, Out of service area, Manual review — while your head is fresh.
Batch the follow-ups. Filter by Needs information and Call dropped and make your callbacks in one sitting. One focused calling block beats scattered interruptions.
Fill the calendar. Filter by Needs scheduled and get times booked — pick slots yourself or fire off booking links.
Afternoon sweep. New requests land all day. A quick check after lunch and before close keeps response times short — leads booked within hours close far more often than leads booked tomorrow.
End at (or near) zero. Pin anything genuinely waiting on someone else, and head home knowing the queue is honest.

Inbox Overview — The layout, filters, and search.
Issues and Reasons Explained — What each reason chip means and how it clears.
From Request to Appointment — The Schedule and Approve & Schedule actions in depth.