Inbox & follow-ups·Beginner5 min read

Assign cases to teammates

Manual assignment from the case page, auto-assign rules in Settings (round-robin or by category), and how reassignment + notifications work.

In this guide

1. Why assignment matters
2. Manual assignment
3. Auto-assign rules
4. What an assignee receives
5. Reassigning a case
6. Unassigning a case
7. Bulk reassign
8. Permissions
9. Common questions
Related

Each case in Yesoma can have one assignee — the teammate whose job it is to reply, follow up, and close it. Assignment makes "whose move is it?" obvious at a glance, routes notifications to the right person, and keeps work from piling up anonymously. Managers, Admins, and Workspace Owners can assign manually, Agents can pick up unassigned work, and auto-assign rules can distribute new inquiries the moment they arrive.

1. Why assignment matters

Without assignment, everyone on the team sees the same inbox and nobody owns anything. With it, each teammate has a personal workload, accountability is clear, and the notification system knows exactly who to ping when a customer replies. Even if you're a solo operator today, getting into the habit makes it easy to hand off cases when you grow.

2. Manual assignment

Managers, Admins, and Workspace Owners can open any case at /inbox/[id] and use the Assigned to dropdown to choose an eligible teammate — including themselves. Workspace Owners, Admins, Managers, and Agents can all receive a Case; Viewer accounts are excluded. An Agent does not receive the teammate assignment dropdown. On an unassigned Case, the Agent sees Pick up case instead.

A few things worth knowing:

Empty means unassigned. A fresh inquiry with no auto-assign rule stays unassigned until someone claims it or you pick a person from the dropdown.
Reassign at any time. Just open the dropdown again and pick someone else. The change is instant and logged in the case timeline.
Picking up a Case assigns it to you. Agents can claim an unassigned Case but cannot assign it to someone else, reassign owned work, or unassign it.

3. Auto-assign rules

Go to Settings → Team → Auto-assign rules to set up rules that fire automatically when a new inbound message creates a fresh inquiry. You have three approaches:

Round-robin. Pick a pool of teammates and Yesoma rotates through them in order. Each new inquiry goes to the next person in the rotation. Good for a team where everyone handles the same kind of request.

Assign by category. Route certain types of inquiries to specific people — complaints to a senior teammate, pricing questions to the owner, service-area requests to your operations lead. Rules match on the inquiry category Yesoma detects at intake.

Leave new inquiries unassigned. Skip auto-assign entirely and let your team claim cases from the shared inbox manually. Useful when you want whoever is available to pick it up rather than pre-routing.

Auto-assign rules fire once, when the inquiry is first created. They do not re-fire on reopen.

4. What an assignee receives

An assignee gets the same notification signals as the workspace owner, but scoped to cases they own:

Browser tab badge — automatic, no setup needed.
Web Push — opt-in, works even when Yesoma isn't open.
Email notification — opt-in, sends a preview and a deep link to the case.

See Get notified about new messages for the full setup guide. Each teammate configures their own notification preferences — you don't have to do it for them.

5. Reassigning a case

Managers, Admins, and Workspace Owners can pick a different person from the Assigned to dropdown. Common reasons:

Teammate is out of office. Reassign their open cases so nothing sits idle.
Escalation. A case turns complex and needs the manager or owner's attention.
Specialist needed. The inquiry turns out to be a billing question and your billing lead should take it.

When you reassign, the previous assignee stops receiving notifications for that case. The new assignee starts immediately. The reassignment is recorded in the case timeline with a timestamp.

6. Unassigning a case

Managers, Admins, and Workspace Owners can select the blank / unassigned option at the top of the Assigned to dropdown. The case returns to the shared pool and no individual gets pinged on subsequent replies. This is useful when a case is closed-pending-review and no one needs to actively own it, or when you want it back in the unclaimed queue for whoever picks it up next.

7. Bulk reassign

Bulk reassignment is not a built-in feature today. If a departed teammate had many open cases, you'll need to reassign them one at a time from each case page. If this is a frequent pain point for your team, let the team know at support@getyesoma.com — it's on the roadmap.

8. Permissions

The Assigned to dropdown is gated server-side by role. These roles can assign, reassign, or unassign Cases:

Workspace Owner
Admin
Manager

Agents can be selected as an assignee and can pick up an unassigned Case, but they cannot assign work to another teammate, reassign an owned Case, or unassign it. Viewers cannot assign or receive Cases. If a teammate you expect to see is missing from the dropdown, check their role in Settings → Team.

9. Common questions

Does the customer see who is assigned to their case? No. Assignment is internal only. The customer sees your business name and branded reply emails, not the individual teammate's name or any indication that assignment happened.

What happens if my assignee leaves the company? They stay listed as the assignee on any open cases until you manually reassign those cases or an admin removes them from the workspace. While they remain listed, no one gets pinged on replies to those cases — their push subscription and email opt-in are tied to their active account. Reassign open cases before or immediately after removing a teammate to avoid a notification gap.

Can multiple people be assigned to one case? No. Yesoma uses a single-assignee model by design — one person owns the case and remains accountable for the next customer step. To ask leadership for a decision without changing ownership, use Escalate → Request manager help. Use Hand over Case when leadership should become the owner. Internal notes remain available for ordinary private collaboration.