Assign a recipient to every inquiry category

The operational decision

Stop otherwise complete inquiries from landing in an unowned inbox. A handoff is useful when the receiving staff member can identify the next action and its owner. Delivering a notification to a device is not the same as acknowledgment or a decision by an attorney.

Prepare the workflow

Map each approved category to a role or queue, name a backup and test access with a fictional notification.

Example wording for approval

“Send the example inquiry to the approved practice-area queue. If that queue has no active owner, use the documented backup rather than an arbitrary attorney address.”

Worked example

The fictional estate-planning queue belongs to one staff role, while business inquiries go to another. An unknown category needs a named general-review owner. Test all three rather than letting every notification fall into a shared mailbox. When the primary role is absent, the approved backup should receive ownership explicitly. A destination address without a person or role responsible for monitoring it is not a complete handoff design, even if a delivery test returns a successful response.

Handoff record

Record these task-specific fields: category, primary queue, backup queue, owner.

Acceptance check

Disable the fictional primary recipient. The workflow should choose its approved backup and record the routing result without dropping the inquiry silently.

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