Assignment

Assigning threads in Plain keeps support organized, accountable, and responsive, especially as volume grows or teams share responsibilities. Every assignment gives a thread a clear owner, helping avoid double-handling, speed up responses, and enable smooth collaboration and handovers.

How assignment works

When you begin typing in a thread, Plain automatically assigns it to you. You can also assign threads manually:

• Press A while viewing a thread

• Use CMD + K to search and assign from the queue

• Select an assignee from the top-right of the thread view

Sticky assignment (and when to turn it off)

By default, once you’re assigned to a thread, Plain keeps you assigned – even if the customer replies later. We call this sticky assignment, and it ensures that whoever picks up a request can see it through end-to-end.

You can change this behaviour in Settings → Workflow. If sticky assignment is turned off, Plain will automatically unassign you when a thread is marked as Done or Snoozed.

When to turn it off:

• If your team operates a shared support rota

• If you want threads to be available for whoever’s on-call

• If you're using automation to distribute work dynamically

Online, offline, and away mode

Users can be in one of three statuses:

Online: When you are online, the "assign to team" workflow will assign you threads as usual, and you will appear online to your team.

Offline: When you are offline, the "assign to team" workflow will no longer assign threads to you, and you will appear offline to your team. This is designed for short-term offline periods like over night or lunch break and will not result in the user being unassigned from any threads.

Away: When set to away, the "assign to team" workflow will not assign you threads. This is designed for longer term away periods, like going on holiday. Away mode has an additional configuration option on the workspace level which controls how thread unassignment works for those set to "Away".

In your workspace's Workflow settings, you can control whether or not the user will be immediately unassigned from all threads upon setting yourself or others to away, or if you should only be unassigned whenever a thread gets a new incoming message while the assigned-to user is away.

The Working Hours feature allows you to set your working hours for each day and automate the online and offline transition. You will automatically switch to online at the beginning of each working day and revert to offline at the end of the day. To configure this, click on your avatar in the bottom left corner, then navigate to Preferences > Working Hours.

If you’re going on holiday or stepping away from support, you can activate Away Mode by clicking on your profile picture at the bottom of the sidebar. While it’s on, any thread that returns to Todo won’t be reassigned to you – even if you were the previous owner.

This prevents support from bottlenecking while you’re offline and keeps the team’s workflow running smoothly.

Automating assignment with Workflow Rules

For more advanced setups, you can use Workflow Rules to automate assignments based on:

• Support address (e.g. assign all security@ requests to your security lead)

• Company or customer tier (e.g. Enterprise accounts go to a dedicated manager)

• Keywords in a request (e.g. “trial extension” routes to Sales)

• AI prompts (e.g. “customer is blocked and needs urgent help”)

Automating assignments helps reduce triage time and ensures the right teammate picks up the right request – fast. To configure automation, go to Settings → Workflow Rules.

Programmatic assignment

If you’re building with the Plain API, you can assign threads to machine users to power fully automated flows – like routing through bots or handing off between systems.

If this sounds useful for your workflow, contact us to learn more.

Multiple assignees

You can add multiple assignees to a thread – one lead, plus optional co-assignees. This makes it easier to:

• Collaborate internally on complex or cross-functional issues

• Support handovers without losing context

• Speed up replies when multiple teammates are involved

This is especially helpful for B2B teams working closely with product, engineering, or account management.