Best practices: keeping your inbox under control every day

An inbox gets out of hand when you only open it when a notification pings. A short routine at the same time each day keeps you on top of it: nobody waits too long, and no promise to follow up gets lost. Here is a 20-minute routine built on Swimlane's views and reminders.

The principle: every conversation has an owner and a next date

At the end of your routine, each active conversation should be in one of three states:

Answered: you wrote last and are waiting for the contact.
Scheduled: a reminder brings it back on a set day.
Archived: it's over.

Swimlane doesn't rank your conversations by priority, and reminders don't send notifications. The routine below fills that gap.

Step 1 — Start with the dashboard (2 minutes)

Open Dashboard:

Reminders lists what's due. Overdue reminders are in red and come first. Click one to open the contact.
Recent conversations shows your four latest threads. Click Open conversations to go to the inbox.
People to interact with suggests good-fit contacts you have barely engaged with. Keep one or two for step 5.

Step 2 — Clear what nobody has read (5 minutes)

In Inbox → Messaging, open the Never replied tab. It lists the conversations where the contact wrote last and you haven't opened the thread yet.

For each conversation:

Open it. The contact's notes, tags and Swimlane Analysis are on the right.
Reply straight away if it takes less than two minutes. The AI draft often gives you a good starting point.
Otherwise, set a reminder for the day you'll handle it (Quick actions → Create a new reminder).
If it's not relevant (a recruiter, a sales pitch), archive it.

Use the arrows at the top of the contact window to move to the next conversation without going back to the list.

Step 3 — Check who is still waiting for you (5 minutes)

Switch to Last message by contact. Unlike Never replied, this view also shows threads you opened but haven't answered. They're the ones that slip through: read on your phone, forgotten at your desk.

Apply the same rule: reply, schedule or archive. Nothing should stay in this view without a reminder.

Step 4 — Work your reminders (5 minutes)

Open Inbox → My Network → Reminders and select To do. It shows everything due today or earlier and not done yet.

Handle the reminder: send the follow-up, share the resource, ask the question.
Tick it off in the contact's Reminders window, or with Mark as done on the dashboard.
If a follow-up is still needed, create the next reminder right away. Reminders can't be edited, so a new date means a new reminder.

Step 5 — Start one or two new conversations (3 minutes)

End with outreach, not admin. Pick a contact from People to interact with or from My Network → Relations, open them and let the AI icebreaker suggest an opening line. Rework it, send it, and set a reminder for the follow-up.

Weekly: tidy up (10 minutes, once a week)

Last message by me: scan the threads waiting for an answer. Every one should have a reminder. Archive the ones you've given up on.
Archived: an archived contact who writes again stays in this page and doesn't come back to Messaging on their own. Unarchive anyone who has restarted the conversation.
No tag: tag the contacts you talked to this week, so your tag pages stay useful.
Reminders → Future: check that the coming week's load is realistic.

Habits that make the routine faster

Leave nothing open-ended. Before closing a conversation, ask yourself: who writes next, and when? If the answer is me, later, set the reminder now.
Write the context in the note. A line like "Waiting for the board decision, around the 15th" makes the reminder useful and improves the AI draft.
Archive without guilt. Archiving hides the contact and pauses their campaigns, but keeps the whole history. You can restore it at any time.
Keep the inbox tab open while you work. It refreshes every 15 to 30 seconds while you're active on the page. New replies don't appear instantly in a tab you left in the background.
Watch your daily ceilings. Manual replies count toward Daily Messages Sent and Daily Conversations. If you run large campaigns, keep some room for the conversations that matter most.

A realistic target

On a normal day, Never replied and the To do tab of Reminders should both be empty when you finish. Last message by contact can keep a few threads, as long as each one has a reminder.