Recipe: Shared Inbox Status

Review the health of one or more shared inboxes - open items, completed work, unassigned emails, and how assignments are distributed across team members.

Prerequisite: Read the use-spark base skill for command reference and filter syntax.

Access level required: read-only.

Steps

Step 1: Discover shared inboxes

spark accounts

Note each shared inbox address and the team it belongs to.

Step 2: Check open items

For each shared inbox:

spark emails shared@co.com:Inbox --filter "is:shared_inbox_open"

These are active items that still need attention.

Step 3: Check unassigned items

spark emails shared@co.com:Inbox --filter "assigned_to:unassigned"

Unassigned items are falling through the cracks - no one owns them yet.

Step 4: Review per-member assignments

spark team "Team Name"

The assignment summary shows how work is distributed. For a deeper look at a specific member's load:

spark emails shared@co.com:Inbox --filter "assigned_to:alice@co.com"
spark emails shared@co.com:Inbox --filter "assigned_to:bob@co.com"

Step 5: Check completed items

spark emails shared@co.com:Inbox --filter "is:shared_inbox_done"

Review recently completed items for a sense of throughput.

Step 6: Present the status

Report per shared inbox:

• Open: N items awaiting action
• Unassigned: M items with no owner
• Per member: assignment counts (flag anyone with significantly more or fewer)
• Done: K items completed recently

If there are multiple shared inboxes, present each separately, then a combined summary.

Tips

• Run this daily for active shared inboxes, weekly for quieter ones.
• Unassigned items are the most actionable finding - they represent work that nobody is looking at.
• Combine per-member counts with recipe-team-workload for a fuller picture of who has bandwidth.
• If a shared inbox has high open count but low unassigned count, work is distributed but not being closed - look for stale assignments.
• Use spark thread <id> to read any item that looks stale or unusual.
• For teams with multiple shared inboxes, the total unassigned count across all inboxes is the key metric.