Assignments

Assignments control how threads are routed to your team members and how contacts are grouped into companies. You can auto-assign threads to a customer's Linear owner, group contacts into companies by their email domain, control whether Productlane creates a customer record automatically when someone new writes in, and keep a thread's assignee matching whoever answered it most recently.

Where to find it

Settings > Assignments (the sidebar entry labeled "Assignments", route /settings/assignments).

Controls on this page

Auto-assign to Linear owner

A toggle labeled "Auto-assign to Linear owner" with the description "Threads will be assigned to the customer's owner if they're a member of this workspace." When on, an incoming thread is assigned to the customer's owner from Linear, as long as that owner is a member of this workspace. This control requires the Scale plan or higher; without it, an Upgrade button appears in its place. The toggle saves automatically. Its default is off.

Auto-assign contacts to companies by domain

A toggle labeled "Auto-assign contacts to companies by domain" with the description "Automatically groups contacts into companies based on their email domain." When on, a new contact is grouped into a company based on the domain part of their email address. This control is available on all plans. The toggle saves automatically. Its default is on.

How domain matching works

When a new contact is created without an explicit company, Productlane resolves a company like this:

1. It checks the contact's full email host first (for example eu.acme.com), so a subsidiary or regional subdomain can be its own company.

2. If nothing matches the subdomain, it falls back to the registrable root domain (acme.com).

3. If a domain matches exactly one company, the contact is added to it. If a company doesn't exist yet for that domain, Productlane creates one.

4. If the domain matches more than one existing company, Productlane skips automatic assignment for that contact rather than guessing. This most often happens when a duplicate company was created before the two were merged; see Merge companies to fix it.

Public email domains never group contacts into a company. Addresses on providers like gmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, and similar free or shared mail domains are excluded from this matching, whether or not this toggle is on. Contacts on those domains stay uncompanied until you assign them manually, or until an integration assigns a company directly (see the widget's orgId/orgExternalId claim in the Widget docs, or the SSO orgId override in the SSO docs).

Automatically create customers

A toggle that controls whether Productlane creates a new customer record the moment a thread arrives from a contact it doesn't already recognize. Its default is on, matching the previous behavior. Turn it off if you'd rather manage which senders become customer records yourself: new threads still land in your inbox, but Productlane no longer creates a customer for the sender automatically. The toggle saves automatically and is available on all plans.

Switch to latest replier

A toggle labeled "Switch to latest replier". When on, a thread's assignee updates to whichever teammate sent the most recent reply, so ownership always reflects who is actually handling the conversation instead of staying with whoever was assigned first. This is useful when a thread gets picked up by a different teammate than the one it was originally routed to. The toggle saves automatically and is available on all plans. Its default is off.

How to set up assignments

1. Go to Settings > Assignments.

2. To route threads by Linear ownership, turn on Auto-assign to Linear owner. This requires the Scale plan; upgrade first if prompted. Make sure the relevant owners are members of your workspace so assignment can take effect.

3. To keep contacts grouped into companies automatically, leave Auto-assign contacts to companies by domain on. Turn it off if you prefer to manage company membership manually.

4. To stop Productlane from creating a customer record for every new sender, turn off Automatically create customers.

5. To keep a thread's assignee in sync with whoever last replied, turn on Switch to latest replier.

Notes

• All three fousettings save automatically the moment you toggle them.

• Auto-assign to Linear owner requires the Scale plan or higher. Domain-based company grouping, automatic customer creation, and switching to the latest replier work on any plan.

• Auto-assign to Linear owner only assigns when the customer's Linear owner is also a member of this workspace.

• Domain-based company grouping and automatic customer creation are both on by default. Switch to latest replier is off by default.

• Turning off automatic customer creation only affects new senders going forward; existing customer records are not removed.

• Public email domains are always excluded from domain-based grouping, and an email domain shared by more than one company is skipped rather than guessed. Both cases need a manual company assignment or an explicit orgId claim from an integration.