Architecture Walkthrough
An end-to-end view of the engine that reads the CEO office's mail, understands who is writing, what it concerns, and how urgent it is, and presents it as a single ranked board — without a human sorting a thing.
At a glance
Four numbers that describe the whole platform.
End-to-end data flow
The complete path an email travels, at engineering altitude: the capture paths, the two queues that decouple and retry the work, the no-AI preparation step, and the precise slice of data handed to each classifier.
The journey of one email
The same path as the diagram above, told without the jargon. Follow an email left to right — every box is a working part of the system; click any box to see what it does, why it exists, and the value it adds.
Inside the AI brain
The three triage classifiers use a model hosted in Azure AI Foundry, fed a deliberately narrow slice of data — each resolving the common cases with a fixed, deterministic rule first, and calling the AI only when the answer genuinely needs judgment. A fourth, optional step then writes a plain-language briefing, and is the only step that reads the email body.
Free & deterministic
Four deterministic checks resolve common cases instantly — keeping results predictable and AI cost near zero.
| Rule | What it does with the data | Where it runs | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project rules | Matches the To/Cc recipient — first match wins. A dedicated address like [email protected] tags the thread outright. | Before the Project AI | No AI |
| Derived status | Reads which folder the latest message is in → Awaiting Them (you sent), Awaiting You (inbound), or Reopened (inbound after a manual close). | During Thread Sync | No AI |
| Domain dictionary | Looks up the sender's domain in a curated table of known organisations → returns the counterparty type instantly. | Before the Counterparty AI | No AI |
| Manual stickies | If a person set a field by hand, that value is protected — rules and AI read it but never overwrite it. | Before rules + AI | No AI |
Why it can be trusted
These principles run across every stage above — not bolted on afterwards.
The triage AI sees only a short snippet; only the optional briefing reads the email body. It is never given attachments or earlier messages; recipients are used only by the routing rules. Content stays inside Microsoft 365.
Fixed rules and a memory of known senders resolve most email deterministically — the same input always yields the same answer. The AI is the fallback for genuine judgment, not the default.
Each person sees only their own mailbox, enforced inside the database. Sign-in is restricted to an approved list, with separate admin rights.
A real-time feed, a 30-minute safety net, retrying queues, and self-healing subscriptions mean nothing is silently lost.