With the recent addition of the Orphan Email Additional Action (release notes here), there is now a better way to handle your Orphaned Action Items. 

The Process

Before

1. All General Inquiry Items come in at the same "First" step
   1. Typically a CS or Traffic Cop review step
2. Sort through and Identify the Orphaned Item from the list of General Inquiries
3. Find the Homeowner based on context clues
4. Edit the Orphaned Item to assign the correct Homeowner/Association.
   1. Click Update
5. Separately step the Action Item to the appropriate step. 

After

1. Orphaned General Inquiries come to your My Action Items pre-sorted in the appropriate Step.
2. Find the Homeowner based on context clues
3. Edit the Orphaned Item to assign the correct Homeowner/Association, and simultaneously move the item to the Appropriate step for Initial Review.  
   1. Note: Don't type anything in the window's box that appears, as that will edit the Action item Description. 

The Benefits

As you can see above, this will reduce what is a tedious process of first identifying the Orphaned items and THEN needing to take two separate actions to assign and sort them appropriately, all before being actually "worked" in some way; we are reducing this to be pre-sorted, in its own step, and a single-step process to assign and sort these to the appropriate Steps/Roles. 

In addition, with the old method, ALL Items were coming to the Traffic Cop role, and all needed to be sorted and touched. With the new method, ONLY the items that need to be assigned will come to the Traffic Cop, reducing the overall workload of the Traffic Cop, and helping the CS (or similar) Role to be more efficient by only having "assigned" Action Items in their queue. 

As you can see, this new feature will allow your front-line teams to be more effective and efficient.

When Should I Use This?

This feature can be used for any workflow that originates from an email (with a notable exception of Invoices). For example:

• General Inquiry from Email
• Any items from an online form submission
• Any items that come from a separate email (closings@yourcompany.com creates a "Closing Question" for instance)

The possibilities are endless. The ability to filter out the orphaned items will greatly increase the effectiveness of your "Traffic Cop" role.