Every thread carries two markers. New starters often mix them up, so it is worth separating them properly once.

Priority and status are different things

Status: Answers "how far along is this?". Has anyone dealt with it, and is it finished.
Priority: Answers "how urgent is this?". Should it jump the queue.

A conversation can be Open and Low, or Open and Urgent. The two do not affect each other.

The five statuses

Open: Live and needing work. Shown with a green dot.
Pending: Waiting on somebody else, usually the customer. It is not finished, but there is nothing for you to do right now.
Resolved: You have answered and you believe it is sorted. Shown with a blue dot.
Closed: Finished and filed away, either by you or by auto-close. Shown with a grey dot.
Spam: Junk, kept out of the way in the Spam tab. Shown with a red dot.

Resolved and Closed both mean "done", but they are not the same. Resolved is the everyday one, and a customer reply reopens it. Closed is firmer. Use it when there is nothing more to say.

How to change the status

1Open the thread.
2At the top of the middle column, click the status button. On a live conversation it says Open.
3Pick the new status from the short menu. From an open thread you can choose Resolved, Closed or Mark as Spam.
4The pill on the thread card in the left column changes to match.

The menu only offers the moves that make sense from where the thread is now, so a resolved thread offers Open and Closed instead. You can also set the status as you reply, using the send options, or from the thread details panel.

Each option has a one-key shortcut shown beside it: R for Resolved, C for Closed, S for Spam, and O to reopen. They are sub-keys. Press Cmd+Shift+S to open the status menu from the keyboard, then the letter. The full list has the rest.

Two changes happen automatically when you resolve a thread. It leaves the Inbox queue, so your unanswered count drops. And a line appears in the conversation recording who resolved it and when, so the history is never guesswork.

The four priorities

Urgent: Drop what you are doing. Red.
High: Deal with it before the ordinary queue. Orange.
Normal: The everyday level. Blue.
Low: Genuinely can wait. Grey.

Urgent and High also show as a coloured badge on the thread card in the list, so they stand out while you are scanning.

What no priority means

Threads start with no priority set at all, shown as a hollow circle.

That is not the same as Low. Threads without a priority count against the same response-time targets as Normal ones. Leaving it unset does not buy you extra time; it only means nobody has judged it yet.

How to set a priority

1Open the thread.
2Click Priority at the top of the middle column.
3Choose Urgent, High, Normal or Low.
4To clear it again, choose No priority.

How priority and status work together

Smart sorting reads both. It lifts threads that are still Open, have waited a while, and carry a high priority to the top of your list.

So the two markers are not admin. They are the instructions you give the inbox about what to show you first. ---

Setting priority (Urgent, High, Normal, Low) and status