Last updated: 2026-05-21

Dispatching a contractor

When an issue lands on a property — leak, broken boiler, faulty wiring — the issue page suggests one of your contractors and offers to draft the email for you. You read the draft, tweak anything that needs tweaking, and click Send. The contractor's reply routes back to the same issue thread automatically.

This is the marquee path for getting work moving. It runs end-to-end from a single screen and never asks you to copy/paste between the app and your mail client.

Opening the dispatch screen

On any open issue, the Suggested action card on the right shows one recommendation — for a leak at Apartment 4, Burlington Road that's likely Tom Walsh (Plumber, marked Preferred). The card explains why he was picked in one short sentence. Click Draft dispatch email and you're taken to the dispatch composer.

If no recommendation appears, either Anchorlet found no trade-fit contractor in your workspace or you don't have one on file at all. Add one at Adding a contractor and the suggestion will appear on your next visit to the issue.

What's in the draft

The composer opens with subject and body already filled in. The draft is written by Anchorlet using your voice profile — the rhythm, vocabulary, and sign-off Anchorlet has learned from emails you've sent before. Dispatch-specific guidance keeps the message tight: under 150 words, opens with the contractor's first name, names the property and the problem early, flags urgency when the issue is high priority, and signs off with your first name.

If your voice profile hasn't been built yet, the draft uses a neutral Irish-English fallback — still readable, just less recognisably you.

Editing and sending

You can change anything. Both fields autosave to your browser as you type, so navigating away and coming back lands you on the same draft (a yellow Restored from earlier draft pill appears with a Use AI version link if you want to discard your edits and start from the model's draft again).

Click Send. The email leaves from a thread-scoped reply+...@anchorlet.ie address, attaches signed download links for any photos on the issue (valid 7 days), and the screen jumps back to the issue. The Suggested action card flips to ✓ Dispatched to Tom Walsh · 14:02, and the issue is stamped as dispatched.

What the contractor sees, and what happens next

Tom gets a plain email in his inbox. The subject is whatever you wrote; the body is your edited message verbatim, followed by a small Photos block linking to any images attached to the issue.

When he clicks Reply in his own mail client, Anchorlet's inbound webhook reads the Reply-To header, matches it to the issue's thread, and files his message under the same issue automatically. You see it in the issue Timeline alongside your sent dispatch — no triage step, no manual reassignment.

Things to know

The contractor needs an email on file. Without one, the Draft dispatch email button still appears on the suggestion card but the dispatch screen redirects back with a banner asking you to add an email. See Adding a contractor.
Photos are added automatically. You don't need to mention photos in the body — the email always appends a links block for whatever's attached to the issue.
One dispatch email per issue. Once dispatched, the suggestion card switches to a confirmation status. If you need to bring in a different contractor afterwards, assign them via the Assigned contractors card lower on the page — no email is sent on that path, so you'd contact them directly.
Replies thread back even if the contractor's mail client looks unfamiliar. The Reply-To is what carries the issue identity — as long as Tom hits Reply (not Forward to a new address), it lands back on the issue.
Sending an email through Elliot is the sibling flow. Dispatch is for kicking work off cold from an issue; Elliot's approval card is for ad-hoc replies and follow-ups inside the chat. See Sending email through Elliot.