This lesson tells one story: an official letter, from the moment it arrives or leaves, until it takes its stamp and register number and is filed. Once you know the story, every correspondence screen becomes obvious — each button is a step of it.
Ordinary email is just email — write and send, no ceremony. An official correspondence is a message in a suit: it takes a register number, passes fixed desks in order, and is archived as an institutional document. Same screen, same inbox — you just open "Correspondence options" and fill a few extra fields. Anyone who can send an email can file a correspondence.
Someone logs the letter: "this official letter arrived today." It now exists officially inside the platform.
Someone reviews and chooses: finish here — the journey ends — or forward to the secretary desk.
The final stamp: finalized and filed, with its number, in order.
The most important sentence of the course: a desk is a label on a stage, never a person. No stage is "waiting on Ahmed" — any signed-in colleague can advance the letter, so work is never locked to one pair of hands.
The direction flips: for an incoming letter the outside body is the sender and you record on its behalf. New message → Correspondence options → incoming → the paper's details (the sending body, their reference number, its date) → attach the scan → choose the internal recipient (a person or a whole department) → send. The three-desk journey begins.
Every department keeps its own register per year — Procurement's outgoing 2026 counter is separate from HR's, and counters restart each year. In a multi-company group this is automatically per-company too: a department belongs to exactly one company (see the group structure lesson), so one company's numbers can never mix with a sister company's.
Mail addressed to a department lands in a shared tray the whole department sees. Inside it, claim & assign keeps things tidy: a colleague presses "I'll take this" and it is marked in their name, or the manager assigns it. Departments that want tighter control enable manager review: outgoing mail waits for the manager, who approves it out or returns it with a note.
Desks are labels, so anyone can advance a journey. Trays are shared, so departmental mail never sleeps in a traveller's inbox. And planned absence is covered by delegation — approvals handled on your behalf, attributed, time-boxed. Two honest warnings: the desk journey only moves forward (no reject-and-return inside it), and nothing reminds anyone automatically yet — a forgotten letter waits quietly, so make checking the shared tray a daily habit.