Where the open work is
Unanswered mail. A thread whose last message came from outside and got no reply is somebody waiting. Sort the last ninety days by who spoke last and it is most of the urgent list.
Promises without dates. “I will send that over” and “let me check and come back to you” never reach a calendar, so nothing reminds anyone. They live only in sent mail.
Dates in the text. Renewals, deadlines and “before the end of the quarter” sit inside message bodies rather than calendar entries.
Relationships that went quiet. A supplier or customer who wrote every week and stopped a month ago is either finished or dropped, and only someone who reads the history can tell which.
What to put in front of the successor first
Not the whole mailbox. A short list, in order: what is waiting on a reply, what falls due in the next fourteen days, and who they will hear from first. Then the reference material — every contact, every commitment in each direction — for when they need it.
Or have it written for you
That is exactly the brief Offboard produces from a suspended Google Workspace mailbox: the attention list, the next fourteen days, what is owed each way and the contacts, with every row linked to the message it came from, and spreadsheets and a calendar file alongside. It is $49 for each person who left, and it does not replace the conversation with whoever is still around to have it — it makes that conversation start from the right page.
Related: An employee left. How do you give their Gmail to the person replacing them? · Suspend, archive or delete: what happens to a former employee's mailbox