This disclosure describes techniques and architectures that involve a latent activity model for workplace emails. Such a model is based, at least in part, on a concept that communications, such as email at a workplace, are purposeful and organized by activities. An activity is a set of interrelated actions and events around a common goal, involving a particular group of people, set of resources, and time framework, for example. The latent activity model involves a probabilistic inference in graphical models that jointly captures the interplay between latent activities and the email contexts governed by the emails. Such contexts may be email recipients, subject and body of the email, and so on.