Comms
Every email, text and WhatsApp message the business has sent or received, grouped by the person it was with, and filed to the job it is about. The company Comms page is the whole inbox; a job's Comms tab is the same screen narrowed to that job. It is where you see what came in, reply, file a message to the right job, approve the replies the assistant has drafted, and tell the assistant who an unknown number belongs to.
- A connected mailbox (Gmail or Outlook) or a texting number, set up under Settings → Integrations. Without either the page says so and stays empty.
- Admin or team role to reply, file or approve. Other roles can read.
- WhatsApp replies need WhatsApp enabled on your business number.
The left side lists people, grouped Today, Yesterday, This week and Older, with a preview, job names and counts of unfiled messages and drafts to approve. Narrow with Search people and messages (press / to jump to it), the channel buttons (All, Email, SMS, WhatsApp), Job and Trade. Newsletters and notifications are hidden; a footer row shows how many and lets you show them. The tiles above the list (needs a reply, unfiled, drafts to approve, and one per message type) are filters too.
- Open the conversation. The reply box at the foot defaults to the channel of the last message; Text, WhatsApp and Email appear when more than one applies. An email reply shows reply to … · Re: … and offers + cc.
- Write the reply, or press Draft with the assistant to have it drafted in chat from the conversation and the job's details; it sends when you approve.
- For a text, pick the job it is About so the thread files itself.
- Press Send (or Ctrl/⌘+Enter).
Email goes from your own Gmail or Outlook when an admin has turned on Business emails under Settings → Integrations, otherwise from Base. Texts go from the business number. Delivery status appears on the message: Delivered, Opened, Bounced — not delivered, and so on; mail sent from your own mailbox shows Sent only, because Gmail and Outlook do not report delivery.
Each message carries a strip reading job, type and trade. Press a value to change it from the menu. When the classifier has a suggestion and the message has no job yet, a chip reads looks like [job] NN% with yes and no. Your word is final; the assistant never re-files something a person has filed.
Under the waiting on you divider, each AI draft shows the channel, who it is to and the job. Press Approve & send, Edit (then Save), or Discard. An approved draft shows approved · sending… until it goes.
- An unknown person shows not in contacts and a Connect to a contact button; an unknown phone number also shows a banner saying the assistant will not reply to their texts until they are a contact, with Add to contacts.
- Pick Someone we have and search, or New contact and enter their name, company and trade.
- Press Connect.
Every message from that address or number, past and future, moves under the contact, and the assistant may now answer their texts. not them? on a known person points the number or address at someone else.
When you send a text to a number that matches no contact, a dialog asks who they are. Add contact and send creates the contact and sends; Send without adding sends anyway, and the assistant will not answer their replies until they are a contact.
Two switches at the top: auto-reply · emails and auto-reply · texts, each off / on. Both are off by default and apply to this job only. The assistant answers only people in your contacts; anyone else gets a draft for you to approve.
- Connected Outlook and Gmail inboxes are read every minute or two; replies to mail Base sent and texts to the business number arrive as they happen. Attachments worth keeping are imported to the job's documents.
- Each inbound message is filed by a reply chain first, then by a job number or name in the text, then by who the sender has written about before. A classifier then suggests a job and a type and trade. As shipped, it suggests only; it does not file a job by itself.
- Every inbound message starts an assistant run that reads it, updates the job and its tasks, and drafts a reply where one is warranted. It sends unattended only to the person who wrote, only with auto-reply on for that job, only to a contact, never with money in it and never with an attachment. Otherwise the reply is a draft under waiting on you.
- The assistant is denied every finance tool when working from an inbound message. The one capture it may make is to record a supplier invoice as unapproved, in Pending review. It never answers an outsider with reports, Xero data, cash position, margins, rate-book prices, labour rates, other projects, other clients or other subcontractors' details.
- A text from a number that is not a contact is never answered automatically; you get a notification with Add contact.
- Toasts announce new mail and texts and drafts as they land.
- Your connected mailbox is yours. Colleagues see a message from your Gmail or Outlook only once it is filed to a job, and only while an admin has Share project email with the team on (the default). Mail sent through Base and all texts are visible to the team.
- Comms is reply-only. There is no compose-new-email here; a new conversation starts from the contact, the job or the assistant.
- "Needs a reply" means the last message was theirs. There is no mark-as-read.
- Auto-reply is per job and off by default. Even when on, the assistant drafts instead of sending whenever a decision is involved (price, start date, scope), when the sender is unknown, or when it is not sure which job the message is about.
- Even with auto-reply off, the assistant still reads every inbound message, updates the job and drafts. To stop it reading texts at all, pause the text automations under Automations → Library.
- Nobody but you can move or delete a message from your own mailbox, admin or not.