Using Connect on a phone
Connect runs in a phone's browser at the same address as everywhere else — there is no separate application to install. The screens are the same screens and the same session rules apply. Below about 600 pixels of width the Assistant's side panel folds into a menu instead of sitting beside the conversation, which is the main visible difference.
What is identical#
- Sign-in. Google is the only route in on any device; there is no password to type on a small keyboard, which is one of the few places that restriction is a convenience.
- The routes. Every screen has a hash route —
#/needs-you,#/inbox,#/follow-ups— and they work in a phone browser exactly as on a desktop, which makes bookmarking the one screen you actually use on the move worthwhile. - Your data. There is no reduced mobile dataset. The same workspace, the same isolation, the same records.
- Autonomy and approvals. Releasing a held draft from a phone is the same decision, recorded against you in the same way.
What folds away#
The Connect Assistant is built around one scroller that Chat, Needs You, Standing instructions, Memory and Files all draw into. At 600 pixels wide and above, that list sits beside the conversation as a sidebar; below it, the same destinations move into a More menu. Nothing is removed — the panels are reached in one tap instead of being visible at once.
The Assistant also keeps browser-style tabs, each holding its own conversation, follow-up chain, record, draft, files and scroll position. On a phone that matters more than on a desktop: you can leave a half-finished piece of work in one tab, deal with something urgent in another, and come back to exactly where you were rather than to a reset panel.
Better on a phone than you expect#
- Working Needs You
- It is a ranked list of decisions with the original message above each one. That is a good shape for a small screen and a bad shape for a spreadsheet.
- Approving or rejecting a single reply
- A short read and one decision, which is exactly the interaction a phone is for.
- Reading a call summary
- Summary and transcript are text on the call record; there is nothing to play back, since recording is not enabled on the live carrier.
- Asking the Assistant something
- A question about a customer answers from the records rather than from a screen you would have to navigate to.
Leave these for a desk#
The #/data grid is thirteen record sheets with sorting, filtering, grouping, frozen columns, saved views and bulk actions. It is virtualised and fast, and it is still a spreadsheet: on a phone you can read a sheet, but a bulk update or a careful import deserves a wide screen and a pointer. The same is true of writing a discovery brief, tuning voice settings, and any edit where seeing several columns at once is the whole point.
Questions#
Is there an app to install?
Connect is a web application served at the same address on every device, so it is used in the phone's browser. Adding it to the home screen from the browser gives you an icon and a full-screen window without anything to install or update.
Can I take a customer call through Connect on my phone?
The browser softphone is a person's own line registered over SIP, and it is designed for a desk rather than a pocket. Calls Connect answers on a workspace number are handled by the voice engine regardless of what device you are holding; what a phone is good for afterwards is reading the transcript.
Does anything behave differently because of the smaller screen?
The layout changes and the capability does not. The clearest example is the Assistant's sidebar becoming a menu below 600 pixels. Where a screen is hard to use small — the data grid above all — it is the ergonomics that suffer, not the rules being applied.