Support cases
A support case is a post-sale issue record attached to a Person, not to a thread. It is opened deliberately — by somebody working the relationship, or by the Assistant when asked — then acted on, then resolved. Its value is that it inherits the whole relationship: the deal that preceded it, the identities the customer writes from, and the timeline that shows what has already been said to them.
What the record is#
One issue, one record, one person. The case names the problem and the person it belongs to; the company follows from the person; and the conversations that discuss it stay where they happened, on their own channels. That separation is what lets a single case survive a customer who starts on email, rings on Tuesday and finishes on WhatsApp — a case stored inside a thread could not.
- The person
- The canonical human the case belongs to. Every identity that resolves to them reaches the same case.
- The problem
- What is wrong, in the words the workspace uses, not the words the model preferred.
- The history
- Not copied into the case. It is read from the relationship when the case is worked, which is what keeps it current.
- The outcome
- Written at resolution, and kept afterwards as part of what the relationship knows.
What opens one#
Opening a case is an action somebody takes, not an inference Connect draws from a message sounding unhappy. There are three doors to the same service call, and all three produce the same record:
- A person, from the relationship record — the usual route, and the one where the context is already on screen.
- The Assistant, through
create_case, when you tell it to open one in conversation. - A workspace route that calls the console's
open_casedirectly, which is how the operator's screens and a customer's screens arrive at one implementation.
The reason opening is explicit rather than automatic is that a case is a commitment. It appears in lists, it is counted, it is chased, and it is read later as a record of what the business owed somebody. A queue full of cases invented from tone would make all of those less useful, not more. If you expected one and there is none, No case was opened covers what to check.
The three verbs#
| Verb | What it does | What it leaves behind |
|---|---|---|
open_case | Creates the record against the person, with the problem stated | An open case on the relationship and in the cases sheet |
act_on_case | Records work against an open case — a reply, a decision, a step taken | A trail that explains the gap between opening and resolution |
resolve_case | Closes it with an outcome | A resolved case that stays attached to the person permanently |
The vocabulary is deliberately small. Extra intermediate states tempt everyone into managing the state machine rather than the customer, and a case that has been acted on twice already tells you more than a case labelled *in progress* ever did. Where something genuinely needs a person's decision, it goes to Needs You rather than into a new status.
Working with cases in bulk#
cases is one of the thirteen sheets in the Data grid, so a list of open cases can be sorted, filtered, grouped and exported like any other sheet. Every change made there goes through the service that owns the record, which is why the grid can be trusted as a working surface rather than treated as a second copy of the truth.
The Assistant reads them too. list_cases answers questions across the set — what is open for this company, what has been open longest — without anybody building a report, and resolve_case closes one from the same conversation. Its rights are narrower than a person's throughout, so nothing about pricing or a do-not-contact entry moves because a case did.
What a case is not#
- It is not a conversation. Threads carry messages; a case carries the issue those messages are about.
- It is not a follow-up. A follow-up is a dated commitment with a reason; a case can own several, and closing the case does not silently cancel them.
- It is not an opportunity. A deal is commercial and lives on the pipeline; a case is post-sale and lives on the relationship.
- It is not workspace-crossing. A case belongs to exactly one workspace, like every other record, and no query from another one can reach it.
Questions#
Can one case span more than one channel?
Yes, and that is the reason it is attached to the person rather than to a thread. An issue raised by email, discussed on a call and settled over WhatsApp is one case with three conversations behind it.
Does Connect open a case automatically when someone complains?
No. A case is opened by a person or by the Assistant when asked. Tone is not treated as an instruction, because a case is a commitment that gets counted, chased and read back later.
What happens to a case when two people records are merged?
It survives. A merge preserves identities, stages, follow-ups, deals, demos, cases and onboarding from both records, so the surviving person carries every case either side held.