Where was that decided? Asking the conversations around a record

The questions people ask about conversations are rarely “find the message”. They are “what did I miss”, “where was this decided”, and “why is this not working”. The first two are hard because a decision about an order is usually split across an email, a chat thread and a call nobody wrote down. The third is hard because a telephone system is a long list of things that must all be true at once.

“What did I miss while I was away?”

Somebody back from a fortnight’s leave. The assistant reads their unread and mention counts, the mentions themselves, and searches their conversations for the customers they look after:

GET /chat/unread
GET /chat/mentions
GET /chat/search

Every one of those calls is scoped to the conversations the person is a member of — the search included. The assistant does not have a wider view to summarise from, so “what did I miss” is answered from what this person was always able to read, and a private thread between two colleagues does not turn up in a third person’s catch-up.

The same restraint runs through presence. Asking who is online answers only for the people the caller names, never for the whole organization — “everyone who is online” is a directory dump, and an assistant that could produce one on request would be a surveillance tool with a friendly voice.

“Where did we decide to split this order?”

A sales manager with an unhappy customer. In Rutba Chat a thread can belong to a record — an order, a customer — and mail can be linked to one, so the conversation about an order can be found from the order. The assistant reads the thread’s record, every message linked to that order, and what a key message said before it was edited:

GET /chat/conversations/{conversation}/record
GET /mail-links
GET /chat/messages/{message}/revisions

The answer puts the email from the customer, the thread where the split was agreed, and who agreed it in one place, in order. And if the message that recorded the decision was edited afterwards, it says so and shows what it said before. Revisions are kept as an audit, not as history for browsing, which is exactly the use a disputed decision needs.

“Why won’t the new support number ring?”

An office manager, the day a new number was added. The assistant reads whether the number may ring and, if not, what is missing, and who has held it before:

GET /calls/numbers/{number}/routability
GET /calls/numbers/{number}/history

Routability does not answer yes or no. It returns the whole verdict for the number’s country, so the blocker has a name: an emergency address that has not been recorded, a number still in quarantine, a country whose rules have not been reviewed. The history is append-only, so a number released last month and re-issued this one shows both. The answer is a sentence an office manager can act on, rather than a red cross they cannot.

“Where did that message go?”

GET /chat/retention/policy
GET /chat/retention/purges

A message that nobody remembers deleting has usually been removed by a retention policy your organization set. The assistant reads the policy — or that none is set, in which case messages are kept — and what past purges actually removed. “Deleted by the retention policy on the first of the month” is an answer. “It must have been a glitch” is the one a chat system usually leaves you with.

Where it hands back to a person

• Writing to customers. A reply that reaches a customer is yours to send, and it is on the short list of things Rutba Assistant will never be allowed to do.
• Deleting messages. Deletion has no undo; the assistant may point at a message, never remove one.
• Changing how numbers route. Recording an emergency address or changing a call flow is an administrator’s change, made by the administrator.