AI assistant and Needs attention

Interdatum CRM includes an AI assistant you can ask about your business, and a Needs attention list on your dashboard that ranks what needs your follow-up. The AI assistant is a Pro feature; the Needs attention list is available on every plan, with an AI-written summary on Pro.

What is the AI assistant?

The AI assistant is a chat panel inside Interdatum CRM that answers questions about your business using your real CRM data, and can draft changes for you to confirm.

To open the AI assistant, click the Assistant button in the bottom-right corner of any CRM page, or press Ctrl+K (Windows) or Cmd+K (Mac). The AI assistant opens as a side panel, so you can keep working and click links in its answers to open records. Press Esc or click Close to hide the panel.

The AI assistant is included with the Pro plan. On other plans, the panel shows "The AI assistant is part of Pro". Owners and admins see a See Pro plan button that opens Settings → Billing; other team members are asked to talk to their account owner about upgrading. The AI assistant is available to staff accounts only, never to clients.

What can I ask the AI assistant?

The AI assistant answers with facts from your CRM, not guesses. Owners and admins can ask about:

• Business results for a period, such as today, this week, last month, this year, the last 30 days, or custom dates: revenue collected, amounts invoiced and outstanding, jobs, new leads, estimates, conversion, and average job value.
• Records: bookings and jobs, clients, estimates, invoices, payments, tasks, workers, services, and text conversations.
• Search across services, bookings, clients, and workers.
• Pricing for a booking using its service's pricing rules.
• What needs attention right now, using the same ranked list as the dashboard.

Suggested starting questions include "How did we do this month?", "Which estimates are waiting on customers?" and "Which jobs this week have no worker?". Answers include links you can click to open the matching records.

Answers use your CRM's time zone and currency. The AI assistant treats customer-written text (such as names, notes, and texts) strictly as data and never follows instructions found inside it.

What can the AI assistant change for me?

The AI assistant never changes anything on its own. When you ask for a change, the AI assistant prepares a confirmation card showing exactly what would happen. Nothing changes until you click Confirm.

On a confirmation card you can:

• Click Confirm to apply the change.
• Click Edit to adjust the details first, then Done editing.
• Click Cancel to discard the change.

Changes the AI assistant can prepare:

• Create a service, or add questions, pricing rules, or line items to an existing service (for example "Create a service for gutter cleaning at $150").
• Create a task for a team member.
• Assign a worker to a booking.
• Schedule or reschedule a job, with warnings if the worker has a scheduling conflict.
• Draft an estimate for a booking. The estimate is saved as a draft and never sent.
• Draft a text reply to a client. The draft is never sent; after you confirm, click Copy text and send it yourself.

A confirmation card expires after 24 hours; if it expires, ask the AI assistant again. Everything is re-checked when you click Confirm, including your permissions and any edits you made.

What can't the AI assistant do?

The AI assistant cannot:

• Send emails, texts, estimates, or invoices.
• Record payments.
• Delete anything.
• Change settings, billing, your business number, or your team.

When you ask for one of these, the AI assistant tells you it can't and points you to the right page. The AI assistant only prepares changes you asked for in your own message.

The AI assistant also never makes up numbers, names, or record links. If a question is too broad, the AI assistant may reply "I hit my step limit for this question. Try asking something narrower." If the AI service is briefly unavailable, the AI assistant says so; try again in a moment.

How does the AI assistant work for field workers?

Owners and admins get the full AI assistant. Team members who aren't owners or admins get a limited AI assistant scoped to their own work:

• Workers can ask about their own jobs, tasks, and schedule, for example "What's on my schedule today?" or "Show my open tasks".
• Workers can't see estimates, invoices, payments, text conversations, business results, or search.
• The only change a worker can prepare is a task for themselves, for example "Add a task: restock the van".

Each person's AI assistant conversations are private to them.

How do I use Brief me and conversation history?

Click Brief me at the top of the AI assistant panel for a quick briefing on what needs your attention. The briefing uses the same ranked list as the dashboard's Needs attention list, skips anything you've dismissed there, and shows up to 12 items with links, plus a count of any more.

To start fresh, click New conversation (the plus icon). To go back to an earlier chat, click Conversation history (the clock icon) and choose from your 15 most recent conversations.

What is the Needs attention list?

Needs attention is a dashboard widget that ranks the things in your business that need follow-up, most urgent first. New dashboards and a reset dashboard show Needs attention alongside the Phone widget.

Each item has a title you can click to open the record, and a short reason explaining why it matters. A red dot marks urgent items; an amber dot marks everything else. The widget shows 6 items per page; use the arrows to page through the rest. A count next to the title shows the total number of items.

For team members who aren't owners or admins, the same widget is titled Your day and lists only their own jobs and tasks.

The ranking is the same for everyone on every plan. On the Pro plan, a short AI-written summary appears above the list. On other plans, the widget shows "AI summary is included with Pro."

What shows up in Needs attention?

For owners and admins, the Needs attention list can include:

• Failed payments from the last 30 days.
• Conversations the AI text receptionist handed to you that nobody has replied to yet.
• Unanswered texts: a customer texted and hasn't had a reply.
• New requests with no estimate sent yet.
• Jobs today or tomorrow with no worker assigned.
• Overdue invoices, and invoices still unpaid a week or more after sending.
• Estimates waiting on the customer, including unpaid deposits, 3 or more days after sending.
• Accepted estimates whose job isn't scheduled yet.
• Unscheduled jobs that are ready for work.
• Old open tasks, open a week or more.
• Setup reminders: no services set up, online payments not connected, or sales tax not configured.

For workers, Your day shows their jobs today and tomorrow, past jobs still open, and their own tasks that have been open 3 or more days. Needs attention shows up to 25 items.

How do I dismiss or restore Needs attention items?

To hide a Needs attention item, hover over it and click the X ("Dismiss until something changes"). The item disappears from your list right away. Dismissals are personal: dismissing an item hides it only for you.

A dismissed item comes back automatically when something about it changes. For example, an unpaid invoice comes back when it becomes overdue or the balance changes, a job comes back when it moves from tomorrow to today, and a text conversation comes back when the customer sends a new text. An item does not come back just because it got older.

To see dismissed items, click Show dismissed at the bottom of the widget. From there, click Restore on a single item, or Restore all to bring everything back. Click Back to list to return.

How do I refresh Needs attention?

The Needs attention list is refreshed automatically at least once a day. To check for new items right away, click Refresh at the bottom of the widget. You can refresh once a minute; if you click again sooner, the widget shows "Just refreshed — try again in a minute."

The bottom of the widget shows when the list was Generated and Last checked. While the list is updating in the background, the widget shows "Updating…". When nothing needs you, the widget says "You're all caught up — nothing needs your attention right now."