The conversation beside the ticket

Open a repair order and the customer's conversation opens beside it rather than on a page of its own. The address gains ?message=1, so the drawer is a link you can send to somebody, and closing it puts you back on the tab and filter you were reading rather than at the top of the ticket.

What the header tells you

The customer's name is the heading, and it opens their record. Under it sits one quiet line naming the order in focus, how many other orders this conversation has touched, and the car — #1632 (1 more) · 2015 BMW X5 M. Every part of that line is dropped rather than guessed: a counter sale with no car shows no car, and a conversation about one ticket shows no count.

On the right there is a tick to clear the unread count, a … menu and a close button. The menu is a plain disclosure holding links and nothing else, so it opens and works with JavaScript off: call the customer's number, Open full page, Open customer, the order, and All conversations.

The header and the chip row under it are fixed at the top, and the contact line, the message box and Send are fixed at the foot. Only the conversation between them scrolls, so reading back through last week never takes away the box you would answer in.

It opens at the newest message, on all three of the places a conversation appears: the drawer beside a ticket, the drawer from the messages panel, and the full page. The order of the messages has not changed — oldest at the top, as it reads — only where you land in it. That is true with scripting switched off as well, because the newest bubble is what the link points at.

It stays at the newest message as more arrive, and photographs finishing loading do not push the end of the conversation off your screen. Scroll up to read history and it stops following: a message landing while you are reading four weeks back raises Newer messages ↓ over the conversation instead of moving it, and pressing that takes you to the end. Sending anything — a reply, an internal note — takes you there too, because what you just did is what you want to see.

Scroll up past the first message and you will find the owner badge — a person's name, or Unassigned — and the control that changes it, above the oldest message. Assignment is how a shop divides an inbox, and it is a separate question from whether the customer is waiting on an answer. It sits with the conversation rather than in the fixed header because it is read once and changed rarely, and a narrow drawer has better uses for a permanent row.

The order chips

All sits first, then one chip per ticket this conversation has said something about, each with the number of messages tagged to it. The chips are links, so the filter lives in the address, Back works and none of it needs JavaScript.

The chips are counted over the whole conversation rather than over the filtered window. Narrowing to one order therefore never hides the other chips, which would make the filter a door you could not walk back through.

While a chip is active, a message you send is tagged to that order and the composer says so. Under All nothing is tagged, so the header can still name the ticket you came from without the send quietly inheriting it.

The mark on each channel glyph

Above every message is a line reading which pipe it went down, what became of it, the time on the shop's clock, the order and who said it — Text · Delivered · 2:23 PM · #1632 · Bayani. The glyph beside it carries a small mark on its corner saying the same thing at a glance.

A green tick

Delivered. A delivery event came back from the carrier or the mail provider. This is the only mark that means it landed.

A red cross

Not sent or Rejected after sending. Either nothing reached the customer, or it left and then bounced or was reported as spam.

A grey question mark

Never found out. Torqix asked and got no answer. Call the customer rather than sending it again.

No mark at all

Accepted by the provider or Sending. Nothing is known to be wrong and nothing is confirmed, so nothing is claimed.

The missing tick on Accepted by the provider is the deliberate one. It means a provider took the request and has told us nothing since, which is a fact about the carrier rather than about a customer's handset, and a green tick is read across a room as "she got it" by somebody who then does not make the phone call.

When something went wrong, the reason is printed as ordinary text under the message and stays there. It is the row's own stored sentence rather than a paraphrase, so a blocked text says which permission was missing. Hovering the mark repeats the same words for a mouse, and the two marks that mean trouble can be reached with the keyboard.

Photos a customer emails back appear on that incoming message in the thread. If an emailed file is too large or is not a JPEG, PNG or WebP, the customer's words still arrive and the message says that the attachment could not be stored.

One message, two pipes

A message sent to text and email at once is stored as two records, because the two halves are gated separately and can end differently. On screen they are drawn as one bubble carrying one glyph and one mark per pipe, so a text that was blocked and an email that arrived read as the one thing you did.

Two records are only joined when they sit next to each other, went out within two minutes, carry the same order tag and the same sender, and the email carries the text's sentence inside it. Anything else stays two bubbles, which is the safe way round: two messages shown separately is yesterday's screen, and two separate messages shown as one would be a conversation that lied about what the shop said.

The red New line

A thin red rule with New on it marks where the messages nobody has ticked off begin. Press the tick in the header and it goes, along with the unread count beside it — they are the same fact drawn twice.

Where the next message will go

Above the composer is one line naming the number a text would use and the address an email would use. These are picked by the same rule the send itself uses, not the first row on the record, so the line cannot name one endpoint while the message goes to another.

The chevron opens two switches, SMS and Email, with the endpoint under each and Primary ★ where it applies. Both start ticked when the customer has both, which is the default a shop wants. Edit contact info at the foot goes to their record.

A channel that cannot be used is unticked and greyed with the reason beside it — No texting permission on file for this number. Ask them to opt in first. or No email address on file. — and in that case the panel opens by itself, because a reason you have to read before typing does not belong behind a disclosure.

Your choice is remembered for that customer for as long as the tab is open, per person, and is cleared when you sign out. With scripting off nothing is remembered and the switches arrive at their defaults.

Untick both and nothing is sent. You get Nothing was sent: pick at least one way to reach them — the text switch, the email switch, or both. rather than a silent fallback to texting somebody you had just untoggled.

The row under the message box

Each text counts against the shop's monthly allowance by carrier-reported SMS segments, or by Torqix's GSM-7/UCS-2 count when the carrier is silent; Settings, Text messaging shows the total. The carrier cost appears only after the carrier reports one and only to somebody whose Shop figures access is on. Turning that access off still leaves the segment allowance and messaging setup usable.

A paperclip attaches a file, the note icon beside it saves what you have typed as an internal note the customer never sees, a ? says what may be attached and who can see it, and a page icon opens your templates, already written out for this customer and this ticket. Send sits at the right and stays grey until there is something in the box.

A picture on its own is not enough — a message needs words, so attach the photograph and say what it is. With JavaScript switched off the buttons are never greyed and an empty message is refused when you press Send instead.

Choose a photograph and it appears in the compose box before you send it, small, with the file name beside it and a cross that takes it back off. That is how you tell this bay photo from the one before it without sending and looking.

A file the browser cannot draw as a picture — a PDF, or a photograph your phone saved as HEIC — gets the same chip with a paperclip where the thumbnail would be. It is attached; there is simply no preview of it. And a preview is not an acceptance: the file is checked properly when you press Send, so one that showed here can still be refused there.