Ask Your Records
Somebody asks what you agreed with a customer, and the answer is spread over a contract, three calls and a timeline. Ask it here in plain words and get one answer, with every claim carrying the record it came from.
Getting started
These are the steps in the order somebody would do them. The same list is in the tool: press F1, or the control reading "How this works" at the top of the window.
1. Ask it the way you would ask a colleague
No query language, no field names, no filters. “What did we agree with Ridgeline Fabrication about the survey date” is a question this can answer. Which kinds of record reach it here is settled for this installation rather than on this card. “What it can see”, on the next tab, is the list kind by kind. A kind held back there reaches no answer here.
2. Read the references, and open them
Every claim carries a number pointing at the record it came from, listed under the answer. Pick one and press the button beside "Answered from" to open that record in whichever tool holds it. An answer whose references do not check out is thrown away rather than shown, so what is on the screen is what your records say and not a summary of them.
3. Check what it could not see
"What it can see" lists every kind of record this tool knows about, which of them reach it, and why the rest are held back. "No deals reach this tool, because this organisation does not hold that tool" and "nothing in your records says that" are two different answers, and only one of them is worth acting on.
4. Put an answer on a customer's record
Filing writes the question and the answer onto that customer's own timeline, where the rest of the suite already looks. There is no way to take one off again: the timeline is written to and never edited, so file the ones worth keeping.
5. Decide where answers may be written
Settings says whether the words are composed on this machine, on a machine inside this organisation, or wherever is fastest - and whether recorded conversations may be quoted, only cited, or left out of answers entirely. What actually happened is on the screen rather than in a log: at the foot of the window, and on the Settings screen itself where a short window has room for one line and not two.
6. Answer a repeated sentence once
A scan reads the words off your records, so a sign-off that ends twenty-two documents is read twenty-two times. Those arrive as one row with a count on it, and keeping or dismissing that row settles every one of them. A wording dismissed three times stops being proposed here; the ones being held back are listed under the same screen, with a button that puts them all back.
7. Forget what was asked
Questions and answers are kept on this machine so you can look back at them. Set how many to keep, drop one, or drop the lot. Set the number to zero and nothing is stored at all, which is the honest answer for a machine other people use.
The screens, and what to do first on each
Each of these opens with nothing on it on a new install. What the tool says on that screen is what this section says, because it is the same sentence.
Nothing has been asked yet
Nothing is invented: if your records do not say, the answer says so. Every claim it does make carries the record it came from, and that record opens from here.
First thing to do: Type a question about one customer in the box above and press Ask.
No answer is open
Questions asked at this desk are on the right, newest first. Opening one brings back the answer it produced and the records that answer rested on, exactly as they were read.
First thing to do: Pick a question on the right, or type a new one in the box above and press Ask.
If you get stuck
Write to support@keywaysuite.com. We answer within one business day. Keyway can send us what it knows about your installation: open the hub, go to About and press Get support. It writes one file wherever you choose and never includes your licence, a password, a customer name or a customer address.