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 included with Starter and Pro, with monthly limits; the Needs attention list is available on every plan, with an AI-written summary on Starter and Pro.

What is the AI assistant?

The AI assistant is a panel inside Interdatum CRM that answers questions about your business using your real CRM data and does admin work for you: creating and updating records, sending estimates and texts, scheduling jobs, running campaigns, and building automations. You can type to it or talk to it. Every change it prepares waits for your OK.

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 Starter and Pro plans, within your plan's monthly AI limits. On the Free plan, the panel shows "The AI assistant is included with Starter and Pro". Owners and admins see a See plans 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.
• Your business email: recent conversations in your CRM Inbox, unanswered emails, and what a thread says.
• One-off questions your reports don't cover, such as "Which clients haven't booked since last spring?" The assistant looks the answer up directly in your own data. These lookups are read-only and locked to your business.

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 do for me?

Ask in plain English, for example "Create a gutter cleaning service at $150", "Book the Smith deep clean for Thursday at 9 with Sam and text her to confirm", or "Send a spring reminder email to my lead list next Tuesday at 9am". The AI assistant can prepare:

• Clients, jobs and services: create or update clients, create bookings, create or update services (questions, pricing rules, line items), and create or complete tasks.
• Scheduling: schedule or reschedule a job and assign workers, with warnings if a worker has a conflict.
• Estimates, invoices and payments: build an estimate, send an estimate to the client, create an invoice, and record a payment.
• Texts: send a text to a client from your business number (needs Starter or Pro for the number).
• Emails: send a one-off email to a client, a lead or any address, send yourself a test email first, and reply to conversations in your CRM Inbox. Emails to anyone other than a client you've done jobs for include your business details and a one-click unsubscribe.
• Campaigns: create, launch, pause or resume an email campaign, schedule an email campaign for later, and create SMS campaigns or cancel a scheduled SMS campaign.
• Leads and outreach: find local businesses to pitch and add them as a lead list, update lead statuses, and run one-card email outreach (list, email, scheduled send and a follow-up to non-repliers).
• Automations: create, update, turn on or off, and run automations.
• Settings: update business info, business hours, sales tax, client portal text, notification settings, and AI text receptionist settings.
• Team: invite a team member, deactivate a worker, or revoke an invite.
• Deletes and voids: delete a client, job, task, service, automation, file or voicemail; void an estimate or invoice (or delete a draft estimate); archive a campaign; remove leads or lead lists.
• Bulk data fixes (owners and admins): change many records at once, such as lead statuses or pricing rules. The card shows exactly which rows will change, with before and after values, and the change is cancelled if the row count changes before you confirm.
• Later or on repeat: schedule almost any of these for later, set reminders, and build follow-up plans and routines. See Schedule actions, reminders and follow-ups.
• Background tasks: start a longer task, such as planning next week's schedule, researching pricing or finding leads (see below).

Does the AI assistant change anything without asking?

No. Questions are answered right away, but every change (creating, updating, sending, scheduling, recording a payment, deleting) is first shown as a confirmation card that says exactly what will happen, to which record, and how many. Nothing changes until you approve it.

You can approve or decline a card in either of these ways:

• Click Confirm (some cards offer a choice, such as Save as draft or Approve & send for an estimate), Edit to adjust the details first (Discard edits undoes them), or Cancel.
• Reply naturally in the conversation: "yes", "yeah", "sure, go ahead" or "do it" confirms what was just shown; "no", "wait", "hold on" or "never mind" cancels it. When several changes were shown together, "all of them" confirms all, or you can pick one ("just the last one"). Interdatum decides what your reply means using only the words you typed or said, never the AI's own output or customer messages. A spoken or typed yes only works for the changes shown in the assistant's last message, within 5 minutes.

A confirmation card expires after 24 hours (15 minutes for cards created in Assistant mode); if it expires, ask again. Everything is re-checked when you confirm, including your permissions, scheduling conflicts and any edits you made.

What can't the AI assistant do?

The AI assistant cannot:

• Change your plan or billing.
• Buy, release or swap your business phone number.
• Connect or disconnect Stripe or other online payment accounts.
• Change passwords or security settings.
• Change your logo, colours, CRM web address, notification templates, sender address, voicemail greeting, caller ID or call recording settings. You change those yourself in Settings.

When you ask for one of these, the AI assistant tells you it can't and points you to the right page. It treats customer-written text (names, notes, texts) strictly as data and never follows instructions found inside it. It never makes up numbers, names, or record links.

Are there limits on how much I can use the AI assistant?

Yes. Starter and Pro each include monthly AI limits (Pro's are higher): assistant replies (chat and voice), voice minutes, spoken voice replies, background AI tasks, and AI receptionist replies. Each reply the assistant writes counts as one assistant reply, whether you typed or spoke; confirming or cancelling a pending change ("yes" or "no") doesn't count. The limits reset on the 1st of each month (UTC), not on your billing date. See AI usage limits by plan for the current numbers and what counts toward each one.

You can track your usage in Settings → Billing, in the AI usage this month card, which shows a meter for each limit with the amount used, the limit, and the reset date. The workspace owner gets a one-time email when a limit reaches 80% (except the background tasks budget). When a limit is reached, that feature pauses until the 1st, with a message such as "You've used this month's assistant replies — resets Nov 1. Upgrade to Pro for more." The rest of the CRM, including the Needs attention list, keeps working.

What is Assistant mode (voice)?

Assistant mode lets you talk to the AI assistant hands-free in real time. Click Assistant mode at the top of the AI assistant panel (or press Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows, Cmd+Shift+Space on Mac) and start talking. The assistant answers out loud and shows the same confirmation cards; say "yeah" or "go ahead" to confirm, or "no" to cancel.

You can interrupt it at any time by talking, or by saying "stop" or "wait". Assistant mode keeps running while you move between pages in the CRM, and closing the panel doesn't stop it (the Inbox page is the exception: the assistant isn't available there). If you reload the page, your conversation is kept; tap Assistant mode again to resume talking. Voice sessions have time limits; tap Assistant mode to start again. Voice also counts toward your plan's monthly voice minutes and spoken-reply limits: when spoken replies run out for the month, the assistant keeps answering in text, and when voice minutes run out, the voice session ends and you can keep typing. See Assistant mode: talk to the AI assistant for the full guide.

What are background AI tasks?

Some requests take longer than a quick answer. The AI assistant can run them as background tasks while you keep working. Open the Tasks view in the AI assistant panel to start one ("Start a background task…") or see their progress; you're notified when a task is ready.

• Plan a schedule, for example "Plan next week's schedule". The task looks at each worker's weekly availability and date overrides, existing bookings, how long each job usually takes, and travel time between jobs, then proposes a schedule. Conflicts are checked when the plan is made and again before anything is saved. The result is one card listing every job it placed; switch off any you don't want. Click View to open the schedule page with the proposed jobs drawn in, and Confirm there or on the card.
• Research pricing, for example "Build me pricing rules for residential cleaning". The task searches the web for local market rates and proposes pricing rules for your service. Every proposed rule cites the web page it came from, so you can check the numbers before you confirm.
• Find leads, for example "Find 50 property managers in Kelowna with emails". See Find leads with the AI assistant.

You can open any task to watch its plan and activity live, and tell the assistant to send it back with changes ("I said 50"). Background tasks can only propose changes; nothing is applied until you confirm. Background tasks count toward your plan's monthly background AI task limit, and the Tasks view shows how much has been used this month ("AI tasks this month"). See Background AI tasks for details.

Can the AI draft estimates for new requests automatically?

Yes, on Starter and Pro, if you turn it on. In Settings → CRM Settings, in the AI assistant card, switch on AI drafts estimates for new requests. When a customer submits an intake request, the assistant prices it from your service's pricing rules and tax settings and puts a draft in Needs attention and the job's Estimate tab. You approve, edit or discard it; it is never sent automatically. There is a daily limit on automatic drafts, and each draft counts as one assistant reply toward your monthly limit.

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.
• Workers can only prepare changes their own permissions allow, for example a task for themselves ("Add a task: restock the van"), or a text to a client if they have texting access.

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, and a grey dot marks a message that needs no reply. 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 Starter and Pro plans, a short AI-written summary appears above the list. On the Free plan, the widget shows "AI summary is included with Starter and 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.
• Unanswered emails: an email to your business inbox in the last 14 days hasn't had a reply (when your mailbox is connected to the CRM Inbox).
• 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.

What if an email or text doesn't need a reply?

Not every message asks for something. When an email or text only says something like "thanks, got it" or "I've passed this on to the right person", the item says there is nothing to answer, shows a grey dot, and offers Clear it first and Draft a reply second.

Click Clear it to take the item off the list. Nothing is sent to the customer. For an email, the thread also leaves the Needs reply folder in your Inbox, for everyone on your team. The item comes back by itself if they write again.

Clear it only appears on emails and texts, and only for owners and admins. Anything that asks a question, makes a request, or mentions a deadline keeps Draft a reply as the first button. Nothing is ever cleared automatically: an item stays on the list until you clear it, reply, or dismiss it.

If you click Draft a reply on a message that asks nothing, the assistant tells you there is nothing to answer instead of writing a reply to it.

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.

An item you took off with Clear it is different from a dismissed one: clearing marks the conversation as not needing a reply, so Restore does not bring it back for good. It returns when the customer writes again.

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."