The conversation beside the ticket

On a repair order, press Message in the toolbar and the customer's conversation opens at the side of the screen, beside the order. 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.

Messaging lives only at the side of the screen. A row in the inbox, a message in the bell, a customer's record — every door to a conversation opens this same drawer over whatever you were doing. A link opened in a new tab, or a browser with scripting off, gets the same side panel with nothing behind it.

The top row

The customer's name is the heading, and it opens their record. Under it sits one quiet line naming the order this conversation is about, how many other orders it 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. Opened from the inbox rather than a ticket, it says how many orders the conversation has touched instead.

The rest of the row is small icons, each with a short word in a tooltip. The chevron on the left goes back to All conversations. On the right, when somebody owns the conversation, their face sits first; then No reply needed while the customer is waiting on an answer, a tick to Mark read while anything is unread, the order filter, a … menu, and the cross that closes the drawer.

The … menu holds everything used a few times a week: a call link with the customer's number, Open customer, the order the next message is tagged to when you can open orders, What we have sent — the send log for this customer — and Edit templates. At its foot is the assignment: pick a person, or Unassigned, and press Assign. The menu and the filter are plain disclosures and the assignment is an ordinary form, so all of it works with JavaScript off.

The top row is fixed, and the message box with its row of icons is 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 wherever it opens — beside a ticket, over the board from the messages panel, or from a link. 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.

Narrowing to one order

The conversation always opens on all messages, even from a ticket. To read only what was said about one order, press the funnel icon — Filter by order — and pick from the list: All messages first, then one entry per ticket this conversation has said something about, each with the number of messages tagged to it. A small dot on the funnel says a filter is on. The entries are links, so the filter lives in the address, Back works and none of it needs JavaScript. A conversation that has touched no order has no funnel.

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

Reading and tagging are two different things. The next message is tagged to the order you filtered to, or — with no filter — to the ticket the drawer was opened from, and the empty message box says which: Send a message about order #1632. Opened from the inbox with no filter, nothing is tagged.

Sending keeps the filter you sent under. Write while narrowed to an order and the conversation comes back narrowed to it; choose All messages and send, and it comes back on all messages rather than quietly narrowing itself again.

One mark per channel

Under every message is a small line: the glyph for each pipe it went down — a speech bubble for a text, an envelope for an email — then the time on the shop's clock and, for the shop's own messages, who sent it. Each glyph can carry one small badge on its corner, and that badge is the whole answer at a glance.

A green tick

It went. On a text, a delivery receipt came back from the carrier. On an email, the mail service took it or reported it delivered.

A red cross

It did not go. Either nothing reached the customer — no consent on file, texting not set up — or it left and then bounced or was reported as spam.

No badge

Not known yet: still sending, a text the carrier took with no receipt yet, or a send whose outcome never came back. The tooltip says which.

The words live in the tooltip, not on the screen. Rest the pointer on a glyph and our own tooltip opens with what happened, when, and why — the row's own stored sentence rather than a paraphrase, so a blocked text says which permission was missing — plus the subject a customer wrote and the order the message is about. A red cross reads This did not go through. or It bounced or was reported as spam. above its reason; a text the carrier took reads The carrier took it; no delivery receipt yet.

On a tablet with no keyboard there is no hover, and tapping a mark does not open its tooltip. Three ways reach the same words without a pointer: with a keyboard, Tab onto the mark and the tooltip opens; a screen reader reads the mark's name and the tooltip's sentence aloud; and What we have sent in the … menu lists every send to this customer with its outcome and its reason written out.

A text with no badge is the one to read twice. A carrier taking a text is a fact about the carrier, not about the 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 — so there is no tick until a receipt arrives. And a send whose outcome never came back looks exactly like one still on its way; only its tooltip, We never found out whether this went., tells them apart.

Messages from the customer carry their channel glyph and nothing else, unless something went wrong with what they sent. Internal notes say Internal note on the bubble, and their glyph's tooltip says the note is for your team only.

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 went 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.

Reactions, both ways

When a customer on an iPhone reacts to one of your texts, their phone sends words like Liked “Your car is ready”. Torqix folds those words back onto the message they quote, the way Apple's Messages does: a small emoji on the corner of your bubble, and a tooltip saying who reacted and when. Taking the reaction back on their phone takes it off here too. Words that quote nothing the shop actually sent stay an ordinary message, because then the customer is saying something.

To react to a customer's message, press the thumb under it — Like this message. When their message came by text, their number has texting consent and the shop can text, the like is texted to them in the same words an iPhone uses, through the same consent check as any other text; otherwise it is kept in the shop as a reaction your team sees and the customer does not. The like's tooltip says which: Sent to them as a text. or Kept in the shop — not texted. Pressing it twice is not two likes.

The New line

A small New between two messages marks where the messages nobody has ticked off begin. Press Mark read in the top row and it goes, along with the unread count — they are the same fact drawn twice.

Where the next message will go

In the row under the message box, two icon toggles say where the next message goes: the speech bubble for a text, the envelope for an email. A toggle that is on is shaded; one that is off is plain. Its tooltip names the number or address it would use, with · primary where it applies, and for a text whether consent is on file. The number and address are picked by the same rule the send itself uses, not the first row on the record, so the toggle cannot name one endpoint while the message goes to another.

Both start on when the customer can be reached both ways, which is the default a shop wants. A way that cannot be used is crossed out and cannot be switched on, and its tooltip says why — No texting permission on file for this number. Ask them to opt in first., No email address on file. or Email stopped for this customer — see their record. While the shop's texting registration is unfinished, the text toggle's tooltip adds Texting isn't registered yet. Carriers may filter texts until it is.

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 toggles arrive at their defaults.

Switch both off 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 switched off.

The row under the message box

From the left: a paperclip to attach files, the two channel toggles, the note icon — Save as internal note — which keeps what you typed as a note the customer never sees, a page icon that opens your Templates already written out for this customer and this ticket, and a ? that says what may be attached and who sees it. At the right sit a clock for Send later and Send, which stays grey until there is something in the box.

A file 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. Enter makes a new line; it never sends.

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.

Pictures and files

Press the paperclip, drop files on the message box, or paste them in — up to ten on one message. Torqix keeps JPEG, PNG and WebP pictures, PDFs, text and CSV files, and Word, Excel, PowerPoint or ZIP files, each up to 8 MB. Anything else — a GIF, an iPhone HEIC photo, a program — is refused when you press Send, not silently dropped: the message still goes, and the conversation says the file did not attach and why.

Choose a photograph and it appears in the compose box before you send it, small, with the file name and size 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. Over 8 MB together, the box warns you before you send.

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.

What the customer receives: the first picture rides with the text; every file goes on the email as a real attachment; and when the text went, the other files follow it as one more text of links that work for an hour. Everything stays on the conversation for your team.

In the conversation, a picture shows as a small tile — press it to open it in the viewer, and use Download there or on the tile to save the original. Any other file shows as a chip with its name and size; its tooltip says what it is, and pressing it downloads it.

Files a customer emails back arrive on their message the same way, up to ten per email. One that could not be kept — over 8 MB, a type Torqix does not keep, or a fault on Torqix's side — never costs you the customer's words: the message arrives, its envelope carries a red cross, and the tooltip says how many files were not kept, their size and why, so you know whether to ask the customer to send it again.

Sending later

Write the message, press the clock, choose text or email and a time on the shop's clock, and press Schedule. Until it goes, it sits at the end of the conversation as a paler bubble with a small clock under it; the clock's tooltip says when it leaves, by which channel, and who scheduled it. The person who scheduled it sees a cross beside it — Cancel scheduled message.

A cancelled message simply disappears, because it never happened. One that has gone appears once, as the real message with its own mark. One the send refused stays, with a red cross and the reason in its tooltip, and cannot be cleared away — it is the only record of why it did not go.

Who owns it, in the inbox

In the inbox, a conversation somebody owns shows their name under the preview. One nobody owns shows nothing there, so a row only grows a line when there is something to say; the inbox's Unassigned filter is how you find them. Assigning is done inside the conversation, from the … menu.