Published
Inquiry topics — the office's own list
The office keeps its own list of topics, and the topic is set by whoever speaks with the person — on the after-call form or through the Edit details action.
The topic of an inquiry — medical negligence, a road accident, whatever the office deals with — used to be a field with nothing to put in it: the list was empty, there was no screen to manage it, and the record simply said "no topic". The list now belongs to the office, and the topic is set in the course of the work, by whoever speaks with the person.
The list itself sits in Settings → Topics, with the office owner: add a topic, give it a label in Hebrew, Russian and English, set the order in which topics appear on forms, and switch off the ones no longer in use. A topic that is switched off is no longer offered on forms, yet on older inquiries its label stays where it was. There is no delete, and that is deliberate: deleting a topic would take the history of the inquiries that sat on it along with it.
The rule the product keeps is a simple one: the topic is marked by whoever speaks with the person, not by someone else on a separate form afterwards. The Record a call form now has a Topic field, pre-filled with what is on the record; if the conversation shows the matter is a different one, it is changed right there — and the change is saved together with the call entry, in a single action.
What came with it:
- the inquiry record and the side panel of the list now carry an Edit details action: name, email, topic and note, all in one place;
- the phone number is deliberately not changed by that action — it is the key of the inquiry, the way the system recognises that this person is already with you;
- the topic is shown in the side panel of the list and works as a filter of the list, so every inquiry on one topic can be seen at once;
- a change of topic and an edit of details both go into the access log: which fields were touched and when, without the values themselves.
The topic stops being an empty field on the record and becomes what it always was — a way of seeing what the office is busy with.
Want to see this on your own office's inquiries?