Automatic behaviour
What happens without anybody acting — including the important negatives.
What happens without anybody acting. This is the material operations teams are most often unaware of, so it is stated in full.
Triggered by mail arriving
Mail sync is Graph delta on each enrolled mailbox. One mail process holds the cursor; it is not a button on a board.
| What happens | When | What the business notices |
|---|---|---|
| A conversation is created or joined | Every new message | The inbox grows; a thread’s message list grows |
| The message is typed | Every new message | Enquiry, PO, acknowledgement, revision, or other. A hand-corrected type is left alone |
| The message is judged for technical impact | Every new message | A “please send a drawing” reply does not re-process; a revised pressure does |
| Job references are pulled out | Every new message | Related conversations attach to the same opportunity |
| The original sender is recovered | Every new message | The customer, not the colleague who forwarded |
| Customer resolved | Origin email against party contacts | Unknown sender becomes a review item, not a lead against staff |
| A closed conversation is reopened | New mail on a closed thread | Work someone had finished with reappears |
| Attachments are saved and queued | Messages with files | Documents appear, marked as waiting |
| Files inside a forwarded mail are lifted out | A forward | The customer’s datasheets, not just the covering note |
Triggered by processing
| What happens | When |
|---|---|
| Documents are read before anything else | Any run, if any are waiting |
| Line items are saved before parameters are extracted | Every run — progress survives a reload |
| Fluid properties are filled in | Every line item |
| Steam properties are derived from pressure | A steam duty |
| Ambient conditions are assumed | Only where the enquiry states neither, and never for steam or a stated gas |
| Values that cannot be what they claim to be are withheld | A length in a pressure or temperature slot |
| Dropped sizes are flagged | A bore in the source that no line captured |
| Products are suggested | Every line item |
| A half-specified duty is completed from published tables | Bore or flow stated but not both |
Triggered by opening a quotation
The quotation is rebuilt from scratch on every view. Only the person’s overrides and header are stored, so a corrected product record or a fixed rule reaches every existing draft. Staleness is recalculated if the enquiry was re-read since.
Triggered by a purchase order
Lines are extracted, keyed, and compared to the current quotation. Differences are held for review. Nothing silently accepts a mismatch.
What does not happen by itself
- Nothing is guessed into a customer. An unknown sender is a review item.
- Nothing is merged silently. Uncertainty is routed to a person.
- A failed document is never retried automatically.
- A closed conversation is not processed until new mail reopens it.
- ERP handoff is not fire-and-forget. The queue retries against the order row; the message on the wire is not the source of truth.
See Collecting mail and Business rules.