A case

Editing a case

Edit case… in the head changes the facts — subject, type, on behalf of (a merchant or member the request concerns, when the requester isn't asking for themselves), submitter, owner, involvement, and a promised-by date with what was promised — in one dialog, along with an optional Component — the part of the OPN stack the request is about, from a list an OPN administrator maintains under Vocabularies; set it when the request makes it plain and leave it blank otherwise. Promised-by is a commitment to the customer, shown in Details and flagged promise missed once it passes; the first-response target is computed from priority and can't be set by hand. Status, priority and blocked-on are edited right in the head; the description and the next action each with their own Edit on the page. The original request is never edited. Every saved change is a case edited event on the timeline, showing was → now. An archived case can't be edited; reopen it first.

If someone else saved the case while you were editing, nothing of yours is saved yet: a dialog shows, field by field, what you saw, what's there now and who changed it, and what you entered — choose mine or theirs per field and save again. On a single control (status, priority) the same appears beside it with a one-click retry.

Header

The status and priority are dropdowns; changing one takes effect at once and is logged. Setting pending internal requires a Blocked on value — who or what the case is waiting for. It clears itself when the status changes again, but stays in the history.

Hold… puts the case on hold until a time you pick, with a reason — a release that moved, a change awaiting approval. Until then the case counts as neither overdue nor stale, isn't escalated automatically, and reads held until … on its row and in the head; when the time passes the flags come back on their own. The first-response target and the weekly figures don't move: a hold quiets the alarm, it doesn't change the promise. Anyone who can change the status can set or clear a hold; each is a timeline event.

Expand all / Collapse all appears when the page has more than one long Markdown block.

The header and timeline recheck the server every 15 seconds, because another operator, Claude acting through the MCP server, or an inbound reply can change the case while you have it open. The Live indicator in the header says so; it keeps refreshing whether or not the window is in front, so a case left on a spare monitor stays current. Your compose form is never touched by that refresh.

Original request

The request as it arrived — the email with its From, To, CC, Date and Subject over the whole body, a text with its numbers and time, or whatever the person who opened the case by hand pasted into Request as received. Kept verbatim, never edited, shown as plain text (an email isn't Markdown) and collapsed to about five lines. It is the record of what was asked; the description and the notes are what the team makes of it. An email that arrived without a plain-text part is shown as the text of its HTML: headings, lists and links kept, styling dropped. When the case was opened by email, Open original in this card's head shows that message as the sender's client built it, the way the timeline's entries do.

Description

The working summary: what is being asked, in the team's words, in Markdown, editable in place. Change it only when the request itself has materially changed — the customer restated the problem, the scope grew, the first reading was wrong. Progress goes in the next action and the notes, not here. Long descriptions are collapsed to about five lines; click the faded text or Show more to expand. Raw shows the Markdown source.

Next action

One line or two: what happens next and whose move it is, in Markdown, up to 500 characters, edited in place under the description by anyone who can add a note. The head shows it as Next: … and the case list can show it as a column. A change is a case edited event with was → now, and two people editing at once get the same merge banner as the description. Clear it when nothing is pending.

Assignment

• Claim an unassigned case to take it. Release to pool gives back a case you claimed yourself.
• A case an admin assigned to someone can't be released by that person — ask an admin to reassign it. This keeps admin assignment a real workload decision.

Responses and review

A response is email to the submitter, sent as yourself (Your details) or under a persona — one of yours, or a shared one. Every outbound subject carries the case ref; replies come back to the case automatically.

Who reviews what:

Reviewer actions: Approve & send, Edit, then approve (every edit is kept as a revision with a diff), or Send back with a required note. The View changes link shows what a reviewer changed.

Style warnings under a draft (em dashes, Markdown syntax, hard-wrapped lines) are advisory and never block sending.

Attachments and library items

• Attach file — goes out with this message only. No approval.
• Add library image / Add library video — an approved, reusable item your entity can see. It's inserted at the cursor; nothing to hand-type. To make something reusable, add it in the Library.

Scheduling and delivery

Schedule for later (in the response form, above the subject) holds a response until the time you pick — the button reads Send later once it's ticked, Send now otherwise — in your own time zone, up to 72 hours ahead. A scheduled response can be cancelled until it goes out, and restored until its send time passes. Sending is done by a job that runs every five minutes, so the message leaves within five minutes after its time, never before; nothing is handed to the mail provider until then.

After sending, each response shows a delivery status: delivered, deferred, or bounced. A bounce means the message did not arrive even though it was sent — check the address.

Notes

Internal notes, newest first, above the timeline: the facts established (ids, statuses, what a log says) and evaluations of where the case stands. + Note opens the one add-note form; a note is Markdown, never sent, dated and attributed, and never edited — a later note supersedes an earlier one. The same notes appear on the timeline among the other events.

Timeline

Everything that happened to the case, newest first: status and priority changes, assignments, responses, inbound email and SMS, broadcasts sent about the case, escalations, timers, system events. Each entry is a line you can read at a glance; N fields recorded under it unfolds everything the event actually recorded — the values as written, and how the write arrived (web, token, email, text, job). An inbound email shows an excerpt that stops where the quoted thread begins (marked Quoted thread trimmed); the message as stored keeps the thread. Open original shows the message as the sender's client built it, on a tab of its own, in a sandbox where nothing in it can run (its links are inert; copy one if you need it). Files that arrived with the email are listed under the entry: an image or a PDF opens inline, anything else downloads, and nothing from outside ever runs in the page. An inbound text carries Reply via SMS, which opens the response form with the channel set to SMS. An OPN admin also sees Move… on every received entry: the message goes onto the case it belongs to, arriving there as a reply would, and this case records where it went (see Messages).

Time

Start timer on the case you're working; you have one timer at a time, and starting another stops it. Stop it with a note, or Record time… by hand. Totals per case feed reporting.

Escalate, or broadcast about the case

These are different actions on purpose.

• Escalate is internal: a reason, optionally a new priority or assignee, and a post to Slack. The case shows escalated until someone de-escalates it.
• Broadcast about this case is the outage alert to the people at the case's entities — by SMS, email or both, according to each person's emergency preference, plus any extra recipients you type in. It's a broadcast like any other (see Broadcasts): a Preview tab shows the exact SMS and its segment count, and nothing sends until you press Send there. Replies land on this case.

A response can also go out by SMS — choose the channel in the response form. It's plain text, wrapped with the carrier-required prefix and footer, and appears in Correspondence like any other response.

Related cases

Link cases that belong together — related to, duplicate of, follow-up of. When a customer comes back after a case has closed, use Create follow-up on the closed case rather than reopening it: the new case is pre-filled and linked, and the old one stays a readable unit. When a case was opened for something another case already covers, an OPN admin uses Merge into case… under Actions: every received message moves to the case it duplicates, the two are linked duplicate of, this case closes without the closed notice, and from then on mail to its address lands on the survivor. Its header says Merged into CASE-….

Resolving, closing, archiving

• Resolved closes automatically after 5 days with no new activity. New activity — a reply, a response, a status change — reopens it. Close now skips the wait.
• A closed case doesn't reopen on its own. Reopen is for a case closed by mistake.
• 21 days after closing, a case is archived: its message bodies, attachments, notes, original request, description and next action are removed from the live system and kept in an export only admins can request. Refs, customer, status and the timeline skeleton stay visible. Reopening an archived case restores it first.