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AurionAI

Escalate, merge and link conversations

6 min readBy Emmanuel Yazbeck

Who sees this: Inbox — profiles Helpdesk and AI Voice + Helpdesk. Roles: Supervisor, Admin and Owner can escalate to a team. Admin and Owner can merge, and so can users with the Merge conversations permission. Agent and higher roles can link conversations and create child tickets. Read-only users only see links.

Escalate a conversation when another team must take it over. Merge conversations when the same customer wrote about the same issue several times. Link conversations, or create child tickets, when one issue needs work from several people.

Prerequisites

  • Your organization uses the Helpdesk or AI Voice + Helpdesk profile.
  • To escalate, your base role is Supervisor, Admin or Owner. An additional role cannot give you this.
  • To merge, your base role is Admin or Owner, or you have the Merge conversations permission.
  • To link conversations or create a child ticket, your base role is Agent, Supervisor, Admin or Owner, or you have the Manage conversations permission.
  • You did not open the inbox from a link that ends in shared=1. Such a link opens the inbox read-only, whatever your role. Read What your role allows in the inbox.

Steps

Escalate to a team

  1. Open the conversation.
  2. In the bar of buttons at the top, select Escalate. On a phone, it is in More. The window Escalate Conversation opens.
  3. In Escalate to team, choose the team. The current team of the conversation is not in the list.
  4. In Bump priority, choose Keep current, Increase by one or Set to urgent. The first two show the priority in brackets.
  5. In Escalation reason, write why you escalate. The reason is required.
  6. Select Escalate at the bottom of the window.

The Escalate Conversation window with the team, priority and reason fields

AurionAI gives the conversation to the team and picks an available member of that team as the new assignee. It changes the priority if you asked, and it saves your reason as an internal note in the conversation.

Merge conversations

The conversation you open is the one that stays. You choose the others that are merged into it. All of them must belong to the same contact: AurionAI refuses to move one customer's messages into another customer's conversation.

  1. Open the conversation that must stay.
  2. At the top of the conversation, next to Share, select the button with three dots, then Merge conversations. The window Merge Conversations opens. It shows the conversation that stays under Primary (surviving) conversation.
  3. Under Select conversations to merge in, type at least two letters of a subject in the field Search conversations…, or paste the ID of a conversation, and select it. Repeat for each conversation to merge.
  4. Read the warning, then select Merge.

The merged conversations get the status merged and leave the normal list. Their messages, internal notes and attachments move to the conversation that stays, which shows all messages in time order. Their tags are added to the conversation that stays. When you open a merged conversation, a banner says This conversation was merged into and links to the conversation that stays.

Undo a merge: within 24 hours, open the merged conversation and select Un-merge in the banner. The conversation opens again with the status open, and its messages, notes and attachments move back to it. After 24 hours, a merge cannot be undone.

  1. Open the conversation and select the tab Related.
  2. In the field Search or paste conversation ID, type at least two letters of its subject, or paste its ID, and select the other conversation.
  3. In the list next to the field, choose the type of link: Related, Parent, Child or Duplicate.
  4. Select Add link.

To remove a link, select Remove next to it, then Confirm.

The same tab has the section Parent / Child Links. There you can make the conversation a child of another one with Link to parent, or create a new child conversation with Create child.

Hand off work with a child ticket

A child ticket is a separate conversation, linked to this one, for work that another team or an outside vendor must do. The panel Linked tickets at the right of the conversation shows the parent and the children.

  1. Open the conversation.
  2. In the panel Linked tickets, select + Create child ticket. The window Create child ticket opens.
  3. Choose where the work goes:
    • Internal handoff: choose the Team, then write the Subject and the Opening message. Only Supervisor, Admin and Owner see this tab.
    • External vendor: choose an existing vendor contact or add a new one, then write the Subject and the Opening email body.
  4. Optional: under Inherit from parent:, choose which fields the child ticket copies from this conversation.
  5. Select Create.

A message confirms the child ticket, with the button View to open it. While a child ticket is open, the parent conversation cannot be resolved. Read Snooze, resolve, archive or delete a conversation.

Result

  • Escalated: the message Conversation escalated appears. The conversation shows the new team, the new assignee and, if you chose it, the new priority.
  • Merged: the message Conversations merged successfully appears.
  • Linked: the link appears in the tab Related, or the child appears in the panel Linked tickets.

If something goes wrong

  • Escalate is missing. Only Supervisor, Admin and Owner can escalate. Write an internal note that mentions a supervisor, and ask them to escalate. Read Write internal notes and mention colleagues.
  • The escalation fails with a message about manual routing. The team you chose does not pick assignees by itself. Ask a supervisor to assign the conversation to a person in that team. Read Claim or assign a conversation.
  • The escalation fails with a message that no agent is available or eligible. Nobody in the team can take the conversation now. Ask a supervisor to assign it to a person. Read Claim or assign a conversation.
  • A message says the team was assigned, but the note or the priority was not saved. The message says which part failed. Change the priority yourself, or write the reason again as an internal note.
  • Merge conversations is missing. Your role cannot merge, or the conversation is already merged or deleted. Ask your administrator. Read Roles and custom permissions.
  • The message These conversations belong to different contacts. Only conversations of the same contact can be merged. appears. One of the selected conversations belongs to another contact. Nothing was merged. Remove it and merge again.
  • A conversation you selected is not merged. Someone else merged it into another conversation first, or it no longer exists. AurionAI skips it without a message. Open it to see where it went.
  • Un-merge is missing in the banner. More than 24 hours have passed, or your role cannot merge.
  • The tab Internal handoff is missing. Only Supervisor, Admin and Owner can hand work to a team.

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