Streamlines and chats

A streamline is a department's assistant, and a chat is one job done with it. Everything you do in Streamliner happens in a chat.

Streamlines

Each streamline belongs to one kind of work. In the Meridian demo, Register handles sales, Approvals handles offers that need a manager, and Receiving handles deliveries. A streamline has its own name, color and icon, its own welcome, its own quick phrases, and its own set of tools in your organization's systems.

You see only the streamlines your job allows. A streamline your role cannot open is not shown at all.

Chats

A chat is one conversation with one streamline, for one job: one sale, one offer, one delivery. It names itself from the job as it goes (Mrs Alvarez · $4,850). Until it has a name it shows the streamline's own label, such as New sale.

Each chat works toward an end your organization's systems confirm, such as a submitted sale. When that happens, a green banner says so, the chat is marked done, and it becomes read-only. The button where the composer was starts the next job. See Finding, archiving and finishing chats (ST-5).

You can have many chats open at once, in the same streamline or different ones. Each keeps its own place.

The list

On the iPhone, the list of chats is grouped by streamline, in your organization's order. Each group's header shows the streamline's icon and name and an On site only mark if it has one; tap it for its latest chat (or a new one), touch and hold it for its menu. Finished chats are hidden until you choose Show Finished Chats there.

Each row shows the chat's title, its last line, the time, a dot when there is something you have not read, and a status chip when it is not simply open:

• Waiting: the job is waiting on someone else, such as a manager's approval.
• Done: the job is finished.

On the Mac and the iPad, each streamline is a card and its open chats are the card's tabs. See The Mac window (MAC-1) and On the iPad and iPhone (GS-7).