The "Needs You" Inbox

Overview

The “Needs you” inbox is the one place for decisions that need you, right now — kept deliberately separate from the work backlog. It answers a different question than the backlog does:

Folding “a human must decide this now” into the backlog is a category error: the two have different owners, cadence, and half-lives. The inbox gives time-sensitive decisions their own home so they don’t get buried under planned work.

Key Concepts

• Only owner decisions reach the daily count. Routine platform recovery, missing credentials, stalled builds, and service health stay with your digital team. They appear only if they create a real business choice for you.
• Money and public actions always come to you. A proactivity setting can change how routine work is handled, but it cannot bypass approval when money leaves the business or something goes public.
• Every card explains the decision. The top of the card gives a short question; for a blocked coworker, a plain line saying what it was doing and why it stalled; a concrete impact (“if ignored…”); the recommendation with the specialist it came from; and no more than three plain choices. It never invents a confidence score.
• Technical detail is preserved. Open Technical detail to see the original title, source, work fields, linked identifiers, detection details, and builder actions. That information is moved one click down, not deleted.
• A projection, not another queue. The inbox is a read-only view over each area’s own records; it is not a second backlog or ticket tracker. Acting on an item updates the record in its home area.
• A card never shows a button it cannot honour. Some items — a paused governance gate, a failed customer journey — have no action an owner can take from the inbox; their record lives on a builder or platform screen. In Simple view those cards show a plain sentence saying your digital team holds it, with the record one click down under Technical detail, rather than a button that goes nowhere. In Full view, where builder and platform tools are visible by choice, the real record is the card’s own action.
• Items retire themselves when the question goes away. If a decision was raised to unblock a build and that build is later abandoned, finished, or folded into an epic, nobody needs to answer it any more. Those cards clear automatically and stop counting toward your daily total. They are marked as closed on their own — never as though a person answered them.
• An empty inbox is a good day. When nothing needs a decision, the inbox shows “You’re all caught up” — and, when relevant, a short summary of what your digital team is handling on its own. An empty inbox is reassurance, not an unfinished list.

What Shows Up Here

• Approvals — bills and expense claims awaiting sign-off, outbound messages pending review, and regulatory submissions with a filing deadline.
• Business judgment — a coworker cannot continue safely without your choice.
• Bounded coworker proposals — a coworker recommends taking more initiative within a stated limit; you can accept it, keep the current level, or ask for a narrower limit.
• Coworker actions held for your approval — a coworker was told to stop and ask before taking a specific action. The card names the coworker, the exact action, the reason given, the job it belongs to, and the time you have to answer. When the action is a review of a saved file, it also names the file, the exact saved version, and the check being answered, so you can see precisely what you are approving. Only you can answer your own; nobody else sees it.
• Approvals nobody is answering (administrators only). AI coworker approvals keep going to an account that is not using the portal: it is deactivated, has not been seen for three days, or has never been seen. The card names the account, how many requests went unanswered in the last week, and which actions they were for. You cannot answer them for that person. The usual cause is an AI connection set up while the wrong account was signed in. Open Review AI connections, revoke that connection, and reconnect under the right account.
• Friday review — low-urgency research and improvement suggestions are grouped together instead of interrupting the daily inbox.

What You Can Do

• Review the business decision using the plain action on the card. In Simple view, builder-only links never appear as the main owner action — and neither does a placeholder button in their place.
• Accept, keep, or narrow a proactivity boundary without leaving the workspace.
• Approve or decline a held coworker action on the card. Once the answer is saved, or the time runs out, the buttons go away and the record stays readable. Pressing twice, or reloading and pressing again, cannot answer it twice.
• Inspect the complete proposal before deciding. The card gives the action, destination, consequences, governing reason, and authorization scope. Open Complete proposed content to read the full saved proposal; the summary may be shortened. Authorizing an evidence record permits that write. It does not independently attest that its tests passed or replace a required specialist review. If consequences are not established, the card says so.
• Ask again on a request that expired before anyone answered it. The same request comes back to you for a fresh decision.
• Open Technical detail when a builder or specialist needs the full source record.
• Clear or snooze the Friday review as one batch, or review an item individually.
• Ask your digital coworker for a briefing on what is in the inbox and why.

An external assistant can also find its pending requests without a saved request ID. Ask it to check its pending approvals; each result names the approval owner, expiry, exact Inbox link and, for a saved-file review, the immutable file version and check. The list contains only requests for the connected user and that assistant. A long list reports when more requests remain in the Inbox. An exact request ID still lets the assistant check whether that request completed. These reads do not approve anything, transfer ownership or change permissions. If the connection belongs to another account, reconnect under the intended account; administrator privileges do not let you answer someone else’s request.

How long a coworker’s request waits

A request that sends something outside your business, such as an email, a post, an ad or a pull request, waits 15 minutes. What it was going to send can go out of date, and it cannot be recalled once it is sent. Every other request waits up to seven days, so a request raised while you are away is still there when you come back. Before an approved request runs, it is checked again. An approval that is too old for what the action now is does not run.

If nobody answers in time, the request is not lost. It comes back in the Friday review as Expired unanswered, with no Authorize or Decline buttons, so a closed request can never be approved by accident. Choose Ask again and the same request returns to you for a fresh decision. Nothing is asked again unless you or your coworker choose to. A link to a request opens that request’s own card, even when it is in the Friday review.

Deadline-bearing items show a plain tag such as Due in 10 minutes, Due in 6 hours, or Due in 3 days — always in the largest unit that is still accurate, so a short window is never dressed up as a long one. A window that has closed reads Past due. Impact tags use words such as Costs money, Goes public, and Reversible.

Derived from the Attention Surface foundation and the cognitive-load redesign. This user guide is the owner-facing view; the specs hold the full rationale and non-goals.