Departments and routing.
Departments are how the platform decides who answers an enquiry. Set them up once and the dashboard does the triage you used to do by hand.
How routing works
When an enquiry arrives, an LLM reads the item description, the item-type field, the artist or maker, and any attached photos, then categorises it into one of your departments. The categorised enquiry is assigned to whichever specialist owns that department. If no specialist is assigned, the enquiry goes to a fallback owner so it never sits unattended.
Every routing decision is shown alongside the enquiry: the chosen department, a confidence score, and a one-line reason. Specialists can see at a glance why it landed with them, and override the routing in a single click if they disagree.
Setting up departments
Open Settings → General → Departments and add the categories that match how your house is organised. Most regional houses have between four and ten departments. Common examples:
- Furniture
- Jewellery and watches
- Fine art (paintings, prints)
- Silver and metalware
- Ceramics and glass
- Books, maps, and ephemera
- Clocks and scientific instruments
- Asian art
Assigning specialists
From Team, open a team member and tick the departments they own. A specialist can own more than one department; a department can have more than one specialist (the platform load-balances between them).
Fallback owner
Set a fallback owner under Settings → General → Routing. This is the person who catches anything that can't be confidently categorised, plus anything submitted to a department with no specialist assigned. Reception or the office manager is usually the right choice.
What if the categorisation is wrong?
Open the enquiry, change the department from the dropdown, and save. The enquiry is reassigned immediately. The platform also learns from these corrections, so the same kind of mis-categorisation becomes less common over time.