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Overview ​

Overdesk writes a reply to each new customer message and leaves it unsent in your help desk. Someone on your team reads it, edits it if it needs editing, and sends it. The drafting happens in the background, so on most conversations the answer is already waiting when an agent opens it.

Overdesk never messages a customer. Every draft waits for a person, and sending from Overdesk is disabled. The one exception to know about is FreeScout: an API and Webhooks module older than 1.0.103 may send a draft reply as a real one, so keep drafts as internal notes there until it is updated. See Where drafts go.

What drafting needs ​

Drafting starts once these are in place:

  • A connected help desk. See Connect your help desk.
  • Your Anthropic API key, saved in Settings → AI. Drafting runs on your own key. See Add your Anthropic API key.
  • A documentation source, set in Settings → Knowledge base. Drafts are grounded in your docs, so drafting waits until a docs address is set; see Point Overdesk at your docs. It does not wait for the first crawl, and by default a conversation your knowledge base has nothing on is still drafted: see Only draft when sources are found.
  • At least one inbox named in Allowed inboxes, under Settings → General. While that field is empty, Overdesk drafts in no inbox at all. See Allowed inboxes.

When drafts are written ​

Overdesk checks your queue every 15 minutes. Each run looks at the open conversations in your allowed inboxes that were updated in the last 14 days, and drafts up to 25 of them, most pressing first. Conversations tagged as urgent, as bug reports or as billing questions move up the list, and a customer who has waited a long time or written in more than once moves up too. The tags come from Triage.

Assigned conversations get drafts as well. A conversation someone has picked up is usually the one they are about to answer.

With webhooks set up, Overdesk also drafts the moment a new conversation or a customer reply arrives, instead of waiting for the next run. See Real-time updates with webhooks.

How often a conversation is drafted depends on where drafts go. With internal notes, Overdesk drafts each conversation once: while its draft note is on the conversation, a later message from the customer does not get a second one. With draft replies, each new customer message gets a fresh draft, unless an unsent reply is already waiting in the composer. For a fresh answer on any conversation, use Re-draft on the draft page in Overdesk.

To start a run straight away, press Run auto-draft on the Agent drafts page.

What arrives in your help desk ​

By default each draft arrives as an internal note. It opens with an "AI Draft Response" heading, the model and the date, then gives the answer, then a line counting what it drew on: docs, history, threads, past resolutions and saved replies. On Help Scout and FreeScout you can have drafts arrive as an unsent reply in the composer instead. See Where drafts go.

Overdesk adds the ai-reply tag to each conversation it drafts, and lists the draft on the Agent drafts page, where you can check its sources, edit it or discard it. See Reviewing drafts.

When a conversation gets no draft ​

  • The workspace is paused. Choosing Paused under Guardrails → Send mode stops all drafting until you switch back to Draft assist. See Guardrails.
  • Its inbox is not named in Allowed inboxes.
  • It was last updated more than 14 days ago.
  • It already has a draft. With internal notes, that means an Overdesk draft note anywhere on the conversation. With draft replies, it means a draft since the customer last wrote, and any unsent reply in the composer counts, including one a teammate has started.
  • Nothing relevant turned up and you have asked Overdesk to draft only when it finds relevant sources. The run says how many conversations it skipped on the Runs page. See Only draft when sources are found.

If a drafting run fails, Overdesk raises a "Drafting failed" alert and records what went wrong on the Runs page, such as which help desk connection it could not reach.