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Replies owed

Most utility emails need nothing from you: a locate sheet is recorded against the ticket and the package builds. A few are questions. A locator asks you to confirm the dig area, a member asks which side of the road, a locate company asks to move a date, Enbridge offers an extension, One Call asks for a clarification on a suspended request. Those need an answer from you, from your own mailbox, and they are easy to lose among the eighty others. Dig Window flags them as Reply owed.

Where you see it

Overview: a tile, Replies owed, with how many are waiting and how many are past the date asked for. It opens the list.
Tracker: a Reply owed chip on the ticket's row, a Reply owed pill above the table, and a view of the same name with the oldest ask first.
Review: the Reply owed filter lists every open one, with the buttons for each kind.
The ticket: a Reply owed card with who asked, their words, when, and the date they asked for (or the date Dig Window suggests when they named none). Answered questions stay on the card for thirty days, with who answered and when.
Your phone and the app: a notice when a question comes in, if you have Someone asks you a question about a locate on under Notifications. The daily digest lists anything past its date.

A reply owed never changes the ticket's status, the map or the package. It is a reminder that a person is waiting, nothing more.

The four kinds

A question from a member, a locator or One Call. Answer it from your mailbox (below), then the ticket is marked answered. The buttons are Send me the reply email, Reply by mail app, Mark replied and No reply needed.
A request to move a date. Accept or Decline, as on the Negotiation card.
An extension offer from Enbridge. Email Enbridge opens the reply in your mail app, as before.
A clarification request from One Call on a suspended ticket. Open the email, answer One Call from your mailbox, then Answered One Call, close.

Answering a question

You always answer from your own mailbox and your own address. Dig Window never writes to a utility or to One Call for you. Three ways to get there:

Send me the reply email. Press it on the card and an email from Dig Window - reply owed arrives in your inbox within a moment, with the question quoted in full. Press Reply (or Reply all) and type your answer above the quote. The reply goes from your address to the person who asked, with their own email under your answer, and a copy reaches your intake address so the ticket is marked answered, usually within a minute. If you would rather have that email arrive on its own for every question, turn on Email me a reply-ready copy of each question under Notifications. It is off until you turn it on.
Reply by mail app. Opens your mail app with the asker's address, your intake address in Cc and the subject already filled in. Keep both addresses and the subject as they are; they are how the ticket knows the answer went out.
Reply all on the original email in your locates mailbox. The original came to your intake address, so Reply all already includes it.

Why two addresses on Reply? One is the person who asked. The other, yourcompany@digwindow.net, is your One Call contact address; every utility already has it, because it is on every request you file. Leave it in. It is what lets Dig Window record that the answer went, so you do not have to come back and mark the ticket by hand. Your reply is stored on the ticket under Documents, marked your reply, whether or not you keep a copy in your own Sent folder.

If you answered some other way, by phone, in person or from a different address, press Mark replied and add a note if you like ("called Jane 10:05"). Everyone on the team sees "Answered by Chris, Oct 14 10:02 · called Jane". If the email did not need an answer after all, press No reply needed.

One optional step in your mailbox

Nothing needs setting up for any of this to work. If the reply-ready email ever lands in junk, add notify@digwindow.com to your safe senders. That is the only mailbox step, and it is optional: the app shows every reply owed without it.

Flagging one yourself

When an email needs an answer and the tracker did not flag it, open the ticket, find the email under Documents and press Mark as reply owed. The same button sits on every item in the review list that came from an email. Pressing it twice on the same email does not make two.

Forwarding a utility's email to your intake address does not flag it, and it does not count as a reply. Use Mark as reply owed on the email the ticket already holds.

"From a sender Dig Window has not verified"

Some questions arrive from an address Dig Window cannot vouch for: a personal address, a contractor the utility hired, a mailbox whose email authentication is not set up. The question still shows on the tracker and in the list, and you still get the notice. What you do not get is the reply-ready email, because Dig Window will not put an unverified address in front of you to reply to. Answer from your mailbox as you normally would, then press Mark replied. If it is a utility or a locate company you hear from regularly, tell support and the reply email will follow for that sender from then on.

Two settings on the Company page

Your replies can be matched. For the ticket to mark itself answered, an email from your domain has to pass its authentication check (SPF and DKIM, set up once by whoever looks after your email). The Company page shows whether the last one did. When it did not, or none has arrived yet, every question falls back to Mark replied, and the line tells you what to ask your IT provider for.
Also keep a copy of our replies in the locates mailbox. Off, your reply is stored on the ticket and the shared mailbox stays quieter. On, the copy lands in the locates mailbox too, as every other email does.

The date

When the sender names a date ("by Friday", "before Oct 16"), the card shows it as asked for an answer by. When they name none, Dig Window suggests two business days and says so. The daily digest lists every reply owed past its date; suspended requests are listed on the tracker instead, since One Call sets no date on them.

What Dig Window does not do

It does not reply to anyone on your behalf, and it does not chase a utility. It flags what looks like a question and records when an answer looks to have gone out, as a convenience. It will not catch every question, and a flagged email may not need an answer; your mailbox stays yours to watch, and every member and One Call deadline stays yours to meet. No reply needed is your judgement, not Dig Window's.

On the Partner plan you see that a question from the utility is awaiting the contractor's reply, and nothing more.

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