Look up in MCS
Fetches facts from your MCS system, such as the purchase order an invoice refers to, or the items on hire to a customer.
Where it goes: anywhere after Identify the contact. A workflow can have as many as it needs.
How it works
Choose an MCS lookup. Lookups are queries set up on your MCS system to read information from your MCS database. You can add your own and try them in Settings, MCS endpoints.
Values found in MCS are real MCS data, so they rank above anything read from an email or document (see where values come from).
The settings are in four tabs.
Search by
What MCS searches by, and which field each value comes from. Each row is marked Required or Optional.
Some lookups search by the identified customer or supplier's MCS code. That row says Filled in automatically: it always uses the account MCS recognised, never anything the sender wrote, so nobody can look up someone else's records.
Results
| Setting | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|
| How many records to expect | Exactly one. At least one. Any number, or none | Exactly one |
| Save the result in | The field that holds the record MCS found | Required |
| Each row becomes a line | When saving into a list field, such as purchase order lines: which MCS column fills each part of a line | |
| Copy from the first row | Save a column's value into a field, for example the order total |
Let the AI choose
People rarely use MCS's own wording. A customer writes "the genny on the Marsden job", not the item code. With On: the AI chooses, the lookup returns the likely records, for example every item on hire to that customer with each contract's site, and the AI picks the one the sender means.
| Setting | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Let the AI choose | Off: use the rules below. On: the AI chooses | Off |
| What the sender said | The fields holding the sender's own words, such as the machine and site they named | |
| The sender means | One record. One or more records | One record |
| How sure the AI must be: carry on by itself | 50% to 100% | 85% |
| How sure the AI must be: ask the sender to choose | Below the level above. Below this, a person decides | 50% |
| If nothing fits | A person decides. Or ask the sender, listing what was found | A person decides |
| How each record is described to the sender | The columns shown for each record in the list | The first three |
The AI can only pick from the records MCS returned, so whatever it picks is real MCS data. It also checks a single result against what was said: a glass washer is not a pressure washer.
| The AI's answer | What happens |
|---|---|
| One record, at or above "carry on by itself" | Carries on with it |
| Records between the two levels | The sender is asked to choose from a numbered list of up to 6. They can reply "2" or "the one at Marsden" |
| Nothing at or above "ask the sender to choose" | As set in "If nothing fits". When the sender is asked, the list shows up to 30 records |
If it does not match
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| When nothing is found | Hand to a person |
| When more than one is found (not shown when the AI chooses) | Hand to a person |
What can happen
| What happened | What happens next |
|---|---|
| Found | Carries on |
| Nothing found | As set in "When nothing is found" |
| More than one found, when one was expected | As set in "When more than one is found" |
| MCS does not answer | Tries again up to 5 times, then waits and carries on by itself |
| The lookup is not installed on your MCS, or failed in MCS | Goes to a person, with what to do |
What you see on the work item
What was asked and what came back. With Let the AI choose, each record it considered, how sure it was and why.
Use it for
- Supplier invoices: find the supplier's purchase order named on the invoice, then that order's lines.
- Requests about hired equipment: find the machine on hire from what the customer described, with Let the AI choose.
- Copy invoice requests: find the invoice the customer asked for.