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Set business rules your assistant never breaks

What a business rule is

A business rule is something your assistant must never do in a playbook, whatever else its instructions say. Write each one as a single plain sentence, with an exception when there is one:

A playbook holds up to 10 rules. Each rule and each exception is at most 300 characters, and no two rules can say the same thing.

The assistant reads your rules as limits on what it writes to customers, whatever the rest of its instructions say. When a rule stops it from doing what a customer asks, it says politely that it can't, or hands the conversation to your team. A rule never stops it from handing a conversation to your team. Every message it is about to send is also checked against them, and a message that breaks a rule is rewritten or held, for real customers and in the Simulator alike (see below).

A phase can also hold up to 5 rules of its own, which apply only while a customer is in that phase, on top of the playbook's (see phase-business-rules).

Write a good rule

Add or change rules

Open Prompts in the sidebar and click the playbook's prompt. Its Business rules section lists the rules:

A saved rule applies from the next reply. If someone else saved the rules while you were editing, your edits stay on the page and Reload shows their version.

Anyone who can read the playbook's prompt (Read text) sees its rules. Changing them is a separate permission, Edit rules, set on the Prompts card of a team member's access page (see team-member-access). The owner and the members of Admins hold it. Without Edit rules, the section shows the rules without a way to change them.

Test a rule before it applies

Because the assistant follows a saved rule from the next reply, try it first. Ask the Consultant for the rule you want: it helps you word it so each message can be judged against it, suggests whether it belongs on the playbook or on one phase, and can check it against past messages your assistant sent: ones it finds where the rule should or shouldn't apply, or the latest messages of a few conversations. Each message is checked the way the real check reads it, beside your other rules and with your notes on that customer, and you see which ones the rule would have caught, which came close, and what each check costs. Nothing is saved by that check, and it only checks conversations you can read. It also tells you when a rule would forbid something your prompts or handbook tell the assistant to do. When you reword a rule you already have, it can start from the messages the rule caught or nearly caught over up to 30 days, in conversations you can read, and it checks each message with the current wording and the new one side by side and shows you what the new wording still catches, so you decide on each kind of message. Then ask it to propose the rule and open the proposal in the Simulator with Try this before it is approved (see simulator and consultant-proposals). In the Simulator, the Turn tab names any rule a reply broke.

When a reply breaks a rule

Rating replies and business rules

Rating a reply in the Inbox never adds, changes or removes a business rule.

When a rule needs a look

Each day Yapper counts, for every rule, how many messages its check flagged over the last 14 days, how many of those were rewritten or held for your team, and how many a thumbs-down showed it missed. When a rule's messages were held or missed, or it flags often, or it flags for the first time since it was written or reworded, a Business rule alert appears on the Tasks list for people who can edit the rule. Ask the Consultant on the alert has the Consultant read the messages behind it, tell you which ones broke the rule and which were flagged wrongly, and propose a fix, such as a reworded rule or exception, tested on those messages. Rewording or removing the rule closes the alert (see tasks).

Yapper's terms of service

Separately from your rules, every message is also checked against Yapper's terms of service. These checks are the same for every workspace and can't be changed. A message that breaks them is rewritten before it is sent. If the rewritten message still breaks them, it is not sent: the conversation is handed to your team with an escalation that says the reply violates Yapper's terms of service and includes the held message.