Replying by voice

Both hands are busy and somebody needs to know you're running late. Finding the thread, opening it and typing is a minute you don't have.

"Text Maya Chen: your appointment on Tuesday at 2pm is confirmed, see you then."

How to get to it

Assist in the Inbox header opens Inbox tools, and the first section is Say it instead. There's a box, a microphone button and Go.

The one thing it will not do for you

The card carries a line that never changes, on every message, whatever it says:

This sends words only — nothing is booked, moved or cancelled. Once it goes, it cannot be unsent.

That is there because of one specific mistake. A reply reading "I can fit you in Thursday at five" is a perfectly good message and creates absolutely nothing on Thursday. The client believes they have an appointment; the diary disagrees. Send the reassurance by all means — then go and book the time.

When it comes back with a question

Sometimes you get a question instead of a card:

• Which channel? Their existing conversation may be on a channel it can't send through — the client portal, for instance — so it asks whether to text or email instead.
• Who do you mean? A name it can't find, or finds twice, comes back rather than being guessed at.

Answer in the same box; it keeps the thread of what you were doing.

Speaking elsewhere

The same pattern turns up in a few places — the calendar's Assist panel takes a spoken booking, and a spoken note about a staff member becomes a tidy note. Everywhere it appears, the rule is the same one: speaking submits the request, never the action. The words go in, the work runs, and a human presses the button at the end.