Inquiries & inquiry forms

Not every booking starts with a click on the booking page. Company events, room rentals or workshops often start with a question. Under Inquiries, anny collects all of these requests in one place: from your inquiry forms, from forwarded emails and from your AI assistants. You reply straight from anny, propose bookings and send a quote your customers accept online. In anny, every inquiry is an order with an Inquiry status. Everything that belongs to the inquiry stays together: the customer, the form answers, the email conversation, bookings, invoice and quotes.

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How do inquiries reach anny?

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The inquiries overview

You find the inquiries in the sidebar under Management → Inquiries. At the top you pick a view. The number below its name shows how many inquiries it holds. The Spam view sits beside them. It lists only inquiries marked as spam. The other views leave those out. The table shows columns such as Inquiry (the request or a summary of the email), Inquiry form, Processing status, Assigned to and Requested bookings. Use the Inquiry status filter to narrow the list further. With the Assignment filter you see only inquiries that are Assigned to me or Unassigned. Manage inquiry forms in the toolbar takes you straight to your forms. The Assigned to column shows the picture of the person in charge and sits right after the status. If you customized a view, anny added the column after the status there too. If you had hidden it on purpose, it stays hidden. In a view without the column, the person’s picture appears next to the status. If a view is empty and you may edit the organization, anny shows the secret email address to copy and a link to the Inquiry settings. If email intake is still off, the link reads Set up email intake. Click a row to open the inquiry in a side panel. Use the arrows at the top of the panel to jump to the previous or next inquiry.

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Inquiry status

You usually don’t need to maintain the status yourself. anny sets it automatically as soon as something happens:

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Spam

anny files some form and email inquiries under Spam on its own. The inquiry status then shows Spam. From the same status you mark an inquiry by hand with Mark as spam, or bring it back with Not spam. While it sits under Spam, nobody joins a community attached to the form.

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Working on an inquiry

The side panel shows the inquiry details on the left and the activity log on the right.

• Summary: inquiry status, Assigned to, requested bookings, customer and the request.
• Forms: the Channel the inquiry came through (for example Website form, Email or Voice assistant), when it was submitted, which Inquiry form was used and all answers. anny hides questions that don’t apply given the answers so far.
• Bookings, Products, Invoices and further sections as on every order.

Under Inquiry form in the Forms section, you set which form the inquiry belongs to, or switch it with Choose a form. The answers given so far are kept. If the new form is available For AI assistants, anny AI fills in the new questions from the customer’s emails. If anny AI recognized the form itself, Recognized by shows, for example, anny AI · filled 5 answers or anny AI, from the email. Answers anny AI adds later appear without a reload.

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Replying

Write the customer an email directly in the activity log on the right. The inquiry then moves to Waiting. When the customer replies, the email lands in the activity log, your team is notified and the inquiry moves to Needs attention. How to write emails and add notes is explained in Activity log. If the inquiry arrived without a customer, for example from a forwarded email, click Add customer in the Summary. If required answers are still missing, anny AI prepares a draft that asks the customer for them. The draft sits in the activity log, is marked anny AI and reads Draft · not sent yet. Above it, anny shows which required answers are missing. anny never sends the draft on its own. You decide:

• Send sends the draft to the customer as it is. Like any reply, the inquiry moves to Waiting.
• Edit opens the draft in the email editor. Adjust the subject and text there and send it.
• Discard removes the draft.

A sent or discarded draft can no longer be changed. While a draft is open, anny AI doesn’t create a second one.

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Accepting or rejecting requested bookings

If the customer requested bookings that you need to approve, the Summary shows the Requested bookings row. Click Accept bookings or Reject bookings there. Once all requested bookings are decided, the inquiry moves to Done.

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Proposing bookings

To propose a date to the customer without blocking the resource, create a transparent booking. In the calendar, complete a booking on this order with the Transparent bookings option. Transparent bookings occupy no capacity, and the resource stays bookable for others. If an inquiry names an unambiguous date together with a resource and service, anny creates such a booking proposal automatically. Check it before you confirm it or include it in a quote. To book a proposal for real, choose Confirm booking on the booking. anny checks availability, confirms the booking and occupies the capacity from then on. With Email a confirmation to the customer, you let the customer know right away.

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Sending a quote

Under Sent quotes you see the state of every quote, for example Not signed or who signed it and when. anny stores the signed quote as a PDF on the order. Then confirm the proposed bookings with Confirm booking. As soon as no booking is left open, the inquiry moves to Done. Each quote offers these actions:

• Accept for customer: The customer agreed by phone or email. The acceptance is recorded in your name and the proposed bookings are confirmed right away.
• Extend validity: The customer gets more time. The PDF keeps its original date, the signing page uses the new one.
• Withdraw quote: The customer can no longer sign the quote, for example because you want to send a corrected one.

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Finishing or archiving an inquiry

In the Inquiry status field of the Summary, you can Mark as done, Archive or Unarchive an inquiry.

• Mark as done only works once no requested booking is open and all transparent bookings are confirmed or removed.
• Archive works as soon as all requested bookings are decided. anny removes any outstanding transparent bookings. The order, correspondence, files, accepted bookings and sent quotes are kept.
• Unarchive brings the inquiry back with the status Needs attention.

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Entering an inquiry yourself

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Inquiry forms

An inquiry form asks for what you need to know about a request, for example the type of event, preferred date and number of guests. Every submission arrives as an inquiry. You find your forms in the sidebar under Catalog → Inquiry forms. For every form, the list shows the name, the Tags and how many question groups it has. When AI features are on, the AI submissions column shows the AI badge if the form is available to assistants.

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Creating an inquiry form

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Settings

In the question groups of an inquiry form, customers can also pick from your catalog. Use the question types Resource, Resources (several), Product and Products (several). Under Resources offered or Products offered, set what customers can choose from: All, By category or Selected ones. With All, customers choose from all public items and those of their communities, and your team sees them all. If the customer picks a resource, anny bases the inquiry’s booking proposals on it.

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Sharing and embedding a form

The Share & embed section has everything you need to publish the form:

• Form link: A direct link to the form, for example for emails or social media. Under Link language, choose the language it opens in. Automatic (visitor’s language) adapts to the visitor.
• Form: Embeds the form directly in a page of your website.
• Button: A button that opens the form in a pop-up.

Copy the code of the variant you want and paste it into your website. While the form isn’t available yet, the link and embeds tell your visitors so. To delete a form, use the three-dot menu in the list. The public form then stops accepting inquiries, and inquiries it already created keep their answers.

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Receiving inquiries by email

Many inquiries arrive by email. To avoid matching your mailbox against anny by hand, forward them to a secret address. anny creates every new email as an inquiry, matches it to the customer where possible and summarizes it automatically. You then reply straight from anny.

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Setting up email intake

With no entries under Allowed senders, anny accepts emails from all senders. Customer replies to emails sent from anny always arrive, even if their address is not on the list.

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Forwarding one at a time or with a forwarding rule

There are two ways to send emails to anny:

• Forward one at a time: You forward selected emails by hand.
• Forwarding rule: You set up a rule in your mailbox that, for example, automatically sends all emails to inquiries@your-company.com to the secret address.

The difference shows when anny matches the customer. anny matches an email to an existing customer by the sender address or creates a new one. That only works if the email arrives as the original. If anny recognizes an email as forwarded by hand, for example by a subject starting with “Fwd:” or “FW:”, or as an automated message, the inquiry stays without a customer. Add one in the inquiry with Add customer.

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What happens to a forwarded email

• Every new email becomes an inquiry with the status New. At first it shows the subject and text, then anny replaces them with a short summary in the Inquiry column.
• Your team is notified about the new inquiry.
• If the email names an unambiguous date with a resource and service, anny creates a booking proposal that occupies no capacity.
• If the email clearly fits an inquiry form that is available For AI assistants, anny AI assigns the inquiry to that form. If it fits none, or several equally well, the inquiry stays without a form. The form’s name, description and questions help anny AI decide.
• anny AI answers the form’s questions that the email answers. Every answer has to rest on a literal passage of the email and fit the question, otherwise it stays empty. anny AI doesn’t guess and doesn’t pick defaults. It never overwrites questions that are already answered.
• anny AI fills in the customer’s missing contact details, such as name, company, phone number or address, by the same rule. Existing details stay unchanged.
• If the email answers a question about a resource, anny takes the chosen resource into account for the booking proposals.
• If required answers are still missing, anny AI prepares a draft asking for them, in the language and tone of the email. You find it in the activity log and send it yourself (see Replying). Without a customer email address, no draft is created.
• When the customer later replies to an email from anny, anny adds the reply to the right inquiry. No new inquiry is created. With every further email, anny AI fills in what is still open.
• anny AI only reads inquiries under Spam once you bring them back with Not spam.

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Generating a new address

If the secret address fell into the wrong hands or you receive spam, click Generate new address. The previous address stops working immediately. Update your forwarding rules afterwards. Customer replies to existing inquiries keep arriving.

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When do I use this?

• Company events and room rentals: A “Private event” inquiry form asks for the date, number of guests and catering. You send a quote with reserved bookings.
• Existing inquiry mailbox: A forwarding rule sends every email to your inquiry address to anny. Your team works through them in the Needs action view.
• Inquiries by phone: Your voice assistant takes inquiries with an inquiry form that is available For AI assistants.
• Calls in the team: After a phone call, you enter the inquiry with New and send the quote later.

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FAQ

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Troubleshooting