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Overview

When a customer emails you about a cake for their daughter’s birthday on March 20th, Knead doesn’t just show you the message — it reads it, understands it, and tells you whether you can take the order before you even reply. This is Order Intelligence, and it works automatically on every inbound message in your Inbox. Inbox showing conversations with unread badges, priority stars, and channel icons

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What Gets Detected

When a message arrives, Knead scans the text and extracts four things:
WhatExample
Delivery date”March 20th”, “next Friday”, “June 7th”
ProductsFuzzy-matched against your catalog — “chocolate cake” → Chocolate Fudge Cake
Quantity”5 dozen”, “2 cakes”, “4 dozen cookies”
OccasionBirthday, wedding, graduation, baby shower, corporate event
When intent is detected, a card appears at the top of the conversation — right above the messages — so you see it the moment you open the thread.

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Capacity Verdicts

The intelligence card doesn’t just tell you what the customer wants — it tells you whether you can realistically take it. Knead checks the requested date against your existing orders and capacity settings, then gives you a clear verdict.

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”You can take this.”

Your schedule has room. The green accent means go. The Accept & Create Order button pre-fills the order form with the client, delivery date, and detected products so you can confirm in seconds. Conversation showing available capacity with green border and Accept & Create Order button

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”Tight, but doable.”

You’re getting close to your limit for that date. Knead shows your current utilization and suggests nearby alternative dates in case you want to steer the customer to a less busy day. Conversation with tight capacity showing amber border, alternative date chips, and Suggest Alternative button Notice the alternative date chips. Click Suggest Alternative to draft a friendly reply proposing a different date.

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”This would put you over capacity.”

The requested date is already packed. Knead flags it in terracotta and shows alternative dates that have room. Conversation with over capacity showing terracotta border and Suggest Alternative button No “Accept” button here — just Suggest Alternative to help you redirect the customer without saying no.

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Priority Customers Get a Pass

If you’ve marked a client as a Priority Customer (the star icon), they get special treatment when capacity is tight or full. Knead still shows the honest verdict, but adds a “Take It Anyway” button so you can override your limits for your most important clients.

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Ambiguous Dates

Sometimes a customer mentions wanting an order but doesn’t give a specific date — like “I need cookies for my best friend’s baby shower” without saying when. Knead still detects the products, quantity, and occasion, but marks the date as ambiguous with a dashed border. Conversation with ambiguous date showing dashed border and no action buttons No action buttons appear until the date is confirmed. Reply to the customer to nail down the date, and Knead will update the intent when they respond.

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When an Order Is Already Linked

Once you create an order from a conversation (or link one manually), the intelligence card collapses into a single line with a link to the order details. The conversation is still fully usable for follow-up messages. Conversation with linked order showing collapsed card

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The Full Picture

On desktop, the Inbox shows everything in a three-column layout: conversation list on the left, the active thread in the center, and a client sidebar on the right with contact info, order history, allergens, and linked orders. Full desktop Inbox view showing conversation list, message thread with intelligence card, and client sidebar

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How It Works

Order Intelligence runs automatically when an inbound message arrives:
  1. Message received — A customer emails your Knead inbox address (yourbakery@inbox.kneadapp.co)
  2. Client matched — Knead checks the sender’s email against your client list. New contacts are saved automatically
  3. Intent parsed — The message text is scanned for dates, product names (fuzzy-matched against your catalog), quantities, and occasion keywords
  4. Capacity checked — The detected delivery date is compared against your existing orders and capacity settings
  5. Card rendered — The intelligence card appears with the verdict, alternative dates, and action buttons
All of this happens in under a second. No setup required — if you have products in your catalog and capacity configured, Order Intelligence just works.
Detection runs on every inbound message automatically. You do not need to enable or configure it.

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Tips

  • Keep your product catalog up to date. If a customer says “chocolate cake” and you have “Chocolate Fudge Cake”, it matches. Generic names like “Cake #1” won’t match as well.
  • Set up your capacity. The verdicts depend on your capacity configuration. Head to Settings > Capacity to set daily order limits.
  • Mark your VIPs as Priority. Go to the client profile and toggle the priority flag for the “Take It Anyway” override.
  • Use canned responses. Set up templates in Settings > Canned Responses for common replies like suggesting alternative dates.
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