Dynamic AI field collection

Helpdesks have always collected ticket details with forms: a pre-chat form before the customer can say anything, or fields an agent fills in by hand afterwards. Aide fills them from the conversation itself. It reads what the customer writes and records the order number, the reason for contacting you or anything else you define, without asking. It asks only for what's still missing, when the answer helps, and before passing a customer to your team it asks for anything they can't skip. Whatever is still missing at the handoff is asked in the chat, one question at a time. Your team sees every value in the conversation's sidebar and can correct it. The separate contact form is gone: everything it did now happens in the conversation.

How it behaves

Picked up automatically: Aide reads the customer's messages and fills fields from what they say, without asking. "Order 1043 hasn't arrived" fills the order number; "it came broken" fills a reason like "Damaged item"; "yes, it's a gift" fills a yes/no field. Text and numbers are only taken as the customer wrote them, never guessed. This happens on every reply Aide sends, and again across the whole conversation when it reaches your team, including conversations Aide never answered.
Asking when it helps: Aide asks for a missing field in its own words only when the answer helps with what the customer needs right now, such as the order number when they ask where their order is, and it asks for each field at most once. It never asks for extract-only fields, and it never asks for an email so the team can follow up (the chat asks for that itself).
One list of fields: Settings › Fields (it was under Helpdesk settings) holds every field, yours and the ones imported from your helpdesk. Views, templates, scenarios and close rules use the same list. A field's description tells Aide what it is and how to recognise it; you can also give the exact question Aide asks, and a pattern the answer must match.
Filled by pattern: a field can be filled by a pattern instead of by AI. Aide takes the first value the pattern finds in the customer's messages, newest first, then in the subject; a part of the pattern in brackets picks just that part, such as the digits after "Account #". Pattern fields are filled without AI, and Aide still asks for one that's missing like any other field. The field editor has a box to test the pattern on a pasted message and see the value it would fill.
What the agent collects: on your AI agent's page, under Fields, pick fields from the list or create one there. Each one is collected in one of three ways: extract only (Aide never asks), ask if missing (the default), or always ask. Mark the ones the customer can't skip.
Before a handoff: when the customer asks for a person and fields they can't skip are still missing, Aide asks for those first, to help your team process the request faster. Their next message goes to your team whatever it says, so nobody is kept from a person. Optional fields never hold up a handoff.
After a handoff: when a conversation goes to your team (the customer asks for a person, Aide hands off, or you're offline), the chat asks for what's still missing. An optional field Aide already asked about isn't asked again. Conversations Aide resolves aren't interrupted.
Nothing asked twice: a value the customer already mentioned, or one your site passes when it identifies them, is filled in and not asked.
Answering: the customer replies in the message box; choices and yes/no questions show as buttons. Optional fields can be skipped with "Not now". One they can't skip stays until answered, and they can keep chatting meanwhile.
Email first: when the chat also needs the customer's email, it asks for that first.
Where the answers go: onto the conversation (or the customer, for customer fields), shown in the sidebar's Fields panel with where each value came from: the conversation, your site, the customer's answer, or a teammate. The thread keeps each question Aide asked, followed by the customer's reply.
Types Aide can collect: text, number, choice and yes/no. Date and multiple-choice fields can be set by your team.

Also in this change

Teammates can set and correct field values in the conversation sidebar. Fields marked "required to close" no longer block closing a conversation whose values were never shown.
A scenario's "Collect a field" action now has the same three ways to collect and a "can't skip" setting. When a scenario matches, it asks for those fields the same way. It offers only fields Aide can collect, and a scenario that collects a date, a multiple-choice or an archived field is refused on save instead of doing nothing.
The widget's Home screen no longer has a "Send us a message" form. An email channel on Home now opens your email address, like the other channels.
The "Reply time" setting, which only the contact form showed, is removed.

For developers

Aide('identify', { attributes }): an attribute whose name matches a field's key fills that field, and the chat doesn't ask for it. Attributes are kept for signed identify (with a hash).
GET /v1/conversations/{id} returns fieldValues; PATCH /v1/conversations/{id} accepts fieldValues: [{ key, value }] (null clears).
/v1/agents accepts and returns collectedFields: [{ fieldId, mode, required }].
/v1/custom-fields accepts and returns collectionPrompt, validationRegex and extraction (ai, the default, or pattern: validationRegex is then the pattern Aide looks for).
WireConversation.detailsRequest tells the widget which field to ask for next; a field's type is text, number, select or boolean.
New widget endpoints: PUT /widget/conversations/{id}/details/{key} and DELETE /widget/conversations/{id}/details/{key}.
Removed before release: POST /widget/contact, Aide('contact'), Aide('prefill'), the /contact route and screen, the contact feature, the config's replyTime, and the widget settings' own list of contact fields.

All changes