Intakes and client forms¶

This page is for anyone at the firm who takes calls and messages from prospective clients. It covers how to record an intake, follow it up, send the person a form to fill in, and turn the intake into a client. If you are new to Kosmos, read Getting started first.

What an intake is¶

An intake is the record of one prospective client, for example Elena Rivera, who called about a boundary dispute. It holds one person's name, phone, email and address, the property in dispute, a status, and a running log of notes. It is not a contact or a matter until you make it one.

You need the Intakes permission to see Intakes in the sidebar. Ask your administrator.

Find an intake¶

Click Intakes in the sidebar. The list opens on intakes with the status Open, newest first, 10 to a page. Count at the top right shows how many match.

To narrow or reorder the list:

• Click All, Open, Pending or Accepted. The list keeps your choice until you change it or sign out.
• Click Filter to open Filter Intakes. Status is the only place to choose Referred Out, Client Declined or Unresponsive. Practice area and Source narrow the list, the two Date boxes set a range of open dates, and Ordering sorts by date, name or importance. Click Apply. Restore Defaults returns to open intakes, newest first.
• Click the sort button beside Date or Name. Click it again to reverse the order. The sort button above the flag column lists the most important intakes first, and the newest first among intakes of the same importance.

Search in the sidebar finds an intake by name, phone or email. See Getting started.

Add an intake¶

1. Click Intakes, then the plus button at the left of the toolbar. (Or press Space, then n, and choose Intake.) Add Intake opens.
2. Enter the Name of the prospective client and the details you have.
3. Click Submit.

The form closes, and the intake is in the list if the list is showing its status.

An intake holds one person's details. If the caller is not the person who would be the client, record the client here and the caller in a note.

The intake page¶

Click an intake's name. On the left are its details: Email, Phone, Address, Disputed Property, Value, Status, Date, Area (the practice area) and Source. Click the status or the area to change it; the area menu ends with None, which clears it. Click the value (or the pencil, if there is none), type a whole number and press Enter. Anything else is refused with "Value must be a whole number, with no commas or cents." The flag beside the name sets the importance. The pin button beside an address opens it in Google Maps, and the house button beside the value searches Zillow for the property.

The three-dot menu has Edit (the same form as Add Intake), Send email, and Add to contacts or, once that is done, Open contact. On the right, Forms, Notes and Assessment switch between three panes. The page opens on Notes until you choose another. Assessment appears only when your firm has set up AI (see AI). Without it there are two panes.

Notes¶

1. Click Notes, then the plus button. Add Note opens.
2. Check Date and Time, and choose a Type: Call In, Call Out, Email In, Email Out, VM In, VM Out or Comment.
3. Type the Details and click Submit.

The note joins the list, newest first, with its date, author and type. Click a note's date to edit or delete it.

Good to know:

• Leave a blank line between paragraphs. Lines separated by a single line break are run together when the note is shown.
• A Client Form note is rewritten when the form is submitted again, so anything you change in it is lost. Put your own remarks in a separate note.

Assessment¶

Assessment holds an AI review of the intake. The pane, with its Assess and Chat buttons, appears only when your firm has set up AI. Click Assess (it reads Update once there is an assessment). Kosmos reads the intake's details and every note, and writes a Summary, an Analysis, a Statute of limitations section when it sees a concern, Follow-up questions and Recommended documents. It may also change the importance. Each run replaces the one before.

Chat opens Intake Chat in a new browser tab. The AI there has the intake's details, notes and assessment. Type a question and press Enter. If you tell it to change the intake (its name, phone, email, addresses, value, practice area, source, status or importance), it does so and lists what it changed. An intake has one chat, shared by everyone who can see intakes, and it stays until someone ends it. The save button ends the chat and adds a summary of its conclusions to Notes as a Comment from Kosmos. The trash button discards the chat and adds nothing.

Send an email¶

Open the three-dot menu and click Send email. Send Email opens with To set to the intake's email address. Choose a Template to fill in Subject and Body, or type your own (templates have no merge fields, so type the greeting yourself). Check Reply-To and click Send. Kosmos shows "Email sent" and adds the message to Notes as Email Out. A copy goes to the firm's intake email address, if one is set. Templates are kept under Settings → Intake Emails.

If your firm's server has no outgoing email set up, nothing leaves it. Kosmos then says "Email is not set up, so this message was logged on the server instead of sent." and the Email Out note starts with Not delivered. The same warning replaces the "sent" message for invoices, payment requests and intake form links. Ask your administrator to set up email.

Intakes that arrive by email¶

Your firm may have an intake address. Forward a prospective client's email, or the email that carries a voicemail transcription, to that address, and Kosmos turns it into an intake. Ask your administrator for the address. (Administrators: see Intakes from forwarded email.)

A new intake appears in the list, Open and dated today. What Kosmos does with the message depends on whether your firm has set up AI.

With AI:

• An AI reads the message and fills in what it finds: name, phone, email, address, disputed property address, value, practice area (only one from the firm's list) and source (Unknown unless the message says).
• The first note is from Kosmos, with the type Email In or VM In. It starts with an AI summary, then the forwarded message as it was written, or the voicemail transcript. Anything you typed above the forwarded message is left out of the note.
• Kosmos then runs an assessment, so Assessment is filled in and the importance may already be adjusted.

Without AI, the intake is named after the email's subject ("Unknown inquiry" if it has none) and nothing else is filled in. Its first note, from Kosmos with the type Email In, holds the forwarded message as it was written, without anything you typed above it. Fill in the details yourself from the note. A follow-up is not matched to an earlier intake, so each forwarded message opens a new one.

With AI, a message with no name becomes "Unknown caller" and the phone number, or takes the email's subject as its name. When the email address or phone number in a forwarded message matches an existing intake, Kosmos adds the message as a note to the newest matching intake and opens no new one. The intake's details and assessment are left alone. If its status was Unresponsive, it becomes Open again.

Either way, attachments are not kept, and no contact or matter is created.

Good to know:

• Forward from the email address on your Kosmos profile. A message from any other address is discarded, and nobody is told.
• Check what the AI filled in against the note. It can misread a name or a number, and a follow-up it cannot match opens a second intake.

Intakes from your firm's website¶

If your firm's website is connected to Kosmos, an inquiry sent from it arrives as a new Open intake with the person's name, phone and email, and an Email In note, with no author, that holds their message. It has no source, no practice area, and no assessment until you run one. An inquiry whose email or phone matches an existing intake is added to that intake as a note. A questionnaire completed on the website is filed on its intake as a Client Form note.

If a questionnaire arrives for someone who has no intake yet, Kosmos opens one with the source Internet. Its practice area is set when the kind of dispute chosen on the website has the same name as one of the firm's practice areas (capitals, spaces and punctuation are ignored). Otherwise the practice area is left empty for you to set.

Client forms¶

A client form is a questionnaire your firm builds once and sends to prospective clients. The person fills it in on a web page, with no account and no password, and the answers land on their intake.

Your administrator may have loaded sample forms. Each is described as a sample in Settings → Intake Forms, for example "A sample Client Intake form. Review and edit it before use." The samples were written for one kind of practice, so read and edit one before you send it.

Build a form¶

1. Click Settings → Intake Forms, then New Form. Enter a Name and, if you like, a Description (staff only) and a Caption shown to the client. Click Save. The builder opens.
2. Click or drag a type from the left into Form Fields: Section heading or Instructions to lay the form out, and Short text, Dropdown, Yes / No or Paragraph to ask something.
3. Type the Question, set Required, and fill in what the type offers: Placeholder (optional), Max characters, Rows, or Options for a dropdown.
4. Drag a field by its handle to move it. Click Preview to see the form as the client will.

The builder saves as you work. Click the form's name to rename it. The gear button opens Form Settings, where Delete removes the form, and the copy button beside it duplicates the form. An older form may also hold field types the builder no longer offers. They still work.

Good to know:

• A field with no label, or a dropdown with no options, is marked with an alert icon and hidden from the client until you finish it.
• A form added to an intake is a copy made at that moment. Editing or deleting the form later does not change it.

Send a form¶

1. Open the intake, click Forms, then the plus button. In Add a Form, choose the form and click Add Form. It appears in the pane with the status Draft.
2. Click the send button at the right of its row. Send a Form opens.
3. Check To, add a Cc or a Message (optional), and click Send Email. Or click Copy Link and send the link yourself.

The status becomes Sent. The email's subject is your firm's name and "Your intake form". The link works for 30 days from the day it was emailed or copied, unless your administrator has set another period. After that the person sees "This link has expired." Click the send button again to open Send a Reminder, which emails a fresh link. Their answers are kept.

Click the form's name for View form, Delete (the answers go too) and, once it has been sent, Copy link and Reissue link (every link already sent stops working at once). Click its status to change it: Mark complete, Lock, Reopen for client, Cancel or Revert to draft, as its current status allows.

What the client sees¶

The link opens a page with your firm's logo or name, the form's name, the caption and the questions. A required question is marked with an asterisk. Answers save as the person types, so they can close the page and come back through the same link. Submit checks that every required question is answered, then shows "Thank you. We've received your answers." with Make changes. They can return, change an answer and submit again until you lock or cancel the form.

To fill the form in yourself, for example with the person on the phone, click View form. The same form opens in a new tab, headed "Filling in for" and the intake's name. Required questions do not stop you submitting.

Read the answers¶

Done in the Forms pane counts the questions answered so far, and View form shows the answers as they stand, submitted or not. When the form is submitted, Kosmos adds a Client Form note to Notes with each question that was answered and its answer. A later submission rewrites the same note and marks it Updated.

Good to know:

• Kosmos does not tell you when a form is submitted. Look for the note icon in the intakes list.
• Answers do not fill in the intake's own details, such as its phone.

Turn an intake into a client¶

1. Open the intake, open the three-dot menu and click Add to contacts. Add Contact opens with the intake's name, address, phone and email.
2. Complete the contact and click Submit.

The new contact opens. Its Intake tab has View Intake Details, which leads back to the intake. See Contacts.

You can also do this while opening the matter. On Add Matter, type in Client and click Convert an intake… (shown only to users with the Intakes permission). Convert an Intake lists the intakes that are not yet contacts, newest first. Click one, complete Add Contact, and you are back on Add Matter with the new contact as the client. See Matters.

An intake becomes one contact only. If someone has already added it, Kosmos adds no second contact and says, for example, "This intake is already in contacts as Elena Rivera. No second contact was added."

Only the name, address, phone and email carry over. Notes, forms, the assessment, the practice area and the property details stay on the intake, and its status does not change. Set it to Accepted yourself.

Close out or delete an intake¶

When an intake goes nowhere, set its Status to Referred Out, Client Declined or Unresponsive. It leaves the Open list and everything on it is kept. Forms you sent keep working: cancel them in Forms if the person should no longer answer.

To delete an intake, open its three-dot menu and click Edit, then Delete. A Delete Intake dialog asks "Delete this intake and its notes? This cannot be undone." Click Delete, and the intakes list opens. The intake's notes, its forms and their answers, and its chat are deleted with it. A contact made from it is kept.

The Intakes report¶

Reports → Intakes counts intakes by outcome and by practice area, month by month. You need the Reports permission for this. Ask your administrator. See Reports.