Next actions

This article explains how FirstQuadrant automatically generates AI-driven next actions based on sales conversation activity. It outlines the types of actions FirstQuadrant can take (such as updating deals, sending replies, or creating tasks), how to review and edit these actions, and how to use tools like the bottom navigation bar and the Actions dropdown to manage your workflow. It also covers how to fine-tune the AI’s knowledge when it can’t answer a question, and how to snooze, regenerate, or approve actions efficiently.

Overview

FirstQuadrant automatically analyzes any activity happening in a conversation between your workspace and a contact—such as emails, calendar invites, replies, signups, comments, notes, or API events. Based on this analysis, its AI determines the most logical next steps and generates what are called next actions. These actions are visible directly inside the conversation history view.

What the AI can do

Deal-related actions

• Create a deal
• Update an existing deal, such as:
  • Reassigning to a different pipeline
  • Moving to a different stage
  • Changing deal status
  • Assigning a new point of contact to the deal

Contact and company-related actions

• Update contact fields based on incoming messages (e.g., name, job title, location)
• Update company fields based on available data (e.g., company name, industry, description)

Conversation-related actions

• Write emails, including:
  • Immediate replies
  • Scheduled replies
  • Replying either to the individual sender or using ‘Reply all’ based on the context of the conversation
    → The AI reads the full thread to determine whether other recipients should be included, and makes a judgment call on whether a group response is appropriate
• Create follow-ups as a sequenced series of emails
• Create tasks when human intervention is needed
  • E.g., if a prospect requests a PDF quote, the AI will generate a task for the user to upload it

Each action includes its own AI-generated reasoning, which can be viewed by hovering over the tooltip icons in the UI. This helps you verify whether the AI’s decision-making aligns with your expectations.

Deal monitoring and fallback logic

If a deal has no actions scheduled or drafted for more than three days, FirstQuadrant’s AI will automatically mark the deal as potentially stalled. In this case, the system will:

• Flag the deal as stale
• Generate a task for a human to intervene

The task will prompt the user to either:

• Mark the deal as lost
• Set up additional follow-ups
• Or take any other custom action to re-engage or close the loop

When FirstQuadrant detects an event or update in the contact relationship, it can perform or propose several types of actions:

Types of actions

Action Type	Description
Reply now	Immediate email response
Reply later	Scheduled email to be sent in the future
Follow-ups	Email sequence planned across multiple days
Task	Manual item for a human to complete before the workflow can continue

Editing and approving actions

Adjusting fine-tuning rules per email

You can click on the colored label (e.g., “Negative”, “Positive”, “Postponed”) shown above an email to open the fine-tuning settings for that specific message. This lets you:

• See which fine-tuning rule(s) were automatically applied by the AI
• Select or deselect rules to manually override the AI’s classification
• Regenerate the next actions based on the adjusted rule set

This is especially useful when the AI misunderstood the tone or content of an email and you want to guide it toward a better response.

Each suggested action appears as a draft in the conversation timeline. The main way to work with these next actions is through the footer bar, which appears at the bottom of the screen when viewing an active contact. This navigation bar includes the following primary controls:

• Approve all: Approves all listed actions at once. Any email scheduled to be sent immediately will go out, while the others will be queued according to their planned time
• Snooze: Temporarily defers all current actions. Snoozed actions are removed from the action list and marked as “later.” They will automatically reappear after the selected duration (e.g., 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month)
• Regenerate: Reruns FirstQuadrant’s AI on the entire contact history to generate a new set of actions. This will consume credits
• Delete: Accessible via the extended menu (three dots), this removes all current actions from the list if you want to start fresh or discard what’s been planned

Working with individual actions

Using the Actions dropdown

You can click the Actions dropdown directly within the conversation timeline. This pop-up menu allows you to:

• Add or remove specific action types (e.g., reply now, follow-ups, tasks)
• Change an existing action type
• Insert knowledge entries for AI fine-tuning if a question couldn’t be answered

Tip: If the AI can’t answer a contact’s question, it may create a task asking for manual input. Once you provide the answer, you can save it to the knowledge base via the fine-tuning panel. This enables FirstQuadrant to handle similar questions automatically in the future.

Manually editing individual actions

Or you can edit individual action items manually:

• Edit the email content manually or use the “Write with AI” feature to generate or revise content. You can also update the metadata (sender, recipient, subject)
• Modify the sending time using the dropdown
• Approve an individual action
• Delete any draft you find unnecessary
• Snooze the actions (1 day, 1 week, or 1 month)
• Regenerate actions, which reprocesses the entire contact thread and recalculates AI actions (uses credits)