A few days ago, we heard from a customer who was having some conceptual concerns using TweetRoost. He wanted to see the Replies sent from TweetRoost in the standard list, which would make it easier for his people to know that a Tweet from one of his users had been replied to.

At first, we suggested making an Auto-Assignment rule. This would allow his staff to be assigned either via Round Robin or based on some Tweet content criteria, and each person could then work on their own list of Tweets and create Replies; and they’d know which ones they’d answered just by looking in TweetRoost at their own list of Tweets and Replies.

But that was not ideal, since it would be hard to see at a glance which Reply corresponded to which Tweet. So we suggested a simple method of marking whether a Tweet had been replied to; that seemed great, especially in this customer’s case, where some Tweets might go into a pool which anyone could work on. But the customer had a better idea: How about put the Reply inline, so the list of Tweets would show which were replied to, what the Reply was, and better yet, the Reply would go right inline. Brilliant! And even better, we already have an inline display method for internal comments about Tweets (or anything), so we could use that method to easily show the Reply.

Well, brilliant, but some catches: You can Reply directly or make a Draft Reply in TweetRoost. You can also Schedule a Reply, and also make a Reply which someone else needs to Approve. You cannot list those as Replies inline, since you’d want to list them as pending. Furthermore — yes there is always another catch — if you would Delete a Pending Reply, you cannot list it as Pending, since it is gone.

So we implemented this: Replies and Pending Replies go inline on the Tweet details page. We handle deleted Pending Replies. We also, to do this right, have made the Replies and Pending Replies clickable links to their details, so more than just the Reply text can be seen at a glance.

Here is what it looks like:
Inline Pending Reply

We think this is a great new feature, based on a customer request,. It was easy for us to implement in only a few days, and it will be helpful to everyone. This is why we love listening to customers. If you’d like to try TweetRoost, just go to MediaRoost

Mark