Work with briefs
Read a brief in Adduce, move it through its statuses, record decisions on its open questions, and discuss it with your team in comments.
A brief is the document a theme turns into: the problem, the change being proposed, and the questions still open. It is written from evidence and stays linked to it.
Before you begin
- Role: Editor or Lead to change a brief or record a decision. Commenter to comment. Viewers can read.
- A brief already drafted from a theme, or one Adduce drafted for you in Chat.
Steps
Open the project and choose Briefs. Each row shows the brief's status, how many questions are still open on it, and when it last changed. Status beside the search box narrows the list.
Open a brief. The main column reads top to bottom: Summary, What we'll change (the proposed change with what is in and out of scope), How we'll know it worked (success metrics and acceptance criteria), then the Evidence behind it. The side panel holds Decisions, Assumptions to check, Planning and Details. Each editable block has its own pencil. Adduce never cuts your text: near a field's limit a counter appears, and past it the field turns red and Save changes stays off until you shorten it. Closing an editor with unsaved changes asks first.
Set the status under the brief's title: Draft while it is being written, Ready when it can be delivered, Archived when it is not going ahead. Choosing Ready while a question is still open asks Mark as Ready? first, with Keep as Draft and Mark as Ready. A brief Adduce is generating, or regenerating, shows a banner and pauses editing until it is done.
Answer an open question in the Decisions panel with Record decision. Write what was decided and why, then Save decision — the question closes and keeps your name and the date against it. Assign a question to a teammate, or give it a due date, from the same row.
Choose Comments to open the discussion beside the brief. Replies sit under the thread they answer, Resolve on a thread's first comment closes it (Reopen undoes that), the filter switches between Open, Resolved and All, and Latest or Popular sorts them. Mention a teammate with @ and they are notified.
Use Copy as Markdown from the ⋯ menu to take the whole brief into a document, a ticket or a message without retyping it.
What Adduce tells you
Two notifications come from open questions, and both are per-person rather than per-project:
| Notification | When it arrives |
|---|---|
| Assigned a question | A teammate assigns you an open question on a brief |
| Question due | The day an open question you own falls due |
Turn either off in your own notification settings; doing so changes nothing for anyone else on the project.
What's next
- Read a theme — where a brief's evidence comes from.
- Ask a question in Chat — ask Adduce to draft one.
- Send data out — put a brief into your tracker.
Read a theme
Open a theme in Adduce, read the evidence clustered behind it, and decide from its strength and sentiment whether it is worth a brief.
Set a strategy
Give a project the vision, objectives and key results that Adduce reads signals against, either by answering three questions or by writing them yourself.