Interactions
Every communication in Laminar is an interaction: an email, a call, a meeting, a text, a fax, or a piece of physical mail, logged against the file it belongs to. The Interactions feed is the answer to “what have we told the client, and when?”
Why it matters: at high volume, the conversation history is the file. When a client calls asking about their deal, anyone in the firm can open the matter’s Interactions tab and see the whole story, without hunting through personal inboxes.
Where Interactions Live
Section titled “Where Interactions Live”The Interactions feed appears on matters, tasks, and trust transactions. Each feed is scoped to its entity: a matter’s feed shows that matter’s communications, a task’s feed shows that task’s.
The feed groups entries by date (Today, Yesterday, This week, Older) and can be filtered by channel, direction, date range, attachments, or free-text search. Email conversations thread: replies collapse under the original with a “View conversation” link.
The Six Channels
Section titled “The Six Channels”Click Add on the feed to record a communication:
Email can be sent from Laminar or logged after the fact. Sent and received emails also file themselves automatically. See Sending Email and Receiving Email.
Log Call: phone number, date and time, duration, notes.
Log Meeting: attendees, location (in person, video, or phone), date, duration, and notes. Meetings are the one channel that can also be scheduled for the future, not just logged after the fact.
Log SMS: phone number, date, and the message.
Fax can be sent from Laminar or logged when received. See Fax.
Log Mail: physical mail, with correspondent, address, and a tracking number field for couriered or registered items.
Every entry records a direction (inbound, outbound, or internal), and most channels ask “received or sent?” before opening the form. Logged dates can’t be in the future, and most channels accept file attachments.
The Record Is Permanent
Section titled “The Record Is Permanent”Once saved, interactions can’t be edited. That’s deliberate: the feed is evidence, not a draft space. If a regulator, a client, or a colleague asks what was communicated and when, the feed is the answer, and it’s only trustworthy if nobody can quietly rewrite it.
Log it when it happens. A call logged with “left voicemail re: closing date” thirty seconds after you hang up is worth more than a perfectly worded note written from memory next week.
Attach as you go. The signed document that came in by fax, the photo the client texted: attach them to the interaction and they become part of the file.
Use the feed before you call. Thirty seconds of scanning the recent interactions tells you what the client has already been told, so you don’t contradict a colleague.