Working an item: Claim, Return, Handled, Dismiss, Hide, Follow

Six actions cover everything you can do to an item in the Inbox. Three change the item for everyone, two are private to you, and one hands the work back. This article walks each one, says who may use it, and spells out the note rules.

Claim: take responsibility

An unclaimed item shows UNCLAIMED and a Claim button, both in the list row and on the accountability card in the detail pane.

1. Open the item, or hover the row in the list.
2. Choose Claim. The button reads Working… while Scout records it.
3. Your avatar and name replace UNCLAIMED. Everyone who can see the item now sees that you hold it.

Claim is also how you bring a lapsed item back to life: claiming it returns it to the Inbox with you accountable.

Who may Claim: Owners, Admins and Members, for work in a team they belong to. Viewers cannot claim.

Return to team: hand it back

If you claimed something that is not yours to finish, the accountability card offers Return to team name (for example Return to Production). Choose it and the assignment is removed; the item goes back to UNCLAIMED in that team's queue and stays open. Nothing is closed and nothing is deleted.

Who may Return: the person holding the item, when they are in its team. Owners and Admins can also reassign work across teams using Assign or Reassign on the same card.

Handled: close it for everyone, note optional

Handled is the main close button at the bottom of the detail pane. It is a split control: the left half is Handled, and the caret beside it opens MORE ACTIONS.

1. Choose Handled. A dialog opens titled Mark as handled.
2. The dialog repeats the item's title and explains: Handled closes this item for everyone in the workspace, and you can add a note about what happened.
3. Fill in Close note (optional) if you want to. It takes up to 2,000 characters and the dialog counts them for you. Leaving it empty is perfectly fine.
4. Choose Mark as handled to confirm, or Cancel to back out.

The item leaves the Inbox and lands in Settled with a receipt showing who closed it, from which surface, and when.

Dismiss for everyone: note required

Dismiss says "this should not have been raised, or it no longer matters." It closes the item for the whole workspace, and Scout requires you to say why.

1. Open the caret beside Handled and choose Dismiss for everyone….
2. A dialog opens titled Dismiss for everyone. It explains that dismissing closes the item for everyone in the workspace, that a close note is required, and that if you only want it out of your own list you should use Hide for me instead.
3. Write the Close note (required). Up to 2,000 characters. The confirm button stays unavailable until there is something in the box, and whitespace alone is refused.
4. Choose Dismiss for everyone.

The note is required because dismissals are how Scout learns. "Duplicate — the customer already approved this on the phone" teaches the system something a silent dismissal cannot.

Who may Handle or Dismiss: Owners and Admins on any item they can see; Members on their own work or their team's work. Viewers cannot handle or dismiss.

Hide for me: private, and only yours

Also under MORE ACTIONS is Hide for me. It removes the item from your own Inbox and your morning brief. It does not close the item, notify anyone, or change anything for colleagues — the work stays live in the team's queue. There is no undo control for hiding today, so use it when you are sure. Viewers cannot hide.

Follow and Unfollow

On the FOLLOWERS line of the accountability card, Follow asks Scout to tell you when something meaningful changes on this item — new evidence, a change of owner, a moved due date, a new note, or the item closing. Unfollow stops it. Following is private: it changes nothing for anyone else, and pressing Follow does not by itself send you a message.

You are never notified about your own actions. If you handle an item, the people following it hear about it — you do not.

Reopening a closed item

An item you or a colleague closed by hand can come back. Open it in Settled and choose Add back to the Inbox; its previous decisions stay in the history. Two rules bound this:

• Items that Scout closed on evidence cannot be reopened by hand. If the situation changes, Scout raises a new point.
• Items an Owner or Admin muted for the whole workspace can only be reopened by an Owner or Admin.

Good to know

• Every shared action writes an immutable receipt — who, which surface (in the app, email or Slack), what changed, and when. Receipts are never edited or removed.
• Handled, Dismiss and Claim work identically from a Slack card. The receipt records the surface, not a different authority.
• If two people act at the same moment, the first one wins and the second is told the item has changed rather than quietly overwriting it.
• Muting an item for everyone is a separate Owner or Admin action with its own reason, not one of the six above.