Ask for bigger jobs
How do I ask Sydekick for multi-step or bulk work?
You can ask Sydekick for a whole job, not just a lookup: "compare these two clients", "find every location missing a description", "draft replies to this week's reviews". It plans the work, reads what it needs and gives you something to review. Anything that would change a customer-facing record or reach an outside channel passes a checkpoint first, but the checkpoints differ, so know which one you are at. Approving a draft in Inbox records your decision; it does not publish the draft. For a check you want every week that never changes anything, ask for a Sweep.
Key facts
| Where you ask | Any Sydekick conversation. Scope it to the client and locations you mean first |
| Reading and planning | Needs no approval and changes nothing |
| Drafts for review | Land under Inbox → Approvals. Approve there records your decision; nothing is published or sent from that screen |
| A confirmation card | Awaiting your approval in the conversation pauses the work until you approve or deny |
| Autonomy settings | Agent → Autonomy, only for workspaces that have it turned on |
| Large bulk edits | Run item by item, and over 100 locations as a background job. Approved is not finished |
| Repeating checks | Sweeps (read-only, saved by you) or Playbooks (multi-step routines) |
Why this matters
The word "done" can mean four different things here: Sydekick finished reading, a draft is waiting for you, you recorded a decision, and the change actually reached a customer-facing screen. Check which one you are looking at, so you do not assume a post is live just because you approved it.
Four things you can ask for
Think it through
- You get
- a plan, a comparison, a recommendation
- Changes anything
- no
- Ends up
- in the conversation
Go and look
- You get
- an answer gathered across clients, locations or directories
- Changes anything
- no
- Ends up
- in the conversation
Make me something
- You get
- a draft, a report, a set of ideas
- Changes anything
- nothing customers can see
- Ends up
- a file you can open or download, or items waiting under Inbox → Approvals
Do it for real
- You get
- a record changed or a message sent
- Changes anything
- yes
- Ends up
- after a checkpoint, depending on the action
The first three are safe to ask for freely. The fourth is where to slow down and look at the checkpoint.
Steps
Open a conversation and set its scope to the client and locations you mean. "Fix every location" means every location in scope, so a conversation scoped to one client reaches that client's locations only. See choosing the client, location and skill.
Ask for the whole job and say what you want back: "Draft replies to this week's unanswered reviews and queue them for me to approve", "Compare review volume across the three locations", or "Save a spreadsheet of locations missing hours".
Read the status line while it works. A phrase such as Sending for your approval means the work is being handed to you for a decision rather than being carried out.
When a card headed Awaiting your approval appears, read the work on it and choose to approve or deny. The conversation waits for your answer. If you deny, Sydekick carries on and suggests alternatives. Not every action is guaranteed to stop at a card, so for anything that reaches a customer ask for a draft first.
For drafts Sydekick queued, such as review replies and posts, open Inbox → Approvals to read each one in full, edit it and decide. Items from the current conversation are also listed in its Canvas, with Open in inbox. See reviewing approvals.
After you approve, check the screen the work was meant to change, such as the review, the post or the listing. An approval is a recorded decision; look for the result before treating the job as finished.
Approved is not the same as finished
Four different things can be called "approved", and only some of them make something happen.
- Approving a draft in Inbox saves your decision for that version. The page says nothing is published or sent from there.
- Approving a confirmation card in the conversation lets the paused work continue, so the action Sydekick described goes ahead.
- Approving a change Sydekick queued under Autonomy is a request for a specific change to be applied. After approving, check that the change appears on the record.
- A background job (below) starts when its approval is given and finishes later.
If you are unsure which one you have, open the item and read what it says it does, then check the result.
Who sets how much asks for approval
Workspaces that have Agent → Autonomy turned on can decide, per module, whether Sydekick is Off, must Ask first, or can work Automatically. The levels are the agency, a single client, a team member and a client's own user, and the most specific setting wins, even when it is more permissive than the agency's. With no setting, writes ask first; reading is never gated.
When it is on and you approve several changes to one module in a row, Sydekick may ask in the conversation whether to stop asking before it makes changes in that module, for example Want me to stop asking before I make Clients changes?, with Turn off approval or Keep asking. Turning it off applies to every client, and you can change it again in Autonomy. If Autonomy is not in your Agent menu, your workspace does not have it; ask your Synup contact before relying on it.
Bulk work
Bulk work is carried out item by item, and one item failing or being skipped does not undo the others. Ask for counts, not "done": how many were changed, skipped and failed, and why.
- Up to 100 locations in one bulk edit are applied straight away; content checks hold the whole batch if any one fails.
- More than 100 are queued as one background job and Sydekick should say the job is queued, not that it is complete. In a job, a location a content check would hold is skipped, and the job reports it. Locations already edited stay edited if the job is stopped.
- After you approve a queued edit, its card follows the job: Running in the background: 40 of 152 done., then Done: 152 of 152 updated., or Finished: 148 of 152 updated, 4 not., or Stopped: 61 of 152 updated before the stop. Only the person who approved it sees the progress, and a card stops following after about 30 minutes, with the last count and a note to reload.
- In Locations, Select all can pick every location in a view of up to 2,000 so you can edit them together.
If your connection drops while Sydekick is working, the conversation says Connection reset. We couldn't confirm your message arrived. and checks before sending anything again, so a request is not sent twice.
Give a repeating check to a Sweep
A Sweep is a saved, read-only check that Sydekick runs on a schedule and posts back into the conversation it was saved in. It reads and reports; it never drafts replies, posts or changes anything. Ask in plain words, for example "check every weekday morning whether any Evanston listing has fallen out of sync".
- Sydekick answers with a Proposed · Not saved yet card showing the schedule. Nothing is scheduled until you save it: Save sweep is your button, Change puts a line in the composer so you can adjust it, and Not now discards it.
- Schedules are daily, weekdays, or chosen weekdays at one time. Nothing runs more often than once a day.
- Open All sweeps in the conversation list for In this workspace: n active · n paused · n stopped, each sweep's schedule, next run, last outcome and the conversation it posts to.
- Anyone who can see a sweep can Pause, Resume or Run now. Only the person who saved it, or an owner or admin, can edit, Stop or Restore it. Stopping keeps the history. Resuming does not replay missed runs, and a restored sweep stays paused until you resume it.
- Credit estimates on a proposal are an estimate, not a charge or a limit; each check is billed on what it actually uses.
- If checks are not running on the account yet, Run now says Sweeps aren't running on this account yet. Saving a sweep still works.
A Playbook is the other repeating job: a multi-step routine that can produce drafts, which wait for approval. Use a playbook when the routine should create something, and a Sweep when it should only look and tell you. See configuring and running a playbook.
What you'll see when it's done
- A reply in the conversation, a saved file in Canvas, or items under Inbox → Approvals
- A confirmation card where Sydekick needed your decision before acting
- A progress line on the card for a large background edit
- A saved Sweep in All sweeps, with its next run
Watch out for
- Scope decides reach. A bulk request runs against the clients and locations in the conversation's scope.
- Do not read "queued" as "done". Ask for the final counts of a background edit.
- A proposal is not a schedule. A Sweep only exists after you select Save sweep.
- Sweeps may not run yet. Whether saved sweeps actually run is switched on for the account separately from the feature.
- Check every fact in a draft. A reply or post can use details from your records, so confirm names, offers and dates.
Questions people ask
If I approve a draft, does it go out?
Not from the Approvals page. It saves your decision for that version and says nothing is published or sent. A confirmation card in the conversation is different: approving it lets Sydekick carry on with the action. Always check the result on the screen it affects.
Can Sydekick approve things on its own?
No. Sydekick can only queue or propose; you or a teammate with the right role decides. Where Autonomy is available, it controls whether a type of change waits for approval, not who may approve it.
Can I approve a queue of drafts in one go?
Approvals has multi-select with a bulk Approve, which records the same decision on each selected request, up to 500 at a time. It does not read them for you. Look through the queue before you approve it.
Does a Sweep change anything?
No. A Sweep reads and reports. It never drafts, replies, posts or changes a record, and its results can offer follow-ups that you choose to start.
What if a bulk edit only partly worked?
Ask Sydekick for the final counts. Locations that were edited stay edited, skipped locations are listed with the reason, and nothing is rolled back automatically.