Someone owns the next move.
The responsible person, the outstanding work and the conditions for moving on belong to the case.
Metabuild / Case management
Every case.
A clear next step.
Bring the work, the people and the evidence into one record — from the first message to a decision you can explain.
8 steps · explore at your own pace · illustrative case
Different work. One workspace.
Start with the work you recognise.
Four illustrative journeys show where automation helps, where people decide and what stays on the record.
Illustrative configurations of the case engine. The records, values and organisations in these examples are fictional.
Designed around the work
Know where it stands.
See what moves it forward.
Review where it matters.
Classification, extraction and drafts support the work. Approval gates make the points that need a person explicit.
The explanation stays attached.
Messages, documents and decisions form a case history that the next person can pick up and understand.
For a closer read
The journeys, in writing.
Use the same step-by-step account to review the process with your team.
Read all four walkthroughs 26 steps ↓
An incident that ends in money
Phone, portal or email · 8 steps
One fault, two possible endings — and a guard on one field decides which.
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Intake
It arrives, and it is already a case.
A customer calls about a failure. The agent keys it once, and the case takes its number, its type, its owner and its deadline from the type's own configuration. Priority is not typed in — it is computed live from impact against urgency, so two people describing the same fault get the same answer.
Who has it · The service desk
- Clock Service commitment starts on the calendar this type uses
- Rule Priority resolved from impact × urgency, not chosen
Case opened · priority High (impact: many sites, urgency: today)
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Triage
It proposes a type, and tells you why.
Classification returns three things, never one: a type, a confidence, and a sentence explaining itself. Above the threshold it files itself and moves on. Below it, the case goes to a triage queue rather than guessing — because a confident wrong answer costs more than an honest question.
Who has it · The engine, then a person
- AI Type proposed at 86% · “mentions a service outage across sites”
- Person Under threshold, it waits for a human. Always.
Classified · Service incident, 86% · reason recorded
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Assignment
It finds the right desk on its own.
Routing is a strategy on the queue, not a habit in somebody's head: claim it, round robin, least active, or balanced by load — with a cap on how much any one person can hold. A critical case overrides all of it and goes to a manager, which is the one rule you want hard-coded.
Who has it · Whoever the queue picks
- Rule Routing strategy and capacity are settings, not code
- Clock First-response clock running against the same calendar
Assigned · Field operations · least-active, 3 of 8 slots free
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Work
Related reports collapse into one.
Six more calls arrive about the same failure. They attach to the first as children rather than becoming six investigations, and one fix closes all of them. The engineer can add a step that nobody anticipated — the path is not fixed in advance, only the outcome is.
Who has it · The assigned engineer
- Rule Duplicate and parent-child links proposed on intake
- Person Ad-hoc steps allowed; the audit trail records who added them
6 cases linked as children · one investigation, one fix
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Contact
The customer is told, on the channel they chose.
Acknowledgement goes out within a minute of the case opening, with the reference. When they reply, the reply lands on the case rather than in one person’s mail, and it is correlated to the task that was waiting for it. Updates go out on the channel their record says they prefer — email, a messaging channel, the portal. The next person to pick this up can see exactly what the customer has already been told.
Who has it · The case — not somebody’s outbox
- Rule Preferred channel is a property of the customer, and respected
- Document Every message is on the case, inbound and outbound
- AI A reply is drafted for sending; a person presses send
Acknowledged · 1 inbound reply correlated · update sent on email
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Resolution
Solved is not the same as closed.
Resolving needs a code, a summary and the evidence — a form the administrator configured, not a free-text box. Then the case sits in resolved until the person who raised it confirms, or a grace window closes it. Reopens are counted, and repeated reopens are a quality signal rather than an embarrassment.
Who has it · The engineer, then the customer
- Person Two-step closure: resolved, then confirmed
- Gate Closure blocked until code, summary and evidence are present
Resolved · code: repaired · awaiting confirmation
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Outcome
One field decides who pays.
Here is the whole flexibility argument in one step. A guard reads the liability field: our fault raises a credit note, billable work raises an invoice. The step calls the finance function — a platform module or your existing finance system — and the call, its arguments and its answer are written to the case. Above a value threshold it needs an approval first, and the gate will not open without one.
Who has it · The engine, under an approval
- Rule One guard, two endings — authored, not programmed
- Call Finance function called as a declared step; arguments recorded
- Person Over threshold, an approver must act before the gate opens
Credit note raised · approved by Regional manager · document filed to the case
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Closure
The whole thread is replayable.
Because a case has no status field, where it went is not a column that got overwritten. Every entry, exit, guard that passed, guard that was ignored, tool that ran and person who decided is on the record. When somebody disputes the credit note in four months, the answer is one export away.
Who has it · Nobody — it is done
- Document Governed document, versioned, attached to the case
- Rule State is history by construction, not an audit add-on
Closed · 41 timeline entries · 2 approvals · 1 document
A document that files itself
Email, upload or scan · 7 steps
Read, classified, routed and checked — with a person confirming only what the engine is unsure about.
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Arrival
A mailbox is an intake channel. So is WhatsApp.
A supplier emails an invoice to a monitored address — or photographs a delivery note and sends it on a messaging channel, or drops a batch off the office scanner. A rule matches on the sender, the subject or the body, opens a case, and hard-links it to the conversation that created it — not a copy, the thread itself. If the same sender wrote an hour ago, it attaches to the open case instead of raising a second one. The channel is a setting; everything after this point is identical.
Who has it · The engine
- Rule First matching rule wins; duplicate window in minutes
- Document Case linked to the thread, so every reply lands in one place
Case created from thread · rule matched · acknowledgement sent
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Reading
Vision reads the page, not a template.
It is a scan, so there are no field coordinates to anchor to. A vision model reads it the way a person does — the layout, the table, the handwriting in the margin — and returns the fields with a confidence on each one. Then it reports three numbers: how many it found, how confident it is overall, and how many a person needs to check. That last number is the point. Extraction is never presented as finished.
Who has it · The engine
- Call Extraction called as a declared step; the envelope lands on the case
- AI 14 fields · 92% document confidence · 3 to verify
Extraction returned · 14 fields · 92% · 3 to verify
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Classification
Agents that know which desk they belong to.
Classification is the second agent, and it decides which lifecycle this document belongs to — a purchase invoice, a claim, an application, a compliance certificate. Each of those is a different flow with different approvers, different deadlines and different forms, and the document is handed to the right one with its confidence and its reason attached.
Who has it · The engine, then the owner of that type
- AI Type proposed with a confidence and a stated reason
- Rule Low confidence routes to triage rather than auto-filing
Routed · Purchase invoice · 91% · Accounts payable queue
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The agent
What that agent actually is.
Worth opening up, because “an AI did it” is not an answer anybody can sign off. Four bindings on one version — and three of them are governance rather than intelligence, which is the reason an agent can be let near real work at all.
Who has it · The engine, on a short leash
- AI One agent per job, versioned — not one model with a long prompt
- Call It can call only the operations you listed, and nothing else
- Person Steps in its plan can be owned by a person; it stops there
Agent v3 · 5 permitted operations · plan step 3 owned by a person
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Verification
A person checks three fields, not fourteen.
The verification screen shows only what was flagged, with the document beside it and the extracted value pre-filled. This is what human-in-the-loop should mean: not re-doing the machine's work, and not rubber-stamping it either. Correct a field and the correction is on the record with the name of whoever made it.
Who has it · A named person
- Person Only the flagged fields are shown; corrections are attributed
- Gate The next step stays locked until verification is done
Verified · 2 accepted, 1 corrected · by A. Mokoena
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Approval
Authority is a setting, not a convention.
Who must approve is configuration: by document type, by value band, by the part of the organisation it belongs to. The approver sees the document, the extracted values, what was corrected and by whom. The gate will not open until they act, and the same condition language that routes the case decides whether an approval is needed at all.
Who has it · The approver for this type and value
- Gate One primitive: the task. Approvals gate steps like any other task
- Person Approver resolved from type, value and org position
Approved · R148,200 · within delegated authority
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Action
Out the other side, into your systems.
The outcome is posted where it belongs — a platform module, or your finance, ERP or line-of-business system, called as a declared step with its arguments on the record. The supplier is answered on the channel they asked for. The document is filed as a governed record against the case, versioned, with a review date.
Who has it · The engine
- Call Posted through a declared integration; response recorded
- Document Governed document, versioned, with a review date
Posted to finance · reference returned · supplier notified by email
A request that leaves the building
Outbound, then whatever comes back · 6 steps
Send a request to somebody with no login, and let their answer move the case.
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Declared
What you need, from whom, and what it unlocks.
A step declares its tasks, and one of them is a document request: who it goes to, which channel they prefer, and — the load-bearing part — which action it releases. Forms, approvals, document requests and confirmations are all the same primitive, so anything can gate anything.
Who has it · The case owner
- Gate The task names the action it unlocks
- Rule Preferred channel is a property of the party, and respected
Task created · document request · unlocks: submit
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Sent
No account, no portal training, no password reset.
The request goes out with a one-time link. A follow-up thread opens against the case so the conversation stays attached, the task is marked sent, and the response timer starts. They get one screen: one task at a time, submit, next, and then a page that tells them they are finished.
Who has it · Someone outside your organisation
- Clock Response timer starts when it is sent, not when you remember
- Document Follow-up thread linked to the case; nothing lives in a personal inbox
Sent · one-time link · response timer started
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Returned
Or they just hit reply, and it still works.
Not everyone will use a link. The outbound message carries a hidden correlation token, so a plain reply with an attachment matches back to the task and the case without anybody re-filing it. Same rule engine, different action: link to the case, complete the task, or continue the flow.
Who has it · The engine
- Rule Inbound replies correlate by token to the task that asked
- AI The engine proposes continuing; a person confirms
Reply correlated · task completed · continue proposed
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Chased
Nothing is quietly late.
An overdue request reminds itself, on a cycle, and then escalates to the queue configured for it. The case shows who has the ball at the top of the screen, and the people panel splits your team from the outside parties with each one's open tasks. Waiting on somebody is a visible state, not a gap in the record.
Who has it · Still them — and everybody can see it
- Clock Reminders on a cycle, then escalation
- Person “Who has the ball” is on screen, not inferred
Reminder 2 sent · escalated to supervisor queue
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In parallel
Four reviews at once, and one condition over all four.
Serial review is where weeks go. So the step fans out: every reviewer gets their own task and their own form, at the same time, and each one answers only their part. The case cannot leave the step until a condition written over the whole set is true — every review present, and each one carrying the values it is required to carry. Three in and one outstanding means the next step is unavailable. Not discouraged: unavailable, to everybody, including an administrator.
Who has it · Four people who do not know about each other
- Gate A stop gate: the join is a condition over every parallel task
- Rule Reviewers work simultaneously; the gate does the coordinating
- Person Nobody can wave it through — the condition is either true or it is not
3 of 4 reviews complete · join condition false · next step locked
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Unlocked
The gate opens because the work is done.
The checklist ticks, the holder banner flips off waiting, and the action that was locked becomes available. Not because someone judged it ready — because the thing that gated it is demonstrably complete, and the record says when and by whom.
Who has it · The case owner
- Gate The locked action releases when its tasks are done
- Rule Run-to-completion: automatic steps fire before the screen settles
Gate satisfied · auto-advanced · fan-in join complete
A deadline that renews itself
Nothing — the engine starts this one · 5 steps
An obligation with an expiry raises its own next case, before anybody notices it is due.
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Issued
An outcome with a date on it.
A case closes by producing something that expires — a certificate, a licence, an accreditation, a contract term. It is filed as a governed document against the case, with its expiry as data rather than as a note in a spreadsheet somebody maintains.
Who has it · Nobody yet
- Document Governed document with an expiry date, versioned
- Call Issued by a declared step, not by hand
Document issued · expires in 12 months · filed to the case
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Watched
Something is looking ahead for you.
A job runs daily and looks forward. Anything approaching its expiry inside the window appears on the dashboard as work that is coming, not work that is late. The window is a setting, because how much notice you need depends on how long your process takes.
Who has it · A scheduled task
- Clock Forward-looking window, configurable
- Rule Detection is a condition, on the same engine as everything else
12 obligations expiring within 45 days · surfaced on the dashboard
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Raised
The next case opens itself, and remembers why.
The renewal case is created ahead of the deadline and linked to the one that caused it. The history is not a coincidence of naming — it is a relationship, so the third renewal can still see what the inspector said the first time.
Who has it · Whichever queue owns renewals
- Rule Created ahead of the deadline and linked to its predecessor
- Document The prior case, its documents and its findings are one click away
Renewal case raised · linked to predecessor · assigned to renewals
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Two clocks
Some deadlines are legal, and they do not pause.
Put a case on hold while you wait for somebody and the operational commitment stops — it is not fair to measure your team against time they did not control. The statutory clock keeps running, because the regulator does not care who you were waiting for. Two clock classes, one case, and the difference is visible on screen.
Who has it · Depends which clock you are reading
- Clock Operational clocks pause on hold; statutory clocks never do
- Person On hold needs a reason, and the reason is on the record
On hold · awaiting third party · operational paused, statutory running
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Closed
And then it starts again.
The new document supersedes the old one, the loop arms itself for next year, and the estate-level view shows what is compliant, what is in flight and what is at risk — without anybody maintaining a register by hand. That is the difference between a system of record and a system that works.
Who has it · Nobody — it is done
- Document New version supersedes the old; both remain readable
- Rule The cycle re-arms without anybody scheduling it
Closed · document superseded · next cycle armed
Your process, next
Where does your work get stuck?
Tell us about the handoff, the approval or the deadline that needs a better home.
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- 01Read the intakeextract, summarise, look for a duplicateagent
- 02Propose the classificationwith a confidence and a reasonagent
- 03Confirm, or correctthe three values it was unsure ofperson
- 04Draft the replywritten, not sentagent
- 05Send ita person presses sendperson
- 06File and post ononly now may anything be writtenagent
Two of the six are owned by a person, and the agent cannot pass them. The last step is the only one that writes anything, and it is unreachable until every mandatory step and every confirmation above it is satisfied.
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