Summary: When Allin (your AI Assistant) can't answer a guest, the conversation is escalated so your team can't miss it. This article explains how those escalations work, how to clear them, and how to control what Allin says to the guest while they wait.
Permissions required:
Conversers assigned to the conversation's departments to see and acknowledge and take over.
Brand Admins or Location Admins to configure the holding messages AIlin (AI Assistant) uses.
⚠️ Note: This is a feature that requires your brand admin to raise to your Alliants Customer Success Manager to enable for your property.
What Happens When Allin Can't Answer?
Allin does its best to answer guest questions using the information it has been given (your context, uploaded documents, links, and booking data).
When Allin doesn't have enough information to go on — for example, a guest asks something outside what Allin knows about, or needs to confirm details only a person can help with, Allin:
Replies to the guest with a message — either your standard holding message, or a one-off message it writes itself, depending on how you've set things up (see Choosing What Allin Says While It Waits below), and
Escalates the conversation so a team member can spot it and step in
This is what we call a soft escalation.
How You'll Spot an Escalated Conversation
You don't need to go looking for these — they're designed to stand out:
The conversation shows up with a purple highlight in your conversations list, with a small purple dot next to it
Instead of the usual message preview, you'll see "Allin was unable to respond - please acknowledge"
Escalated conversations move to the top of your list, after red conversations, even above other conversations that simply haven't been replied to yet
Open the conversation and you'll see the same note in the timeline: "Allin was unable to respond - please acknowledge", next to an info icon (ⓘ).
Click the info icon to see the specific reason Allin gives — for example, that it needed the guest to confirm a preferred time or missing booking details — so you know exactly what it was stuck on before you reply.
Underneath the escalation note, you'll also see the actual message Allin sent the guest, labelled "Replied by Allin" — this is either your holding message or the one-off reply Allin generated, depending on your settings. See more in Choosing What Allin Says While It Waits.
Marking a Conversation as Handled
Once a member of your team has seen the escalated conversation and is taking care of it, they can click Acknowledge on the timeline entry.
When someone clicks Acknowledge:
The button disappears straight away
The note changes to a greyed-out "Allin was unable to respond (acknowledged)"
Once the page refreshes, the conversation drops out of purple and returns to normal in your list
Who can do this? Only people who are able to reply to that conversation — a Brand Admin, or a Converser with Converser roles of the relevant department assigned to them.
📓 Note: If someone can only view a conversation (for example, a Location Admin who isn't assigned to that department), they'll be able to see the escalation from conversations preview list but won't see an Acknowledge button, in the same way they wouldn't see a reply box.
If Allin gets stuck more than once in the same conversation, each instance is escalated separately.
ℹ️ Important: The purple highlight stays until all of them have been acknowledged — acknowledging one still leaves the conversation escalated if another is outstanding.
Choosing What Allin Says While It Waits
Admins can control what message Allin sends the guest when it escalates. Go to:
Settings → Locations → [your location] → AI Settings
ℹ️ Important: This needs to be done by the Brand Admin or Location Admin who can see Settings tab.
💡 Tips: If the "Enable 'Allin' auto-responses" is not visible to admins, please speak with your Alliants Customer Success Manager to discuss having it enabled for you. A Change Request is needed and can be raised by Brand Admins afterwards.
There are two things to set up here:
Holding message — the fixed text Allin will send if you want to use a standard message (e.g. "Thank you for your message. We will check with team and come back to you"). This is the text shown to guests when Allin can't generate a response.
Unfulfilled response mode — a dropdown that decides whether that holding message actually gets used:
Option | What it does |
Use holding message | Allin sends the exact text you set in the Holding message field |
AI-generated response | Allin ignores the Holding message field and writes a one-off reply itself, tailored to what the guest asked |
Either way, the conversation still gets escalated to your team — this setting only changes what the guest sees while they wait, not whether a person gets involved.
💡 Tip: Changes here needs to be saved and will still be applied after you refresh the page.
Common Questions
Q: Do I need to turn this feature on?
A: If you don't see purple-highlighted escalations or the Unfulfilled response mode setting yet, check with your Alliants Customer Success Manager and then raise a Change Request if needed for the team to review and take action.
Q: Does acknowledging an escalation delete anything?
A: No. The message Allin sent while waiting stays in the conversation history — acknowledging only clears the escalation, it doesn't remove any messages.
Q: Can I still use Allin's suggestions after a conversation is escalated?
A: Yes. Once a person takes over, Allin can still offer suggested replies for you to review and send.