A nudge is a short, actionable suggestion Sense puts in front of you at the moment it matters — on the record you're viewing, above the list you're browsing, or in your Sense Home feed. Each nudge carries a headline, an explanation, a category, often a value at stake, and action buttons that do the suggested thing. Nine built-in nudge sources ship with xMatix; this page is the reference for all nine. Nudges are suggestions, never automatic changes: nothing happens to your data until a user clicks an action button.
How a nudge is made
Every built-in nudge follows the same three-part pattern:
- Deterministic arithmetic decides. Each source is fixed logic checking your data for one specific condition, against thresholds that are visible and tunable. The same data always produces the same nudges — there is no model guessing what might matter.
- AI delivers. The model's contribution is the plain-language explanation of why the nudge fired. The Why? view shows the actual evidence — the numbers and records behind it — and Explain more asks the AI to write that evidence up.
- A person controls mutations. Record-changing action kinds run through the signed-in user's ordinary entity services and show a confirmation first. Navigation, chat and Why? are non-mutating and do not show that confirmation.
The nine built-in nudges
| Nudge | Category | Watches | Recalculates | What it computes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overdue receivables | RISK | Invoice | Hourly | Unpaid invoices well past their due date, with the outstanding amount at stake |
| Dormant regular customers | RISK | Account | Hourly | Customers who ordered regularly and have since gone quiet |
| Approved orders awaiting invoice | BEST_ACTION | Order | Hourly | Orders that are approved but have not been invoiced |
| Stale draft document | BEST_ACTION | Order, Purchase Order, Service Order | Hourly | Documents that have sat in Draft untouched for 24 hours |
| Scheme threshold gap | SCHEME | Order, Invoice, Purchase Order | On save | A document within reach of a trade-scheme threshold — fires once achievement passes 40% of the threshold (tunable), showing the gap and the rebate at stake |
| Alternate / refurbished item availability | INVENTORY | Order, Service Order | On save | An alternate or refurbished equivalent is available for an item on the document |
| Open service recommendations | SERVICE | Service Order | On save | Open service recommendations relevant to the service order, listing up to 5 (tunable) |
| Purchase order quantity check | INVENTORY | Purchase Order | On save | A line quantity more than 25% (tunable) away from the expected quantity — the "may not be needed" nudge |
| Quote follow-up on accepted recommendation | UPSELL | Service Recommendation | On save + hourly | An accepted service recommendation that has not yet been followed up with a quote |
Save-triggered nudges appear within seconds of saving; hourly ones appear within the hour. Sources that watch for drift over time — a draft going stale, an invoice aging — have to run on the timer, because saving a record is exactly what makes it not stale.
Worked example: the purchase-order quantity nudge
A buyer saves a purchase order with 60 units of an item on it. The quantity check compares each line's ordered quantity with the expected quantity computed from that item's own recorded figures, and this line is more than 25% above it. Within seconds the purchase order shows:
Ordered quantity may not be needed — this line orders 60 units; the item's figures support notably fewer. [Open line] [Why?]
Everything about the trigger is arithmetic: expected quantity, ordered quantity and a tolerance ratio of 0.25 that an administrator can tighten or relax. What the AI adds is the sentence, while Why? shows the underlying numbers. The nudge changes nothing by itself. If the buyer edits the line, the source recalculates on save and can supersede the old occurrence. A successful mutating action marks it Applied and unchanged inputs do not reactivate it. Dismissal suppresses it for the source's cooldown window.
Where nudges appear
| Surface | What appears |
|---|---|
| Record detail page (web) | A panel of nudges for that record |
| List page (web) | An insights strip above the table, plus chips on individual rows |
| Sense Home | The attention queue and nudge feed |
| App pages | Wherever a designer has placed a nudge widget |
| Mobile — list and record screens | Nudges at the top of the list, and on the record |
Limits depend on the surface and its authored widget settings. For example, the Sense Home attention queue defaults to eight items overall and three per category; other record, list or app-page widgets can use different caps.
Working with a nudge card
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Action buttons | Navigation and chat open their destination without resolving the nudge. Record changes and workflows show confirmation; only a successful mutating action marks the nudge Applied |
| Why? | Shows the evidence — the numbers and records the nudge was computed from; Explain more adds the AI write-up |
| Snooze | Hides it for 1 or 7 days, after which it returns if still relevant |
| Dismiss | Hides it for the source's cooldown window — 7 days by default |
A nudge is always in one status: Active (showing), Snoozed, Dismissed, Applied, Expired (its validity window passed) or Superseded (replaced by a fresher calculation of the same thing).
Common questions
Do nudges ever change data on their own?
No. The compute pipeline writes suggestions, not the proposed business-data change. Mutating action kinds use the clicking user's ordinary entity API path and show a confirmation; the same RBAC, validation, rules and audit behavior applies as for a manual edit. Navigation, chat and Why? are not mutations and therefore do not show the mutation confirmation. The governance model behind this is described in How Sense AI is governed.
A nudge I dismissed came back — why?
Dismissal suppresses a nudge for the source's cooldown window, seven days by default, not forever. If the condition still holds when the cooldown ends, the source can publish it again. A successful mutation marks the occurrence Applied, and unchanged inputs do not reactivate it. Disabling a provider stops future computation, but do not use that switch as a promise that every already-stored Active row disappears immediately; manage existing rows through their normal lifecycle and verify the feed after the next reconciliation.
Can our organization add its own nudges?
Yes — three ways beyond the nine built-ins: a business rule with a Raise Nudge action, an AI agent that publishes nudges, and an external system posting nudges in through the API. All of them appear in the same administration inventory with the same on/off, cooldown and cap controls; see Nudge administration.