What OutcomeDev cannot do

The limits, stated plainly, including the places where a person is genuinely required and why that is a good thing.

This page lists what OutcomeDev does not do. It is here because the alternative — finding out later, after a date has passed — is worse for everybody.

It cannot send anything until a mailbox is connected

Connecting a mailbox is what lets the desk actually send. Until one is connected, the desk prepares and records everything, and nothing leaves. Messages are written, filings are made ready, chases are drafted, and the record shows they are waiting. As far as the person at the other end is concerned, nothing has happened.

This catches people out on the first day, because the desk looks like it is working — and it is working. It is just not sending. Connect a mailbox before relying on anything going out. See Connections.

It can propose the wrong set of work

The desk proposes the work by reading the business: the website, and the sentence about what the business does. For a business that describes itself plainly, that reading is right first time. For a genuinely unusual one — an unusual structure, an unusual trade, something that does not read the way it works — it can propose the wrong set: a renewal that does not apply, or a date that is not the real one.

The list is yours to correct, and the desk treats your correction as the truth from then on. But it is a proposal, not a finding, and it should be read before it is trusted.

It stops at a one-time code or a CAPTCHA

The desk can sign in to sites it has not seen before and work screens it has never been shown: that is how it handles systems nobody has built an integration for. Two things stop it:

A site that demands a one-time code sent to a phone or an authenticator.
A site that presents a CAPTCHA.

In both cases the desk stops and hands that step to the person, and goes no further until it is done. This is deliberate. A code that exists to prove a particular person is present should require a particular person to be present.

Some sites refuse this kind of access

Some systems will not accept an automated sign-in at all, at the sign-in screen or in their terms of use. Where that is the case, the desk cannot work that system, and no configuration inside OutcomeDev changes it. Where a step can still be prepared for you to complete by hand, the desk prepares it; where it cannot, the item stays on the desk with the reason attached.

Some things are reserved to a person

A few steps are legally reserved to a human being, and no amount of preparation removes them:

A wet signature.
A physical inspection, where somebody has to be somewhere and look.
Anything sworn before a witness.

The desk prepares these completely and stops at the signature. The paperwork is ready, the dates are known, the appointment is arranged and the record says exactly what is outstanding and who has to do it. That is a better position than the same task sitting on a list in somebody's head.

Where a person is needed, it is because the law, or another organisation, says so. It is worth being clear about why: a wet signature exists to bind a named person, an inspection exists because someone has to be physically present, and a sworn statement is sworn by a person. Those requirements are not obstacles the desk failed to clear. They are the point of the step, and the desk making them fast to complete is the useful part.

It does not make legal decisions on its own authority

The desk does not decide anything with legal consequences by itself. It prepares, and you approve. The boundary is set in the permission panel, What the desk may do in the account menu, and anything you have not allowed is put in front of you first.

What is not listed here

Only limits that are real are on this page. Nothing has been left out to make the product look better, and nothing has been added as a way of saying something smaller. If a limit is discovered that is not here, it belongs here, and the page is the place to say so: support@outcomedev.com.

Connections — where access is given and what it allows.
The desk — how an unfinished item stays visible instead of disappearing.
Questions — the same points, answered as questions.