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Now

TalkWatch opens on Now: what the phone system is doing at this moment. It's laid out as the calls move through it. Calls stream in to Live calls, from ringing through to connected. When one ends it stays a few seconds, faded, with how it ended, then travels along its stream (answered, voicemail or missed) into Recent activity, and from there into the call log at the bottom. A missed call's mark also climbs to the rail's "missed today", which changes when it lands. The streams get busier the more calls took that path in the last five minutes. Above the lists are today's calls, calls in progress, the answer rate and missed calls; below them, who's on a call and which handsets are online. The page stays live, so you can leave it open.

A call ends and travels its stream from Live calls into Recent activity

Each row of the call log says who answered, Talk's score for the call's quality (in amber below 70, where TalkWatch counts a call as poor), how Talk rated the call from its transcript, and a bell with how many alerts the call raised. The rating shows only where you may read the call's transcript, and the alerts only those you could see. On a narrow window the log keeps to its first columns.

When a call comes in, a pulse runs in from the left along the inlet, and its row appears as the pulse lands, with Calls today and In progress changing at the same moment. A count is never held back longer than the move that explains it: about half a second for an arrival, a second and a quarter for a missed call's mark on its way to the rail.

A call arrives on Live calls

A list holds still while your pointer is over it, or you're tabbing through it, because a row that shifts just as you click lands the click on its neighbour. Its heading counts what's waiting ("2 waiting ยท Show"); choose that to catch up at once, or move away and it catches up half a second later. The figures above never wait. If your system is set to reduce motion, nothing travels: changes just appear where they land.

Below 1000px of room, on a narrow window or with a call open beside it, the board stacks into one column and the streams run down between the lists. In the light theme it's the same board on paper.

Now on a phone

Now in the light theme

The people and handsets come from Talk's live feed. If that's down, the heading says so and what went wrong, and calls carry on being copied from the call log each poll.