Issues

An issue is one problem you can fix. It names where the problem happens, what causes it, and what to change, and it carries the calls that show it. SignalMD groups problems across calls by the change that would fix them, so one issue is one repair. A slow tool is one issue wherever its silence shows up, and questions the agent cannot answer at one step are one gap, even when callers word them differently.

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Fix and Improve

SignalMD lists confirmed patterns only: problems it has seen across several different calls and callers. Where a pattern is listed depends on whether SignalMD established its cause. Outside your agent. When the cause sits outside your agent, the Fix row says so first, for example “Outside your agent: the service behind lookup_vehicle is slow to answer.” Whoever runs that service has the fix; a change in your agent can only soften it. Improve. An Improve item names a change that is yours to make, such as how a question is asked or when the agent hands a call to a person, and the number it moves: “Yours to change: how this question is asked. Moves Got it done.” Not on the board. Some patterns are kept but not listed in the app, the API, the MCP server or the copilot: ones not yet confirmed, ones that are a consequence of a larger issue, and what callers did that no change to your agent would prevent (never spoke, stopped answering, hung up on the greeting). SignalMD keeps reading them as new calls arrive. Opened by its link, such an issue is tagged Not on the board with one sentence saying why.

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What an issue contains

Some issues also show their lane, Where under the cause, Lasting harm in place of Ended badly, Checked (the calls on which the cause was confirmed) in place of Confidence, and Outcomes it produced. A cause headed Model’s reading has not been confirmed on the calls: treat it as a lead, like What was seen.

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Cause not established

When the calls do not show why something happened, SignalMD does not guess:

• On Issues, the pattern is listed under Cause not established with what was seen and what to check. It can move to Fix once SignalMD establishes a cause.
• On the issue page, a Cause not established tag, What was seen in place of Cause, and What to check in place of Suggested fix. Treat it as a pointer to the calls, not an explanation.
• On the overview board, when a number changes, a tile names an issue as the reason only when SignalMD can tie the change to that issue. Otherwise it says Cause not established. This is a common answer.

A plausible reason that turns out wrong sends someone to fix the wrong thing and teaches everyone to stop trusting the board.

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How the board is ordered

Issues are ordered by impact, so the top of each list is where a fix helps the most callers. Two things you control change the order:

• Your brief. Issues at a part your brief marks High under Matters move up, and issues at a part marked Low move down.
• Your fixes. An issue the live version fixed is listed after every issue still happening.

Use the order as a starting point and read the calls.

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Status

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The grace period

The grace period is how long your agent has to take calls without an issue before SignalMD counts it as resolved: 7 days unless you change it.

• Set it on Issues, next to Show resolved: Resolved after 7 days without a sighting, with 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days. It belongs to the agent and applies at once.
• Resolving. An open issue becomes Resolved when the agent’s newest call is at least the grace period past the last call that showed it. The clock is your agent’s calls, not the calendar, so an agent that stopped receiving calls keeps its issues open. The line under the title reads “Resolved by SignalMD”, with Confirm resolved to make the resolution yours, so a later change to the grace period does not reopen it.
• Marking it yourself starts the same watch: “Resolved Oct 3. SignalMD keeps measuring it: a call that shows it again is noted, and only a rate that rises beyond noise sends it back as regressed.”
• Seen again. A call after the resolution that shows the issue leaves it resolved, and the line under the title says so: “Seen again on Oct 9; the rate has not risen.” When enough calls show it to judge and its rate is not below where it was, the line reads “Seen again on Oct 9; back at about its old rate”: the fix may not have worked, but the issue stays resolved until its rate rises. With too few calls since the resolution to judge, or no rate from before to compare with, the line says that instead. Raising the grace period over the last sighting reopens an issue SignalMD resolved.
• Coming back. An issue regresses only when its rate after the resolution rises clearly over its rate before the resolution, with enough calls on each side to tell. Calls from before your fix never count, and an issue you answered No on stays resolved. A regressed issue resolves again only after a full grace period from the regression. Some older regressed issues read “Back on the board after it was resolved” instead.

A weekly pattern, such as a failure only on Mondays, can look gone after a quiet week, so give those a longer period.

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Did my fix work

One sentence above the bars in By version answers this for the live version. It compares the share of calls with the issue on the live version against earlier versions, counting calls where the caller spoke, and waits for the grace period so a quiet morning on a new version cannot settle it. On Issues, a fixed issue is tagged Fixed on v12 and moves below every issue still happening; one that rose is tagged Rose on v12. This is a before and after reading, not a controlled experiment: Retell ships a version to all traffic at once, and something else may have changed at the same time. See Fix an issue and Versions.

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Is this real?

Yes confirms an issue. No asks what was wrong: A rejected issue leaves the board and stays off.

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Next steps