Conversations inbox

The inbox brings the messages from all your connected channels into one list: WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, text messages and the chat on your website. Each conversation is linked to a contact, so your team sees who is writing and can answer from the same place.

Before you start

• The inbox is available when your plan includes Conversations inbox. Each channel also needs its own plan feature. See Channels and WhatsApp.
• An owner or administrator must connect at least one channel. Until then the inbox shows No conversations here.
• What you can do depends on your role:

A custom role can remove some of these rights. See Roles and access.

Find a conversation

1. Open Conversations in the sidebar.
2. Choose Open or Closed under Status.
3. If you have more than one kind of channel, choose one under Channel, or keep All channels.
4. Tick Assigned to me to see only your own conversations.
5. Select Apply.

The list shows 25 conversations a page, newest message first. Each row shows the contact, the start of the last message, the channel, the time of the last message (in UTC) and the person it is assigned to, or Unassigned. A conversation whose last message came from the customer carries the badge Awaiting reply.

Reply to a customer

1. Open the conversation. The page shows its latest 100 messages.
2. Write in Your reply. A reply can be up to 4,096 characters.
3. To send a file, choose it in Attach a file: images, video, audio or PDF, up to 16 MB, one file a reply. Website chat and text messages do not take files.
4. Select Send.

To start from a prepared answer, choose it under Saved reply and select Use. The text fills the reply box and is not sent until you select Send. See Saved replies and templates.

Under each message you see who sent it and its delivery state:

A message that is still Sending after 10 minutes is marked Not sent, because the outcome is unknown. A failed message stays in the conversation, so nothing disappears silently. Messages written by the AI agent are labelled Assistant. When the agent is turned off, for the company or for a channel, the conversations it was answering come back to your team at once and appear in the waiting-customer alerts again. See AI agent.

The 24-hour window

WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram allow free replies only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. After that the reply box is replaced by the notice This channel allows free replies only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. On WhatsApp you can still reach the customer with an approved template, which Meta charges for. Telegram, text messages and website chat have no window.

Assign and close

1. In the conversation, choose a person under Assigned to, or Unassigned.
2. Select Save.
3. When the matter is done, select Close conversation. Select Reopen to open it again.

Only active members of your company can be chosen. If someone else changed the conversation while you were working, you see This item was changed and nothing is overwritten. Go back and try again.

A new message from the customer reopens a closed conversation on its own.

How new conversations are created

When someone writes for the first time:

• A contact is created as a lead, with the source set to messaging, and a deal is opened in the stage chosen for that channel. No second deal is opened if the contact already has an open deal in that pipeline.
• On WhatsApp, text messages and the test channel, the phone number is matched to an existing contact first, and that contact is used. Other channels always create a new contact, which you can merge later. See Contacts.
• The conversation goes to the channel's fixed owner. If there is none, it goes to the contact's owner, or, if the channel uses balanced assignment, to the team member with the fewest open conversations.
• The assigned person gets the notification New message from …, at most once an hour for the same conversation.

The first reply your team sends records the response time on the contact's open deals, which feeds Reports.

Good to know

• If a customer writes only a stop word, such as stop, unsubscribe, إيقاف or iptal, they are marked as opted out of marketing and their WhatsApp consent is removed, on every contact with that phone number.
• Incoming images and files are downloaded in the background and show File on its way until then. Pictures open in the page; other files always download. Accepted types are JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, MP4, OGG, MP3, M4A, PDF, Word and Excel, up to 16 MB. Others show This file type is not accepted.
• Voice messages can be written out as text. See AI assistant.
• When your plan includes Tickets with promised times, you can turn a conversation into a ticket: write the Subject and select Create ticket. See Tickets and knowledge.
• If a channel's feature leaves your plan, incoming messages are still saved, but replies on that channel show This channel is not in your package. Website chat is the exception: it stops completely.
• Open contact takes you to the customer's record.

Troubleshooting