Inbox overview

The Inbox is your home base. Every conversation across chat (widget), SMS (your business number), voice (phone calls), email (sent from the platform + customer replies), and website form submissions — all in one list, grouped by contact, sorted by most recent activity. This is where you check first thing in the morning to see what came in overnight.

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Two panes

The conversation list sits on the left; opening a conversation shows the full thread on the right. The list stays put as you work down it — it keeps your place, your search text, and your filters while you read. Collapse the list with the panel button next to the “Conversations” heading when you want the whole width for a long transcript. It stays collapsed until you bring it back, and the button on the left edge reopens it. On a phone you see one at a time: the list, then the thread once you tap in. All conversations at the top of a thread takes you back.

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What you see on each row

Each row is a contact — or an anonymous visitor, unknown phone number, or social thread when we can’t match one:

• Name + business — or a phone number / “Website visitor” if there’s no contact yet
• Channel badge — which channel the most recent activity came through
• Preview — the last message. If it starts with “You:”, the last word was yours; no prefix means the customer is waiting on you.
• Date and, when assigned, the owner’s initials

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Unread

A conversation is unread when the customer spoke last and you haven’t opened it since. Unread rows are bold with a blue dot, on a faintly tinted background; read rows sit back in plain text — the same convention your email client uses. Threads you’ve already answered are never marked unread, however long ago it was — nothing is waiting on you there. Unread is per person. A teammate reading a thread doesn’t clear it for you. The count sits next to the “Conversations” heading, with Mark all read beside it.

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The numbers at the top

Click any of them to filter the list to exactly those conversations. Click again to clear.

• Today — conversations with activity today
• New leads (7d) — conversations with contacts added in the last 7 days
• Missed — conversations whose last activity is a call nobody picked up, i.e. still needs a callback
• Calls (today) — conversations with a call today

Each number counts the same conversations its filter shows you, so the badge and the filtered list always match. A number at zero isn’t clickable — there’d be nothing to show.

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Search and filter

Search matches names, phone numbers, email addresses, and the message previews — so you can find a thread by what was said, not just who said it. It filters instantly as you type. The filter button next to search opens:

• Unread only
• Owner — Anyone / Assigned to me / Unassigned
• Channel — only the channels your account actually uses

The number on the button is how many filters are on. When filters are hiding rows you’ll see “Showing 3 of 41 · Clear filters”, so a narrowed list never looks like a quiet one.

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Inside a conversation

Everything for that contact, interleaved newest-first:

• Chat, SMS, and social messages
• Calls, with the summary, transcript, and recording
• Emails, with the quoted history collapsed
• Form submissions, shown as a card of every field they filled in — not just their message, so the phone number, service, and address they typed are right there. Uploaded photos appear as thumbnails.

Tabs at the top let you narrow to one channel.

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Reply

The box at the bottom sends SMS or email — pick with Send via. Email adds a subject line; SMS shows the character count and how many segments it’ll cost. You can attach files to either. A channel is greyed out when we can’t use it, and says why: no phone number on file, or the contact opted out. Opt-outs are a hard stop, not a warning. Sending a text also pauses the AI Receptionist for that conversation, so it can’t reply over the top of you. See SMS replies.

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Assign an owner

The Owner dropdown in the thread header puts one teammate’s name on it. That’s the same owner shown on the contact record — one contact, one owner — and it drives the “Assigned to me” filter. Conversations without a contact yet (unknown numbers, anonymous visitors) can’t be assigned. Create the contact first.

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Channels in detail

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How far back it goes

The inbox holds your most recent conversations — a couple of hundred — and search covers exactly what’s loaded. For older activity, use Contacts: search by name, then open the contact to see their full history.

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Anonymous visitors

Someone who chats on your site without sharing a phone or email shows up as Website visitor. If they later become a real contact — book an appointment, share a number, fill in a form — the entry becomes a named contact and the conversation history follows.

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