Inbox and customer messages
Inbox and customer messages
Who can do this: Read opens the inbox and lets you read every conversation. Replying, starting a message, assigning, changing status, follow-ups and asking for a suggestion need Edit. Setting up channels (Inbound Messaging), Live Chat and the inbox bot needs Manage Members. See the .
What it's for
The inbox is one shared place where messages from your customers arrive, whatever channel they used: email, Telegram, MAX, WhatsApp, the chat on your website, or chat inside a connected app. Your team answers from here, hands conversations to each other, and ties each conversation to the customer's record in a table.
You set up the channels once. After that the team works only in the inbox.
Before you start
The inbox itself needs no setup. It is empty until the first message comes in.
Team members who should answer need Edit, which uses an editor seat. Someone with only Read sees conversations but cannot reply or change anything. The inbox does not hide the buttons from them; the action fails.
Needs your administrator: several things behind the inbox are installation-wide.
•Email on a platform address, and the web addresses messengers call. If Inbound Messaging says No inbound email domain is set, or a channel asks you to Set the Public App URL system config first, ask for the Inbound Email Domain and the Public App URL in System, Config.
•Browser notifications. If the Inbox notifications control (section 9) is missing from your profile menu, push is not configured on the server.
•Attachments are stored in the installation's file storage.
•Suggestions (section 8) need an AI provider, or your own key on the Agents page.
•CAPTCHA on the chat widget works only if a captcha service is configured.
Steps
1. Open the inbox
In the navigator header, press the Inbox icon. A dot on it means something is unread.
Pick a filter on the left: All open, Unread, Awaiting reply, Mine, Unassigned or Closed. The number beside each is how many conversations match.
Click a conversation to read it. Opening an unread one marks it read for the whole team (this needs Edit).
How to read the list:
A coloured badge such as 3h awaiting shows how long the customer has waited since their last message. It turns amber after 4 hours and red after 24 hours. I found no setting for these two limits.
A green badge names the table the conversation is linked to (section 4).
The small tag on the right is the assignee (the part of their email before the @), or a dashed tag with the team group's name.
The list updates by itself. Refresh forces it. Load more shows older conversations. No conversations means the filter is empty.
Mine means assigned to you, or owned by a group you are in while no person has taken it.
On a phone the filters become chips at the top and Details opens the right-hand panel.
A new message from the customer sets a closed conversation back to open.
2. Answer a message
Open the conversation. The box at the bottom reads Write a reply… (⌘/Ctrl+Enter to send).
Type your answer. Attach file adds a file and Emoji inserts one.
Press Send, or Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac).
Things you will see:
Your replies carry your name. Replies written by an AI agent carry the Agent label and the agent's name.
On channels that report it, a small tag shows Delivered, Read or Not delivered. Hover the tag to see the provider's own reason.
The box is greyed out when the conversation is Closed, or when the channel cannot send right now. The grey text says why. For example, official WhatsApp only lets you write freely for 24 hours after the customer's last message. If the Telegram, WhatsApp or MAX channel the conversation came in on was removed, the grey text says so and asks you to add the channel again in Inbound Messaging; the conversation reconnects when the customer next writes.
Email replies start with your Email signature. Set it once: press the gear (Settings) at the top of the inbox, write it, and press Save.
A file the customer sent shows Fetching… while it downloads. If it shows Blocked or Expired, or gets stuck, use the retry icon next to it. What is blocked is set by the attachment policy in Inbound Messaging.
Links in emails do not open on the first click. You see Check this link before opening with the real address. Open it only if you trust it.
3. Start a conversation yourself
Press New message at the top of the left column.
Choose the Channel: Email, Telegram or MAX. WhatsApp is not offered here.
Under Recipients use Add contact to pick people from the channel's contacts table, or type the address or chat id in To. For email, fill Subject.
Write the Message and press Send.
If a contact has no address for the channel you see This contact has no address for this channel. If the channel has no contacts table you see No contacts table is set for this channel — type an address.
4. Assign, set status, link to a customer
In the right-hand panel of a conversation:
Status: Open, Pending or Closed. Closing ends the customer's wait, so it leaves Awaiting reply. Pending is also what an AI agent sets when it hands a conversation to your team.
Assignee: pick a person. They must be a member of the space. Assigning by hand does not send that person a notification. I found no notification for it.
Team group: shown when the space has team groups. A group owns the conversation under Mine until a person takes it.
Contact: if the sender is not matched to a record you see Unlinked sender. Press Link to contact to search the contacts table, or New contact to create a record from the conversation. Leave Remember this sender on the contact ticked so future messages match by themselves.
Once linked, Open record jumps to the record. Change picks another record. Unlink asks you to confirm and offers to also remove the saved sender id from the record.
Some links cannot be changed here. A conversation from a signed-in portal user follows that person's account, and a record's own comment thread follows its record. The panel says so.
If the space has the CRM process installed, a Pipeline block offers Create lead and Create deal, then View lead and View deal.
On the record itself, the Conversations tab lists every conversation linked to that record and lets you answer from there.
5. Set a follow-up
In Follow-up press Remind me / Follow up.
Choose Remind me (a reminder for you) or Auto-send (a message goes out for you). For auto-send, write the text.
Pick In 1 day, In 3 days or In 7 days, or set a date and time and press Set.
A conversation has one follow-up. Setting a new one replaces the old one. A new message from the customer cancels it. Remove follow-up (the cross) cancels it yourself. The time must be in the future.
When a Remind me follow-up falls due, a line appears in the Notifications panel (the bell) of the conversation's assignee at that moment. If nobody is assigned then, it goes to the person who set the reminder. So if you set it and a colleague has been assigned since, your colleague gets it and you do not. The check runs once a minute, so the line shows up within about a minute of the due time. The line names the customer and the channel, for example "Follow-up due: your conversation with Ivan Petrov (Telegram)." The name is the one on the customer's latest message; without one it is their portal name, a group chat's title, or their address or number. Clicking the line marks it read and opens the conversation in the inbox. The line belongs to the conversation's space: it shows only in the Notifications panel of that space. The reminder is not sent by email or push. Once it has fired, the Follow-up block of the conversation is empty again.
6. Add channels (Inbound Messaging)
Open the space's admin menu and choose Inbound Messaging. The dialog is titled Inbound messaging.
Press Add email address, Add Telegram bot, Add MAX bot, Add WhatsApp number or Chat in a connected app.
Per channel you can choose a Contacts table and Sender match column, so senders are matched to records, and a Routing rule that gives new conversations an owner.
Further down, Attachment processing policy sets blocked file types, the largest file and how long files are kept. The defaults are a list of executable types, 25 MB and 30 days.
The switch Routing enabled turns a channel off without deleting it.
Careful: Remove asks you to confirm (Remove channel) and says what happens to the channel's conversations, then deletes the channel. For Telegram, MAX and WhatsApp the token cannot be shown or edited later. To change it, remove the channel and add it again.
7. Put a chat on your website (Live Chat)
Open the admin menu and choose Live Chat.
On the Settings tab, switch on Enable chat widget. It is off until you do.
Under Appearance set Title, Subtitle, Accent color and Position.
Under When no one is online, Capture email and reply later keeps the conversation open when nobody is there and sends your answers to the visitor's email. Offline message is what the visitor reads.
Require CAPTCHA before connecting to a human asks the visitor to pass a check first. It has no effect if your administrator has not configured captcha.
On the Conversation flow tab build the script the visitor walks through: Message, Buttons, Input, Dropdown, Talk to a manager and End. Add steps with Add a step, and choose where each step goes next. A new widget starts with a greeting, a "What is this about?" question, an email question and a handoff.
Add language adds a translation. Translate with AI fills it in; you review it before saving.
Press Save. The flow must have a start and a Talk to a manager step, or Save refuses.
The widget shows on your public site. To put it on another site, copy the line under Embed on another site.
Careful: the dialog says to add the customer's site to External Portals → CORS settings first. That list is a trust grant. Read before adding an address.
Visitors' messages arrive in the inbox as Website chat. Your replies appear in their chat window.
8. Let the inbox bot watch for you
The bot alerts your team and can suggest answers. It never sends anything to a customer. It is off until you switch it on.
In Inbound Messaging, open New contact and unanswered message alerts and switch on Bot is on.
Channels: tick the channels to watch. None ticked means All channels. Tick Include group chats if you want group chats watched too.
Who is notified: by default the conversation's own assignee or group hears first (The conversation's assignee or group, when it has one). Otherwise the People and Group you pick. If nobody is picked, everyone with access to the space.
How: the in-app bell always. Add Browser push, and Telegram if the space has a Telegram bot. Telegram alerts reach a colleague only if the staff directory knows their Telegram id and they have pressed Start on the bot.
New contact alerts when someone opens their first conversation on a channel.
No reply alerts when a customer has waited. Set Alert after (minutes). To remind again, set Repeat every (minutes) and Repeats at most (up to 10). Empty means one alert.
Analyse and propose a reply: Off, On request (Analyse button), Automatically, with the no-reply alert, or Automatically, on every customer message.
Press Send test. It sends one alert to you only, using the settings on screen, saved or not. Then press Save.
Defaults when you first switch it on: New contact on, No reply on after 15 minutes and once, browser push on, Telegram off, analysis on request.
Waits that began before you switched the bot on are never alerted, so you do not get one alert per old conversation. The check runs every minute.
When analysis is on, a Suggestion card sits above the reply box with Summary, Intent, Urgency, Next step and a Draft reply. Press Analyse (or Re-run) to ask for one. Insert draft only copies the text into the reply box; a person reads, edits and presses Send. A note says when new messages arrived after the analysis. If it fails you see Analysis failed: with the reason.
9. Notifications to your team
Bell. The Notifications panel lists assignments, bot alerts and agent handovers. Clicking one opens the conversation. Routing (an owner from the linked record or a group) sends an assignment notice. Assigning by hand does not.
Browser push. Each person chooses it in their own profile menu under Inbox notifications: Off, Mine (conversations assigned to them) or All. Their browser asks permission once. The control appears only if the server has push configured.
Notification settings (Tools menu in the navigator) is about changes to documents, not about messages.
For your team
Press the Inbox icon. Start with Unassigned or Awaiting reply. Take a conversation by choosing yourself under Assignee, answer it, then set Status to Closed when it is done. Set a follow-up if the customer may go quiet.
How to check it worked
Send a test message to a new channel from your own phone or mailbox. It should appear in Unread within a few seconds, with the right channel icon.
Answer it. The customer receives it, and the conversation leaves Awaiting reply.
For the bot, press Send test and read the result line for each way: delivered, sent, or the reason it was not.
For Live Chat, open your site in a private window, start the chat and reach Talk to a manager. A Website chat conversation should appear.
Undo / what can go wrong
A message went to the wrong person. The inbox has no way to recall a sent message. Check the To line before you press Send.
The wrong record is linked. Use Change or Unlink.
Auto-send follow-ups send under your name even if you are away. Remove them if plans change.
Closed by mistake. Set Status back to Open.
No alert came. Alerts reach only people who can read the space. Check Channels, the person's own Inbox notifications and, for Telegram, the staff directory.