Inbox guide for Standard and Professional plan members

Manage your workflow and handle conversations all from one central location in Inbox. In this guide, you’ll find out how to set your availability, learn how to work with conversations in the queue, and take a brief tour through what features are available in your Inbox workspace.

Plans: Standard, Professional

Set your availability

Set your notification preferences

Find and work with your conversations

In Inbox, you engage with all your contacts from one streamlined queue that consists of conversations in different states. At the top of your Inbox, you'll see your New and Pending queues. On the left side, you'll see conversations by status. You have the following queues:

• New - These are the conversations that need attention. They are either new or awaiting a reply. When you reply to a conversation, it moves from this queue to the Pending queue. As soon as a contact replies, the conversation moves back to this queue.
• Pending - Conversations waiting for the contact to reply. You can select Conversation state actions at the top of the reply area, and then select Move to pending to move a conversation to the Pending queue. You might do this if you're waiting for more information or need to do additional work.
  
• All conversations - All unresolved conversations.
• Resolved - Conversations that have ended because they were resolved and require no further action. This queue shows all resolved conversations from the last three months. You can select Resolve at the top of the reply area to move a conversation to the Resolved queue once you've resolved a contact's issue or answered their questions.

The conversation view is where most of your work takes place, and where you see a conversation's history. Each message within a conversation includes the type of message (private message, Facebook post, X direct message, comment on Instagram dark post, and more), a link to the social network for public messages, the message sender, and a timestamp. Use the reply area at the bottom of the conversation to select your message type and the account you want to use to reply, and then enter your reply to the contact. You will see inbound reactions in your Inbox for messages from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Learn how to work with conversations in Inbox.

Interact with messages

Select Message actions next to a message to show options such as Reply, Quote, and Repost. To react to the message, select Add reaction below the message. Your options depend on the social network the message is from and the permissions you have in Inbox.

For each social network and message type, you have the following options:

• Facebook - Like, hide and delete inbound public messages
• Instagram - Hide and delete inbound public messages, love private messages
• LinkedIn - Like, celebrate, support, love, insightful, and funny mentions and comments.
• X - Follow. Like, quote, and repost inbound public messages
• TikTok - Love and hide inbound comments on owned videos
• Google Business Profile - reply, add text, assign topics, and analyze sentiment.

Add internal notes to a message

You can add internal notes to messages in a conversation by selecting Add note. Notes include your name and a timestamp. You can edit or delete them at any time.

Shorten links in messages

Admins can shorten links in your messages for a tidier look. You can use the Bitly account connected to Inbox or connect your Bitly account to Inbox. To connect your Bitly account, use the following instructions:

1. In Inbox, select Settings, select Admin settings.
2. Expand Agent workspace, and then select Link shortening.
3. Select Sign into Bitly and enter your account information.

Get to know your customers

When a customer messages you in Inbox, you can view key contact details, like their language preference, email address, account number, and more. These details help you personalize responses and build stronger relationships with customers. Contact attributes are shown on the right of the conversation view and can be expanded to show the contact or collapsed to hide them.

Admins can choose to display specific contact information and the order in which the information is shown.

1. In Inbox, select Settings, and then select Admin settings.
2. Expand Agent workspace, and then select Contact attributes.
3. Select Reorder and drag contact attributes up or down in the list to order them in the view. Use the toggle to turn on and off contact attributes.

Edit a channel's settings

Admins can customize the display name for a channel to make it easier to identify.

1. In Inbox, select Settings, and then select Admin settings.
2. Expand Channels and business hours, and then select Channels.
3. Point to the channel you want to edit, and then select Edit .
4. Enter a custom channel display name, up to 255 characters.