Conversations is the business app's shared inbox. Each contact has one conversation with everything in time order: emails they sent, emails the business sent (by hand or from an automation), internal comments, and events such as a form or a booking.
Whose conversations
- Mine: assigned to you, or ones you follow.
- Team: every conversation in the business.
- Unassigned: nobody's yet.
People with Only their own conversations set see Mine and Unassigned, but not Team.
Tabs
Unread, Recent (the default), Starred, All and Archived. Unread, starred and archived are shared by the whole team, as in a shared mailbox: if a colleague marks a conversation read, it's read for everyone.
Read is your choice
Opening a conversation doesn't mark it read, so you can look without losing track. Press Mark read (or Mark unread), or send a reply: Sending a reply marks this conversation read. Jump to first unread takes you to the first new message in a long thread.
Filters, search and saved views
Search messages and contacts, then filter by who it's Assigned to, I follow, I'm mentioned, direction (From the contact / From the business), Automated (a person or an automation), Channel, contact tags, and Waiting for a reply (the contact wrote last and nobody has answered). Sort by newest, oldest or longest waiting. Save view keeps the filters; Share with the whole team shares the view.
Assign, follow, star, archive
- Assign a conversation to a team member (they get a notification), or back to Nobody (unassigned).
- Follow a conversation to see it under Mine and hear about new messages; Stop following to stop.
- Star marks one to come back to.
- Archive clears it from the list; a new message from the contact brings it back.
- Delete removes it from the inbox; it can be brought back for 30 days (Undo, or Bring back on the deleted conversation).
Tick several conversations to mark read or unread, assign, star, archive or delete them together.
Live updates
The inbox updates on its own: a new reply, comment or change shows up within a moment on everyone's screen, without reloading. If live updates can't connect (some company networks block them), the inbox checks for changes every few seconds instead, so nothing is missed.
Keyboard shortcuts
j / k next and previous conversation, r reply, c comment, e archive, / search, Ctrl/⌘ + Enter send, ? shows the list.
On a phone
The list and the conversation are separate screens: open a conversation, and Back to the list returns. Contact details opens the contact's details in a panel.
Channels
Email works today. Texts, calls and website chat will be added as more channels in the same conversation, with the same inbox, filters and automations, so nothing changes in how you work. Until then other tools can already post messages into a conversation through the API.