Messages

Getting Here

This module can be accessed from the side navigation menu under the menu item, Messages.

The Messages Module has 7 components:

Inbox Sidebar
Contact Search, Sort & Filter
Contact List
Messaging Console
Conversation Action
Vertical Sidebar
Contact Drawer

Inbox Sidebar

The Inbox Sidebar is where you can search for an inbox or select your preferred inbox view.

There are 3 possible inboxes to choose from:

Standard Inbox
Team Inbox
Custom Inbox

Standard Inbox

There are 3 displays within the Standard Inbox:

All: Shows all conversations on the platform.
Mine: Shows Contacts and conversations assigned to the User only.
Unassigned: Shows conversations that haven’t been assigned.

Agents with restricted Contact Visibility can only see the Mine Inbox. Owners, Managers and Agents with unrestricted access are able to view all Standard Inboxes.

Team Inbox

This displays the inboxes of the various Teams in your Workspace, such as Sales, Marketing and Support.

Access to the Team Inbox is granted as below:

Agents with the “View Contacts assigned to User only” restriction are not able to view any Team Inbox.
Agents with unrestricted access or with the “View Contacts assigned to User’s team” restriction are able to view their own Team Inbox.
Owners and Managers are able to view all Team Inboxes.

Custom Inbox

This section shows all the Custom Inboxes created by the User or shared by other Users. There are two sub-sections:

Created by me: Shows all Custom Inboxes created by the User.
Created by others: Shows all Custom Inboxes shared with the User.

New Message Indicator

The green dot indicator indicates a new incoming message in the relevant inbox. It disappears when the inbox is opened.

The green dot indicator prioritizes inboxes as below for specificity:

Mine > Team > Unassigned > All

When a new message arrives in the Mine inbox, the blue dot will mark it accordingly without alerting the Team or All inboxes. The same principle applies throughout using this hierarchy.

Open Conversation Count

The Open Conversation Count indicates the number of open conversations in an inbox.

Contact Search, Sort & Filter

By default, the Contact List is filtered by All Status and sorted by Newest Message first.

The filter options are:

All Status: Shows all conversations in the Contact List of the selected inbox.
Open: Only shows conversations that are open in the Contact List of the selected inbox.
Closed: Only shows conversations that are closed in the Contact List of the selected inbox.
Snoozed: Only shows conversations that are snoozed in the Contact List of the selected inbox.

The sorting options for Contacts are:

Newest message: Sorts Contacts by newest messages to oldest messages.
Oldest message: Sorts Contacts by oldest messages to newest messages.
Longest (Open/Closed/Snoozed): Depending on which filter is chosen, Contacts are sorted from the longest to the shortest conversation duration that were opened, closed or snoozed.
Shortest (Open/Close/Snoozed): Depending on which filter is chosen, Contacts are sorted from the shortest to the longest conversation duration that were opened, closed or snoozed.

Search Behavior: Contacts, Messages and Comments

Use the search bar at the top of the Contact List to search your Contacts, Messages and Comments. Your recent searches are listed in the same dropdown.

You cannot search Broadcasted Messages.The search results are not case sensitive. For example, the search result for SAMANTHA include samantha, SAmaand SAM.

Search for Contacts

To search for a particular Contact, click the Contacts button in the search dropdown.

You can only search for First Name, Last Name, Phone Number and Email.

Partial or wild-card search: The search results include Contacts that are a partial match to the search query. Example: The search result for car includes Carlos, Scarlet and Oscar. Here are the Contact details that are included in the search:
1. First Name
2. Last Name
3. Phone Number
4. Email
Strict-searching: Only Contacts that are an exact match of the search query will be included in the search result.
1. Custom fields, except for checkbox type, date type and time type.
Contact fields that cannot be searched:
1. Country
2. Language
3. Gender
4. Assignee
5. Conversation Status
6. Checkbox type (custom field)
7. Date type (custom field)
8. Time type (custom field)
9. Tags

For unsearchable contact fields, use filters to find the desired Contacts.

Search for Messages or Comments from All Contact Conversations

To search for a Message or Comment, click the Messages or Comments button, respectively, on the search bar. The search automatically begins once 3 characters are provided in the search bar with the recent messages/comments listed first.

The messages in text format that can be searched, include WhatsApp Templates, quick replies, and story replies.

Basic match: Search for 1 keyword. Example: the search results for “fox” returns all messages with the word “fox” in them.
Multi-word match: Searching for multiple words. Example: the search result for “quick brown” returns all messages with “quick” and/or “brown” in them
Emoji: Search for any emoji. However, 1 emoji is considered one character, therefore, search begins after 3 emojis are entered.
Email address: When searching for email addresses, messages/comments that have the exact match, partial match, or domain-specific match are included in the search results. Example: the search for the domain “@gmail” returns all email addresses of the specified domain.
Number: When searching for numbers, messages/comments that have the exact match or multi-number match will be included in the search results. Example: the search result for “016 014”, includes “…your number start with 016…” and/or “…your number starts with 014…”.Message/Comment search is not filtered based on inbox, sorting, or conversation status.

Search for Messages and Comments from a Single Contact’s Conversation

You can also search for a message or comment inside a Contact’s conversation. Select the Contact and click the search icon on top to open the search bar. Enter the keyword that you want to search.

You can use the arrows or the search results dropdown to navigate through the search results in the Contact’s conversation.

Contact List

The Contact List shown is based on the selected inbox. Standard and Team Inboxes refresh in real-time when a new inbox is selected or a new message is received. Custom Inboxes have to be manually refreshed by clicking the refresh button on the “Last updated X time ago” banner at the top of the Contact List.

Selecting a Contact

Any action related to Contacts starts with Contact selection. By default, the Contact List is filtered by Open Contacts and sorted by Newest Message first.

Conversation Indicators

Add a Contact

Agents can add individual Contacts from the Messages Module. To add a new Contact, click on the +Add Contact icon next to the Contact Sort, Search & Filter search bar.

Messaging Console

This is where you can view, draft and compose messages to communicate with Contacts. When a Contact is selected from the Contact List, their conversation history, inclusive of Message Metadata and Conversation Events, will load here.

Message Metadata

When you hover over a message, the message metadata will be shown in a callout. The metadata consists of the message's sender and its status with a timestamp.

Refer to Message Status for more information on the different message statuses.

The message sender indicates how the message was sent.

Reply-To Context

When a Contact replies to one of your messages, the Messages Module will indicate the exact message they are referring to for context. It's important to note that the Reply-To Context feature is available for both incoming and outgoing messages.

Reply to incoming message

Reply to outgoing message

This feature is only available for selected Channels such as: - WhatsApp Business Platform (API) - WhatsApp Cloud API - Telegram

Message Status

When you send a message to a Contact, you can check its delivery status by hovering your mouse over the message.

For each message sent to the Contact, there will be an indicator that indicates the status of the message. The statuses are described as followed:

- Message Status is only applicable to messages sent within a Channel's messaging window. - If a message fails to be sent to a Contact, hover over the message to view the error message from the platform or the Channel source.Some messaging channels have limited coverage of message statuses.

Conversation Events

Message History will also keep track of important events, such as when a conversation was closed and by which source.

Conversation Events with Reference

It is possible to trigger an event with a reference on supported Channels (Facebook, WhatsApp). References include tracking different links placed in different Channels or tying a Channel user to a session or account in an external app. A Conversation Opened or a Channel event can be triggered with a reference and the reference code will be stored with the event. For events that contain URLs as sources, the URL will also be stored and shown in the Messages Module.

Events will belong to a conversation if they are triggered during an open conversation.

Sending Messages

Here is a quick guide on how to send messages to your Contacts.

Important: Some messaging channels have a limited messaging window. Be sure to plan your replies ahead of time to ensure your message is delivered.

You can use Respond AI prompts to help enhance your messages before sending them to customers.

Use shortcuts in the messaging composer to quickly access emojis, snippets and variables.

Receiving Messages

New messages will appear in the contact list of the Messages Module. New Contacts will be unassigned by default.

Link Previews

The Link Preview feature involves displaying link previews in messages, enabling users to remove these previews from the message composer.

Link Previews are available for the following Channels: All WhatsApp Channels (except Vonage), Instagram, Telegram and LINE.

Link Preview Content

The Link Preview content includes image, title, description, and the website link associated with the URL.

Remove Link Preview in the Message Composer

You can remove link previews from the message composer when entering a URL. To remove a link preview, click on the "remove" button.

Link Preview Behavior

Incoming Message

Link previews will be displayed for incoming messages that contain URLs.

Outgoing Message

If you sent a message with a link preview, the Contact will receive the message along with the link preview, provided the Channel supports it.
If you have removed the link preview in the message composer, it should not be displayed in the conversation window.
The Contact will receive the message without the preview if it was removed by the sender.

Only one link preview will be shown per message. When multiple URL links are present in a message, the preview of the first URL will be displayed.

Channel Switcher

Connect with Contacts across multiple Channels. Use the Channel switcher in the messaging console to switch between Channels to maintain your interactions with Contacts.

Unsupported Messages & Custom Payload

Messages that are not supported will have a fallback display with Unsupported Message or Custom Payload text and Type (if available). Click Show More to view the JSON payload of this message.

Examples of Unsupported Messages are:

Contacts
Ads Events
Line Flex Message
Instagram Profile
Instagram Avatar
Telegram Poll

Email Channel Composer

This composer only applies to emails and will not be shown if you switch to other channels.

For email channels, we provide additional functionalities in the message composer and console to assist you in properly formatting and sending messages to your Contacts. These include:

Rich Text Editor: You can utilize the rich text editor in the message composer to format your message by making text bold, underlining it, embedding links, adjusting alignment, changing color, and more.
Subject: In the message console, you can view the subject of each email you send via email channels. Additionally, when composing a new outgoing email in the message composer, you have the ability to specify the subject. Please note that a subject is required for new outgoing emails, but you can receive and reply to emails from your contacts that do not contain a subject.
CC and BCC: Similar to regular email functionality, you can add additional email addresses to the CC and BCC fields when composing your outgoing email in the message composer." Note that if the emails that are copied are contacts on the platform, it will not start a new conversation for them.

Reply: In addition, you have the ability to reply to specific emails that you have previously sent out. To do this, navigate to the specific message in the message console and click on the reply icon to initiate your reply to the email.

If you edit the subject of the message you are replying to, it becomes a new email.

Conversation History: Customers can see their conversation history when they click on the email open icon on the message called “Show email content”. Note that the history only shows for emails coming from your Contacts.

Conversation Actions

Contact Assignment and Closing a Conversation

Assigning a Contact and closing a conversation work in tandem to help your team stay organized when dealing with an influx of conversations. Assign Contacts to specific agents and archive resolved conversations by closing them.

Contact Assignment and Closing a Conversation are designed to work together to reduce the workload of the agent and manager. There are a few key actions that happen automatically to achieve this:

Anytime the platform receives a new message from a Contact with no open conversation, a new conversation will be opened for this Contact.
Any Agent who responds to an unassigned Contact will automatically assign the Contact to themselves.
The Agent will remain assigned to the Contact after the conversation is closed.

Snoozing a Contact

A Contact can be snoozed to temporarily exclude them from the Contact List. This can be done by clicking the alarm icon at the top right of the Messages Module and selecting the duration of the snooze.

Once the snoozed time is up, the Contact will reappear in the list again.

When you snooze a Contact, they will not appear in the Mine list until the specified time.

To un-snooze a Contact ahead of the specified time, click on the timer-off icon. They will immediately reappear in your Contact List.

Vertical Sidebar

In the rightmost column of the Messages Module, you can access the Contact Drawer of a selected Contact by clicking on any tabs in the vertical sidebar.

The vertical sidebar has 4 tabs:

Contact Details
Merge Suggestions
Channels
Activities

Contact Drawer

The Contact Drawer will display the Contact’s information relevant to the tab you selected.

Contact Details

In this tab, you can access key information about the selected Contact such as their phone number, email, country and language. This information can be updated when necessary.

Merge Suggestions

In this tab, you can find potential duplicate Contacts. All Contacts with the same phone number or email address as the selected Contact will be listed here.