Message Inbox Overview

Powerful tools to manage messaging across your organization

What's New

There a few key differences from the previous Message tab tools:

• Outstanding speed. Conversations load much faster, especially for customers with a large volume of messages.
• Omni-brand inbox. Manage conversations across all brands in one centralized inbox.
• Multi-player support. Real-time updates let you know when a team member is responding.
• Customizable folders. Create custom folders to match your unique workflow.
• Simpler assignments. Only one user can be assigned to a conversation at a time, ensuring clear ownership and responsibility. An Assigned to Me folder automatically tracks your assignments for easy access.
• And more... From powerful new filters to simplified resolution workflows, this guide details all the ways the Message Inbox helps your team communicate effectively with patients and customers.

Inbox Basics

Any time a contact sends a message to your organization, it brings their conversation to the top of your Inbox folder. From your Inbox, you can respond, assign a user to the conversation, move it to a different folder, flag it, or resolve and archive it.

Search

You can search for any conversation by contact name, phone number, email, and message contents.

Assign a user to a conversation

Assignments can be used to indicate responsibility for a particular conversation. Only one user can be assigned at a time to each conversation. The Assigned to Me folder shows a filtered view of all open conversations assigned to you. Resolving a conversation automatically removes the assignee.

Resolve conversations

Messages remain in the Inbox or another assigned folder until they are resolved using the Resolve check mark button. Resolved messages remain in the Resolved folder for easy reference. Resolved messages can be reopened at any time, moving them back to the Inbox. Resolving a conversation is a global action, meaning it resolves the conversation for all users.

Bulk actions

Bulk actions can be applied to a group of selected messages, including Mark Unread, Flag, Move to, Assign User, and Resolve/Reopen.

Marking Conversations as Read, Unread, and Flagged

Swell automatically tracks which conversations you've read. You can also mark conversations as read or unread manually.

You can add a flag to important conversations to make them easy to find later. Flags are applied at the user level, meaning other users will not see that you have flagged the conversation. Flagged conversations appear in your Flagged folder until they are resolved (which removes the flag) or the flag is removed manually.

Filtering the Conversation List

You can apply the following filters to any folder:

• Unread
• Unassigned
• Flagged
• Not Responded

The Not Responded filter shows conversations that have not received a response since the last inbound message.

Advanced organization and filtering

Filter by brand and location

By default, Message Inbox shows you all of the active conversations within your access level, across all brands and locations. Users cannot see conversations with contacts that are outside their assigned location(s) or brand(s). You can use the Brand and Location filters to only show conversations pertinent to a particular set of brands and/or locations.

Custom folders

Organization admins can create and manage custom global folders. These folders are visible to all users in the organization. Any user can use the Move to action to move conversations between folders. Moving a resolved conversation to a new folder automatically reopens it.

Channel folders for Webchats, Schedule Requests, and Facebook messages

The Webchat, Schedule Request and optional Facebook folders show a filtered view of conversations that come in via each specific channel. These conversations also appear in the Inbox by default when a new message comes in.

After being resolved, Webchat and Schedule Request conversations automatically convert to standard SMS conversations. This is helpful when contacts being their conversation via the web and then message back later with additional inquiries. The conversation history preserves data about which messages came through which channel.

Responding to messages

The conversation history

Selecting a conversation displays its history shown as a chat timeline. This thread contains all the messages and events shared between the contact and your messaging phone number. This includes inbound messages and custom replies, but also invitations, templates, and campaigns you may have sent them, surveys they have responded to, opt-in/opt-out messages, and internal events like user assignment and resolution.

Draft and send a response

You can type a custom response in the chat interface. You can also select a template or attach files as part of your response. (See our guide on attaching images and other files for more information). Choosing Send or pressing Ctrl + Enter (or Cmd + Return on a Mac) will send the message.

Using templates

From the conversation pane, you can choose Templates to use response templates of all types, including Message (plain text), Review, Survey, and Sequence (campaign). You can also filter these by type and location as needed. You can manage your templates in their respective tabs; access Message templates using the Message Templates link.

Helpful information for responding

The conversation pane displays the contact's name, contact information, associated brands and locations, message enrollment status, and their associated timezone. 

The chat pane also indicates the brand and location you are responding as, as well as the phone number your message will come from.

If another user is drafting a response within the same conversation, a <User> is typing... indicator will appear to alert you.

Notes

Using the Note tab in the chat interface, you can leave an internal-only note in the chat history for future reference. Notes are visible to anyone who can view the conversation.

Managing contacts

Many contact management features are available from within the conversation pane. To change the contact's message enrollment status, select the dropdown and choose a different status. See the guide How Do I Block a Contact? for more details on enrollment statuses.

Within the three-dot (⋮) menu, you can also select Edit Contact to update contact information such as name, contact information, and assigned locations and groups.

Delivery errors

Occasionally, messages cannot be successfully delivered to the contact. When this happens, an error message is displayed in the chat history. This error can be inspected for additional information about the underlying cause, such as a a network outage or an ineligible number (e.g. a landline). Where relevant, the option to retry a failed message is also given.