Team inbox

The team inbox lets several people answer a project's WhatsApp numbers together. Each person writing to one of your numbers gets a conversation. Your team can assign it, reply, leave internal notes, tag it and resolve it, and everyone sees changes live.

The team inbox is included in the Starter, Business and Enterprise plans. Each person who works in it needs an inbox seat.

Turning it on

1. An owner or admin opens Inbox in the project sidebar and selects Enable the team inbox. That person is given a seat automatically if one is free.
2. People who wrote to the project recently are imported as resolved conversations, so their history is there when they write again. Only messages still within your plan's retention period are imported.
3. On the Team page, assign seats to the people who will answer. You can also invite people with the Agent role: agents see only the inbox, never API keys, webhooks, billing or the raw message log. Agents always hold a seat.

The inbox needs message content retention (Project settings → Retain message content). To see received images and documents, also turn on Store inbound media.

Working in the inbox

• Views. Mine shows conversations assigned to you, Unassigned shows conversations nobody has taken, and All shows everything you can see. You can filter by status, tag, team, number and unread, and search contact names, numbers and message text.

• Statuses.

  • Open: needs attention.
  • Pending: you are waiting for the customer.
  • Snoozed: hidden until a time you choose.
  • Resolved: done.

  A new message from the customer reopens a resolved, pending or snoozed conversation.

• Assignment. Use the assignee menu, or press a to assign the selected conversation to yourself. If someone else took the conversation in the meantime, you are asked before taking it over. By default, replying to an unassigned conversation assigns it to you.

• Replies and notes. The composer has two modes. Reply sends a WhatsApp message to the customer. Internal note is visible to your team only; mention a teammate with @ to notify them.

• Saved replies. Type / followed by a shortcut to insert a saved reply. {{first_name}} is replaced with the contact's first name.

• Avoiding double replies. The inbox shows when a teammate is viewing the conversation or typing a reply. If someone replied while you were writing, the inbox asks before sending yours.

• Where messages come from. Messages in a thread are labelled by source:

  • your teammates' replies, with the sender's name
  • messages sent through the API (API)
  • away messages (Automation)
  • replies typed in WhatsApp on the phone (Phone)

• Keyboard shortcuts.

  • j / k: move between conversations
  • e: resolve or reopen
  • a: assign to yourself
  • /: search

• Availability. Set yourself available, away or offline at the top of the inbox. Auto-assignment only picks available agents.

• Desktop notifications. Turn these on with the bell icon. You are notified about new messages in your conversations, mentions and assignments while the tab is in the background.

Settings

Owners and admins configure the inbox under Inbox → Settings.

Setting	Effect
Assign to the agent who replies	An unassigned conversation is assigned to whoever answers first
Restrict visibility to teams	Agents only see conversations on numbers their teams cover, conversations routed to their teams, and conversations assigned to them. Owners and admins see everything
Show messages sent from the phone	Replies typed in WhatsApp on the phone appear in the thread
Send read receipts	Blue ticks are sent to the customer when an agent opens the conversation
Business hours and time zone	Used for away messages, response targets and report buckets
Auto-assignment	Round robin or least busy, with an optional maximum of open conversations per agent
Away message	Sent outside business hours, at most once every 12 hours per conversation. Counts towards your monthly messages. Not sent while the AI assistant is on (its handoff message replaces it)
Response-time targets	First-response target and, optionally, a target for every later reply, counted in business hours only if you choose. Overdue conversations are flagged and the assignee is notified
Auto-resolve	Resolves conversations where you replied last and the customer has not answered for the chosen number of hours
Tags, saved replies, teams	Shared labels, canned answers, and groups of agents covering specific numbers

Reports

Inbox → Reports shows the following for any period of up to a year, in the inbox time zone:

• conversations opened and resolved
• median and 90th-percentile first response time
• median time to resolve
• the share of conversations answered within the response target
• a per-agent table: assigned, resolved, replies, median first response and open now
• when customers write, by weekday and hour

You can download the report as CSV. Response times count from when a conversation opens or reopens to the first reply from a person: an agent in the inbox or someone using the phone. API messages and away messages do not count.

Data and privacy

• Inbox history follows your plan's message retention. Message text, conversation previews and internal notes are erased after the retention period. Conversation metadata used for reports holds no message content and is kept for 400 days.
• To erase a person on request, open the contact panel and select Erase contact and history, or call DELETE /v1/contacts/{id}. This permanently deletes the contact, all their conversations, messages, notes and attachments.
• To automate the inbox from your own systems, use the Conversations & contacts API and the conversation.* webhook events.