Working in the shared inbox

Every conversation — automated and human — lives in the inbox. Messages sent by automations are marked with ⚡ so you can tell them apart.

Finding conversations

• Open and Closed tabs.
• Filter to everyone, conversations assigned to you, or unassigned ones.
• Filter by label.
• Search by name, username, or anything said in the conversation.

Assigning and labelling

Assign a conversation to a teammate from the top of the thread, and add labels with the Labels button. Closing a conversation files it under Closed; it reopens by itself when the person messages again.

Notes

Switch the reply box to the Note tab to leave a note for your team. Notes appear in the thread but are never sent to the contact, and you can write one even when the conversation is outside Instagram’s 24-hour window.

Remind me

Use Remind me in the conversation header to snooze a conversation for 30 minutes, 2 hours, until tomorrow (9am in your workspace’s time zone) or a time you pick. It leaves the open list and comes back under Reminders — earlier if the person messages you.

Pause automation

Pause automation for a conversation when you want to handle someone yourself. While it’s paused, no automation fires for that person: not comments, keywords, story replies, the default reply, or a flow that was already running. Resuming doesn’t replay anything that was skipped.

Favorites, unread and system messages

• Star a conversation to add it to Favorites.
• Mark as unread puts a conversation back in the unread count.
• System messages — grey lines for assignment, labels, reminders and pauses, including what auto-assignment and auto-close did — can be hidden with Hide system messages.
• On larger screens, the inbox sidebar lists Reminders and Favorites, and the contact panel beside the thread shows the profile, Instagram link, labels, tags, custom fields and activity.

Quick replies

Save up to 20 canned answers under Settings → Inbox behaviour → Quick replies, then pick one from the ⚡ menu next to the reply box. Editing a quick reply updates it everywhere; nothing already sent changes.

Auto-assignment

Under Settings → Auto-assignment, choose how new inbound conversations get an owner. Conversations that already have one keep it, and you can always reassign by hand from the conversation header.

• Round-robin — hands conversations out evenly across everyone with access.
• Rules — sends conversations to a group based on conditions, as described below.

Groups and routing rules

Create groups such as Sales, Support or Tier 2, then add rules that send matching conversations to a group. Inside a group, the person with the fewest open conversations gets it.

• Rules use the same conditions as segments — tags, labels, subscribed, name, username, source, last interaction, the automation that ran, and custom fields.
• Rules run in order and the first match wins. A rule with no conditions matches everything, which makes a useful catch-all at the bottom.
• If a rule matches but everyone in its group is at their limit, the conversation waits in Unassigned rather than moving on to the next rule.
• Removing a group keeps its rules, but they stop matching until you point them at a group again.

Conversation limits

Set a limit for each teammate under Settings → Auto-assignment. Nobody is handed a new conversation once they’re at their limit; leave it blank for no limit. The count is open conversations, so closing one frees a slot.

Auto-close

Under Settings → Inbox behaviour, choose to close conversations after 3, 7, 14 or 30 days of silence — or never.