Guides

Conversations & the inbox

The inbox at /conversations is where you spend most of your day. It gathers every customer message from all your channels into one list, keeps it updated in real time, and gives you everything you need to read, reply, organize, and hand off conversations. This guide covers the list, opening and reading a conversation, replying, and managing it from start to finish.

The conversations list#

Open Inbox in the sidebar (/conversations). The number next to it is how many customers are waiting for you right now. The inbox opens on Needs you, newest first.

Views. The inbox's own menu (on the left, or a row of buttons at the top on a phone) sorts your work by what to do next. Each conversation is in exactly one of them, worked out from what actually happened, never guessed:

Needs you: a customer wrote and nobody has answered yet, or the AI has a draft ready. The wait is counted from their first unanswered message. An out-of-office reply does not count as the customer writing, and a message the AI decided needs no answer ("Thanks!", spam) does not keep it here.
Draft ready: the AI has written a reply for you to check. These are also in Needs you.
Waiting on customer: our reply was the last word. As soon as the customer writes again, the conversation moves back to Needs you. A reply sent from your mail client counts too.
Done: closed and archived conversations, and conversations the AI decided need no reply (a newsletter, a platform notice), marked No reply needed. Conversations closed automatically after a quiet spell are marked Closed automatically. If that customer writes again, the conversation goes back to Needs you (a closed conversation starts a new one).
All conversations: everything, for when you are looking for something.

Older than 30 days. Needs you and Draft ready only hold customers who have waited at most 30 days, and so do their counts and the sidebar number. Older ones (a "thanks" from months ago, an old platform notice) would otherwise sit at the top of a longest-wait-first list. A quiet line at the bottom of those views says how many there are; Show opens them in their own list, where Mark all as done closes them after you confirm. Nothing is sent to the customers, and anyone who writes again comes back to Needs you.

Quiet conversations close by themselves. When we replied last and the customer has not written back for a while, the conversation closes on its own and moves to Done, marked Closed automatically. Chat closes after 1 day, email and social or messaging after 3 days; change it per channel in Settings → Channels, then the channel (Close after: Never, 1, 3, 7 or 14 days). A conversation is never closed while a customer is waiting on us, while an AI draft or a reply is still waiting to go out, or while the AI is waiting on someone outside the conversation. Nothing is sent to the customer. If they write again, it starts a new conversation in Needs you.

Under the views, Channels narrows the list to Email, Website chat, or Social and messaging (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the like); only the kinds you have are listed. The numbers next to the views and channels are the conversations waiting there.

Each row shows who it is, the channel, the customer's last message (or "You: …" when we wrote last; an unsent draft is never shown here), its status and one time. A view does not repeat its own status on every row: in Needs you only the rows with a draft ready are marked, Draft ready and Waiting on customer show no status, and All conversations shows it on every row. The "Waiting on customer" tag is not shown on rows, because the status already says it. The time is waiting 3 h while the customer waits on us, or replied 2 h ago while we wait on them. The waiting time turns amber once the customer has waited more than a day. A bold name means unread. On a computer, hover a row to mark it read or unread, or click Done to close it.

The list is built for triage:

Search. Type to find conversations by content or customer.
Filter bar. Above the list sits one row of filters. Each opens a short menu:
- Status: show only OPEN, PENDING, WAITING, CLOSED, or ARCHIVED conversations. WAITING is shown as Waiting on Reply and answers "what are we blocked on".
- Assignee: conversations assigned to Me, Unassigned ones, or those of a specific teammate.
- Channel: pick one or more of your own active channels, listed by name with their channel icon, up to 25 at a time. Only channels your workspace actually has appear here. Picking every channel is the same as All channels. If a channel you had selected is later turned off, it stays as a filter chip until you remove it. If you have a website chat channel, the same menu also lets you narrow website chats by where they started: Your website or Your app (the in-app widget).
- Tags: pick tags, grouped by category, and choose whether a conversation must carry Any of them or All of them. Only shown once your workspace has tags.
- Time: Today, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, or a Custom range picked from a calendar. Time filters on each conversation's last activity, which is when the customer last wrote. Ranges use your own timezone, and a custom range includes both the first and the last day.
- Unread and Needs human: one-click toggles.
Sort. The sort menu at the right of the filter bar orders the list by:
- Newest activity (the default): the conversations with the most recent customer message first, the familiar email order. The sort you pick is remembered on this browser for every view.
- Longest waiting first: the customers who have waited longest for us at the top, then everything nobody is waiting on, newest first.
- Oldest activity first: the conversations whose customer has waited longest since they last wrote. It does not hide conversations your team already answered, so pair it with the Open status or Unread to get a work queue.
- Recently created: the newest conversations first, by when they started.
- Priority: Urgent first, then High, Normal and Low, newest activity first within each.
Active filters. Every filter you apply shows as a chip under the bar. Click the × on a chip to remove just that one, or Clear all to start over. Clear all keeps your chosen sort. The number next to the chips is how many conversations match.
Shareable and remembered. Your filters and sort are part of the page address, so you can bookmark a view, send it to a teammate, or use the browser's back button to step back through them. HelpStack also remembers your last view on this browser, separately for each workspace you belong to, and restores it the next time you open the inbox. A link that carries its own filters always wins over what was remembered. A remembered or shared view that names a channel, tag or teammate this workspace no longer has simply drops that part.
On a phone. The views are a row of buttons you can scroll sideways at the top, and the channel menu sits next to the Filters button. The filters sit behind a single Filters button, which opens a panel from the bottom of the screen with the same options. The active filter chips stay visible above the list.
Inside Shopify. The inbox in your Shopify admin has the same views, filter bar and sort. Your view is remembered there too, but it is not added to the address, because that address belongs to Shopify.
Pagination. The list shows about 20 conversations per page; use the controls to move through pages. Changing a filter or the sort takes you back to the first page.
Mark all as read. Clear the unread state across the list in one click.
Real-time updates. New messages and changes appear instantly thanks to a live connection, and you don't need to refresh. Rows you are looking at update in place (read state, status, time) but never move or disappear under you; conversations that newly belong in the view wait behind a quiet N new, Show bar at the top. Showing them, or changing the view, filter, sort or page, puts the list back in order. A row you close yourself leaves at once.
Unread stands out. An unread conversation has a small coloured dot before the avatar, a darker name and a darker preview line; read ones are lighter. No coloured backgrounds, so the list stays calm even when it is long.

Opening a conversation#

Click any conversation to open it at /conversations/[id]. Opening it:

Marks it as read automatically, so it no longer appears bold.
Loads the full message history so you have the complete context.

Reading the thread#

The thread shows messages in order, with a clear distinction between:

Inbound messages — what the customer sent you.
Outbound messages — what your team (or the AI) sent back.

When auto-translation is on, customer messages are shown translated into your language so you can read them easily. For any message you can:

Send original. If a reply was translated before sending, you can choose to send the original (untranslated) text instead.
Retranslate. Re-run translation on a message — handy if a short or ambiguous message was detected in the wrong language.

For a deeper explanation of how translation decides languages, see About translation below.

Replying#

To answer, type in the reply box at the bottom of the conversation:

Press Enter to send.
Press Shift+Enter for a new line without sending — useful for multi-paragraph replies.
Send and close. The small arrow next to Send (and next to Approve & Send on an AI draft) offers Send and close: the conversation closes once the reply has actually gone out. If sending fails, it stays open. Plain Send stays the default.
Drafts auto-save. Whatever you type is saved locally in your browser, so if you navigate away or your tab reloads, your in-progress reply is still there when you come back.

If auto-translation is on for the channel, your reply is translated into the customer's language before it goes out.

Managing a conversation#

Beyond replying, you have full control over each conversation:

Done. The Done button at the top closes the conversation and opens the next one in the list you came from. On a computer, press E for the same (not while you are typing). A conversation you mark done yourself is not marked Closed automatically.
Change status. Move a conversation through its lifecycle: OPEN → PENDING → CLOSED, with ARCHIVED available from the same menu. Use PENDING for things you're waiting on, CLOSED when you're done, and ARCHIVED to file a conversation away without it sitting in your closed list. Both CLOSED and ARCHIVED end the conversation as far as the AI is concerned: it stops replying and resolves any open escalation.
Waiting on Reply is set for you. A conversation moves to WAITING on its own when the AI has asked someone outside the conversation a question, for example a carrier, through an email inquiry tool. It is the one status you cannot pick from the menu, because nothing about it is a decision you made. It means nobody on your team has to act: the thread is parked until the reply arrives or the wait runs out, and then it returns to OPEN by itself. If a customer asks for a human while it waits, the conversation becomes PENDING and the request for a human wins.
Assign to a teammate. Hand the conversation to a specific team member so ownership is clear.
Set or auto-detect the language. HelpStack can detect the conversation's language automatically, or you can set it manually.
Add and edit internal notes. Leave private notes for your team. Notes are never visible to the customer — they're just for you and your colleagues.
Mark as unread. Flag a conversation to come back to later; it returns to the bold, unread state.
Delete the conversation. Remove it entirely when it's no longer needed.

Continue via email#

From a conversation on any channel other than email — website chat, Facebook, Instagram — you can start an email thread with that customer instead. It's useful when a chat visitor needs a longer answer or an attachment, or has already left your site and won't see a reply in the widget.

Open the conversation's ⋮ menu and choose Continue via email. This option only appears when the conversation isn't already on an email channel and you have at least one active email channel to send from.

In the dialog:

Confirm or enter the customer's email address. If HelpStack already has one on file, it's filled in for you.
Pick which email channel to send from, if you have more than one.
Set a subject — "Following up on your conversation" by default, editable.

Creating the thread opens a new email conversation with that address and copies over what's known about the customer — their contact details and any facts captured so far — so the context carries over. If you already have an active email conversation with the same address, HelpStack reuses it instead of creating a duplicate.

The customer just receives a normal email, with the subject you set, from your support address — nothing marks it as having come from a chat. You write and send the first message from the new conversation like any other reply.

The info sidebar#

Alongside the thread you'll find a details panel — shown as a sidebar on desktop and as a slide-out sheet on mobile. It collects everything you need to know about who you're talking to:

Customer info — name and email or social handle.
Metadata — details about the conversation and its channel.
Notes — your team's internal notes, where you can read and add more.

Customer information#

HelpStack keeps a short profile for every customer it talks to — a contact record with whatever's known about them: name, email, phone, company, city, country, and language, plus a running list of facts.

Facts are short, specific things worth remembering about a customer — "prefers phone over email," "on the Pro plan," "based in Ljubljana." Most are captured automatically by the AI while it's chatting with the customer; a fact can also carry over from an agent action, like starting an email thread with Continue via email. Each fact is tagged with where it came from — AI or agent.

You'll find this in the info sidebar, split in two:

Known about this customer — facts tied to the person, carried across all their conversations.
About this conversation — facts specific to this particular thread.

You can delete any fact you don't want kept, right from the sidebar. HelpStack also automatically filters out sensitive information — passwords, card numbers, health or political details, national IDs, and similar — so it's never stored as a fact in the first place.

These facts feed future AI replies, so the AI remembers relevant context about a customer instead of asking the same question twice.

Typing indicators#

HelpStack shows live typing activity both ways:

You see a "visitor is typing" indicator when a website-chat customer is composing a message.
The customer sees an "agent is typing" indicator in the widget while you write, so they know help is on the way.

AI replies#

You can ask HelpStack to draft a reply for you: click the Sparkles button to generate one using your channel's AI provider and knowledge base. A draft panel lets you Approve (send), Reject (discard), Send Original, or Retranslate. Channels can also draft or send automatically. For the full walkthrough, see the AI replies guide.

About translation#

Each channel has its own Auto-Translate toggle. When it's on, incoming customer messages are language-detected and translated into your language for reading, and your replies are translated into the customer's language for sending. Very short messages (under six words) inherit the conversation's already-detected language, which prevents the language from flip-flopping between similar languages. The complete details live in the channels guide.

The mailbox view#

If your workspace has the Mailbox view turned on (it is enabled per workspace on request), picking Email under Channels in the inbox opens your email channels like a mail client: the folders unfold under Email, the message list is in the middle and the whole conversation in a reading pane on the right. It is the same inbox, for people who prefer to think in folders, so there is no separate Mailbox entry in the sidebar. Each row carries the same status and waiting time as in the rest of the inbox. With several email channels, a channel filter sits above the folders.

Folders

Inbox: conversations waiting for an answer from your team. A conversation is here while the customer's latest message has no sent reply after it, and leaves as soon as a reply goes out. Mail the AI marked as not needing a reply (newsletters, automatic notices) and spam stay out. With mailbox sync on, a conversation whose email was filed out of the Inbox in your mail program also leaves, until the customer writes again.
All open: every open email conversation, answered or not.
Drafts: open conversations with an AI draft waiting for review, longest-waiting first.
Sent and Replied: the replies that went out, and the conversations that have one.
Archive: closed and archived conversations.
Spam: mail the AI marked as spam; it only appears when it holds something.

The number next to Inbox, Drafts and Spam is how many conversations are waiting there. The folders are built from HelpStack's own conversations, so browsing them never loads your mail server. The real folders of your mailbox are listed at the bottom, collapsed and read-only, for reference.

Conversations that were already replied to from your mail client or filed out of its Inbox after the customer's latest message show Handled in email, here and in the conversations list, so you can tell them apart from open work. They stay open, and the label disappears when the customer writes again.

Working through the list

Open a message and the reading pane shows the full conversation: approve, edit or reject an AI draft, or write your own reply, exactly as on the conversation page. The pane is titled with the email subject, with the sender under it. When an approved or sent reply takes the conversation out of the folder you are in, the next message opens on its own, so you can work through Inbox or Drafts without going back to the list. Unread messages are shown in bold.

The folders, the list and the reading pane each scroll on their own, so the folders and the search box stay in place. On a long draft the approve, edit and reject buttons stay at the bottom of the pane. In the list, a small sparkle icon marks a message with an AI draft ready, tags take one line ("+2" stands for more), and in Sent a reply your team wrote in its own mail program is marked "Sent from email".

Keyboard: j/k or the arrow keys move through the list, Enter opens, x selects.

Acting on several messages

Tick the box next to a message to select it (shift-click selects a range, the box above the list selects the whole page), then:

Mark as read / Mark as unread.
Mark as answered: closes the conversation without sending anything. Use it for mail that was answered outside HelpStack, for example by phone or from another mailbox. The conversation moves to Archive, marked "Answered outside HelpStack". No reply is recorded, so response-time analytics are not affected.
Archive.
Move to folder: moves the customers' email out of the Inbox into a folder of the mailbox (all selected conversations must be from one email channel). See the email channel guide.

Mark as answered is the labelled button in the bar; the others are icons, with their name on hover. Up to 100 conversations at a time (one page). Viewers can read the mailbox but not change conversations, so they do not see the checkboxes.

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