Navigating the Inbox

Types of Inboxes

The inbox is where you’ll be able to centralize all your customer conversations into one place. There are three types of conversations: my conversations, conversations assigned to others, and unassigned conversations. These three types of conversations are organized into four inboxes: All, Unassigned, My Messages, and Others.

All. This inbox contains all the conversations that you have access to. This inbox is only visible if two or more conversation permissions have been enabled for a role. To learn about conversation permissions, read “Setting up Roles & Permissions.”
Unassigned. This inbox contains conversations that are not assigned to a user. This inbox is only visible if the Unassigned Conversations permission is enabled for a role.
My Messages. This inbox contains conversations that are assigned to you. This inbox is only visible if the My Conversations permission is enabled for a role.
Others. This inbox contains the conversations of other users. This inbox is only visible if the permission conversations assigned to others is enabled for a role.

Attention: If you reply to a message that is unassigned, it will automatically be assigned to you, and that conversation will then be visible in both your My Message and All inboxes. To learn how to assign a conversation to another team member, read “Managing Conversations.”

Changing Your Inbox Location

Users may have access to more than one business location in Podium. If you have access to more than one location, you’ll be able to toggle between the different locations in the inbox. To learn more about giving a team member access to multiple locations, read “Adding New Users to Podium.”

To toggle to a different location:

Go to Inbox.
Click the location menu.
Select a different location.

Attention: A customer’s conversation can only exist in one Podium location at a time. If a conversation’s needs could be more easily addressed by a different location, it will need to be transferred to that location. To learn how to transfer a conversation, read “Managing Conversations."

Opening and Closing a Conversation

Each of the four inboxes All, Unassigned, My Messages, and Others are further organized into open and closed conversation lists. A conversation appears in the open conversations list if it is a brand new conversation to the inbox or if a customer sends a new message to an existing conversation. For a conversation to be moved to the closed list a team member must manually close the conversation.

To close a conversation:

Go to Inbox.
Select a conversation to close.
Click Close.

Best Practice: To keep your inbox organized, we recommend clicking the Send & Close button instead of the Send button after a team member responds to a conversation.

To open a conversation:

Go to Inbox.
Click Closed.
Select a conversation to open.
Click Open.

Attention: A conversation will automatically be marked as opened when a customer sends a new message.

Finding a Conversation

To find a conversation in the inbox, you can use either the search bar or filters. The search bar allows you to find a conversation by using a customer’s name, phone number, or email address.

You can filter the conversation in an inbox by no review invite, sent review invite, clicked the invited link, and left a review.

No Review Invite. Shows conversations that haven’t been sent a review invitation link.
Sent Review Invite. Shows conversations that have received a review invitation link but haven’t clicked on it.
Clicked the Invite Link. Shows conversations that were sent a review invitation link and it has been clicked on. These conversations haven’t yet submitted a review.
Left a Review. Shows conversation who have been sent a review invitation link, opened the link, and left a review.

Understanding Inbox Notifications

Inbox notifications help you keep track of which conversations are marked as opened and which conversations have been responded to by team members.

Open Conversations. When you first sign in to the inbox, you’ll be able to see how many open conversations you have access to.
Unread Conversations. Any conversation that you haven’t read will appear in bold. Once you click on the conversation, it will no longer be bolded for your account.
Last Response. For each conversation in the inbox, you’ll be able to tell whether the last response came from a team member or the customer. Conversations where the last response came from a team member will have a reply icon to the left of the message in the message list.

Conversations without a reply icon indicate that the last response came from the customer.