Configure Inbox Settings

The SlickText Inbox allows you to have one-on-one conversations with your contacts. Messages people send to you show up in your inbox where you or someone on your team can respond to each of them individually using the same features you’d find when sending campaigns, such as the ability to use merge tags, attach images or send trackable links. For a deeper explanation of the inbox, see Navigating the SlickText Inbox or Assign, Organize, and Manage Inbox Conversations.

Inbox settings are the options and features that you can adjust to change how the inbox works. You can enable or disable the inbox, decide what data team members can view and interact with, determine how conversations are handled, create automated responses, and more. You must be an account administrator to make changes to inbox settings.

Inbox settings are brand specific, which means you can treat multiple brands differently. 

In this article:

Locating the Inbox Settings

General Inbox Settings

Inbox Tags (Settings)

Locating the Inbox Settings

You must be an account administrator to view and change settings in SlickText.

1. Click on your name at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. If the left navigation menu is minimized, you won’t see your name and will click on your avatar or initials.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Inbox Settings.
4. Choose General Settings or Inbox Tags.
5. Adjust settings as appropriate.

General Inbox Settings

Inbox On

Set the toggle to the on position to enable the inbox for all users who have access to the brand. The inbox will be on by default when you create your account in SlickText. When toggled off, you will not be able to view or respond to individual messages that are sent to your number, except through auto-responses. Toggling the inbox on or off will show or hide the other available settings.

Allow Starting Conversations

This is enabled by default, allowing any team member to start a new conversation or restart a closed conversation. Toggling this setting off will prevent team members from starting conversations and replying to existing ones that are closed. This setting does not apply to inbox managers and account owners.

Allow Conversation Assignment

This setting is toggled on by default. When enabled, any team member can assign any conversation to a teammate. Toggling this setting off prevents users from reassigning conversations. Users with inbox manager permissions and account owners will still be able to reassign conversations even if this setting is not enabled.

Allow Conversation Tagging

By default this setting is enabled allowing any team member to apply one or more tags to a conversation. Toggling this setting off prevents users from tagging conversations. This does not apply to inbox managers and account owners.

Private Conversations

Conversations are not private by default. This means that all team members can see and respond to all messages even if they are not assigned to the conversation. Set the Private Conversations toggle to the on position to prevent team members from seeing conversations that aren't assigned to them. However, team members with inbox manager permission and account owners will still be able to view all conversations even if the Private Conversations setting is enabled.

If the private conversations setting is enabled, you’ll have another decision to make: whether or not to hide conversation history when the conversation is reassigned. This is disabled by default, so team members will see all of the available conversation history when conversations are assigned to them. When this setting is turned on, team members who are assigned conversations will not be able to see the previous conversation history.

Office Hours

Toggle this setting on to set office hours. You can send different inbox auto-response messages based on whether a message was received during office hours or outside of them. After enabling this setting:

1. Choose which days to include in office hours. If a day is grayed out, it will be considered outside of office hours.
2. Select a start and stop time to define office hours for the selected day(s).

In the example in the image below, the office is open from 9:00 - 5:00 CT on Monday thru Friday, and from 9:00 - 12:00 on Saturday.  The office is closed outside of those hours and on Sunday.

Conversation Auto-Assignment

Toggling this setting on allows you to define rules that automatically assign conversations to teammates when new inbound messages are received. This only applies if the conversation is unassigned at the time the new message was received. When this setting is disabled, conversations are not automatically assigned. After enabling auto-assignment, choose one of the following assignment rules:

• Round Robin—This will assign conversations to team members in the same sequence every time.
• Random—This will assign conversations to  team members randomly.
• Online Teammates Only—If enabled, teammates who are offline will not be eligible for auto-assignment.
• Exclude Inbox Managers—If enabled, Inbox Managers will not be eligible for auto-assignment.

In the image below, conversations will be automatically assigned based on the round robin rule, and will only be assigned to teammates currently online. Users who are set up as Inbox Managers will be excluded from the round robin assignment.

Conversation Auto-Close

By default, conversations remain open (or pending) until a user manually closes them by changing the conversation status. Toggling this setting can cause open and pending conversations to be automatically closed after a specific number of days with no message activity. You can choose to have auto-close apply to conversations only in open status or conversations only in pending status or both. After enabling Conversation Auto-Close:

1. Enter the Days to Auto-Close. This is the number of days with no message activity before the conversation status automatically changes to closed.
2. Enter the Auto-Close Statuses. This defines which conversations will automatically close. Select Open to apply this rule to conversations in open status. Select Pending to apply only to conversations in pending status. Select both to apply this rule to all conversations regardless of status.
3. Enable Auto-Close Message if you want to automatically send a message to the contact when the message is auto-closed, then type your message. You must enable office hours to use the auto-close message feature. This helps prevent mess.

In the image below, conversations that are in the Pending status and have no messaging activity will automatically close, and the contact will receive the auto-close message. Messages that are in other statuses will not auto-close.

Unassign Conversations When Closed

This setting is toggled on by default. When enabled, conversations automatically become unassigned when they are closed. Turn off this setting to have conversations remain assigned after they are closed. When this setting is disabled, individual users will have an additional filter to view closed conversations assigned to them.

Mark Conversations as Unread When Assigned

This setting is toggled on by default. When enabled, conversations will show as unread when they are reassigned. When disabled, conversations will not show as unread when they are reassigned. They will only show unread if and when a new message is received.

Inbox Auto-Response

Enabling this setting allows you to send a standard automated response when a message is received in the inbox and there’s not already an open or pending conversation. If there is already a conversation with a contact in the open or pending status, the auto-response will not be sent. If the Office Hours setting is enabled, you can define a different message for inside office hours versus outside office hours.

In the image below, you can see an example of different auto-responses for inside and outside of office hours.

Inbox Tags (Settings)

Inbox tags allow you to label conversations to better organize them in the Inbox and report on them in Inbox Analytics. All tags are custom, created specifically for each brand.

1. Click on your name at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. If the left navigation menu is minimized, you won’t see your name and will click on your avatar or initials.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Inbox Settings.
4. Choose Inbox Tags.
5. Click Create Tag, to add a tag and make it available in the Inbox.
6. Name the Tag. This is what will appear in the inbox for users.
7. Enter a description for the tag, if desired.
8. Choose a color to make the tag more easily identifiable in the Inbox
9. Choose whether or not to Untag a Conversation When Closed. By default, this is disabled and this tag will remain with conversations even when they are closed. If enabled, this tag will be removed from the conversations when they are closed.
10. Click Save.