Navigating the SlickText Inbox

 

 

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.


The inbox provides capabilities that help you more effectively manage your one-on-one conversations. Filters such as All Conversations and My Conversations serve as predefined folders to organize your conversations and make them easier to find. You can assign one or more custom tags to a conversation to label them. Conversation statuses of Open, Closed or Pending allow you to understand which messages are active and which are in need of attention.


Along with being able to manage your one-on-one conversations, the inbox helps you collaborate with your team to provide better responses and service to your contacts. You can assign conversations, view teammate conversations, and collaborate on conversations by leaving internal notes.


To get to the SlickText Inbox, click on Inbox on the left navigation bar. The inbox will automatically default to an expanded screen, minimizing the left navigation bar. Click on the small arrow in the top left corner above the Inbox icon to unhide the left navigation bar. 

This article will provide a high level tour of the SlickText Inbox and in some cases link to other articles with more in-depth how-to explanations.


In this article:  

Conversations List

Conversations

Conversation Filters and Tags

Contact Cards

Inbox Actions

Inbox Search

Inbox Settings

Conversations List

Conversations are text message interactions with individual contacts. Your most recently active conversations will display at the top of the list. Clicking on a conversation will reveal the full history of messages you’ve sent or received from the contact, including campaign and workflow messages. Unread conversations are indicated by a bold font and a blue vertical line to the left of the contact’s name.

Conversations 

Click on a conversation to view the conversation thread for that contact. Once the conversation has been opened, you can view and respond to messages from the contact. The conversation will display the entire history of your interactions with that contact. You can choose to hide specific message types, actions or other indicators by toggling off conversation filters.  

  • Inbox Messages: One on one text messages exchanged between you or your team members and the contact.
  • Other Messages: Messages sent to your contact using campaigns, workflows, or auto-responses.
  • Notes: Private notes recorded by you or a team member about the conversation.
  • Events: System-generated events logged about the contact like status changes or conversation assignment.
  • Day Markers: A line that separates days from each other to more clearly indicate when a conversation spans across more than one day.

Conversations are either unassigned or assigned to one team member. Assignment is a way to organize conversations and create ownership, but does not limit who can see and respond to them unless Private Conversations is enabled in the Inbox Settings. Conversations can also be placed into one of three statuses: Open, Closed or Pending. Conversations are automatically marked Open when a message is received from a contact, but can be marked Open, Pending or Closed manually at any time. 

Note:

Conversations can be closed, but are never deleted.

Conversation Filters and Tags

Located in the left column of the Inbox, filters and tags act like folders to organize your conversations and make it easier to manage your one-on-one messaging with contacts. The number of conversations that match the filter or tag are displayed to the right of the filter. Depending on your permissions, you may only see My Conversations and Tagged Conversations. 

  • My Conversations—These are conversations assigned to you as an individual user. Conversations will show up under My Conversations as long as they are assigned to you.
  • All Conversations—All conversations between your contact and your brand regardless of who the conversation is assigned to. These conversations include those assigned to you as an individual user or your team members, or not assigned to anyone.
  • Tagged Conversations—Click here for an in depth explanation of tagging conversations. These are conversations which have been tagged. A conversation can have one or more tags. Tags can be created from the Inbox Settings page.
  • Teammates Conversations—If you have permission, you can view conversations that are assigned to other team members. You can set or modify these permissions in the Inbox Settings. To view your teammate’s conversations, click on their name, then sort by All, Open, or Pending.

Note:

Closed conversations never have an owner, therefore, there is no Closed filter under My Conversations. 

Contact Card

You can view and edit information about the contact from the inbox. Click on the Contact Card icon in the top right corner and the contact card associated with the active conversation will slide in from the right. The card includes all data stored for the contact. All of the contact details can be edited right from the inbox.

Inbox Actions

Below is a brief explanation of the actions available in the SlickText Inbox and highlighted in the image.

  • Compose New Message—Click this icon to start a conversation. You can start a new conversation with an existing contact or enter the phone number of a new contact and begin texting right from the inbox. If there is an existing conversation, SlickText will display the conversation history and reopen the conversation once you send a message.
  • Bulk Actions—Bulk actions allow you to make changes to multiple conversations at the same time. You’ll first need to select conversations. You can select all conversations or one at a time.  After selecting at least one conversation, the active conversation pane will disappear allowing you to perform bulk actions to the contacts you’ve selected. 
  • Conversation Status—Mark a conversation as Open, Closed or Pending. Conversations are automatically marked Open when a contact sends a message.
  • Assign Conversation—Assign a conversation to yourself or a teammate. The current assignee will be bolded and have a blue checkmark.
  • Tag Conversation—Assign one or more tags to a conversation. In order to tag a conversation, the tag must exist for the Brand. Add and manage tags in Inbox Settings.
  • Mark Conversation Read / Unread—If a conversation is currently marked as read, you can mark it unread and vice versa.
  • Conversation Filters—Show or hide the components of a conversation: chat messages, non-chat messages, notes and events.
  • Download Message Transcript—Download to a .csv file the complete message history between the contact and your brand. This includes inbox messages (known as chats), campaigns, auto-responses and workflows messages.
  • Contact Card—Click to reveal the contact card which contains details about the contact associated with the active conversation.

Inbox Search

Use the search bar to find existing conversations based on the contact’s name, phone number, or the contents of a message. Conversations that match the search results will display in the conversation list.

Inbox Settings

Check out the in-depth article about Inbox Settings.

To get to Inbox Settings, you’ll leave the inbox. 

  1. If the SlickText left nav bar is hidden, open it by clicking on the small arrow in the top left corner of the screen. 
  2. Click on your name at the bottom left.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Click Inbox Settings.
  5. Choose General Settings or Inbox Tags.
  6. Adjust settings as appropriate.