Inbox and conversations

Inbox combines conversations from the website widget, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Slack for the selected agent.

Find a conversation

Use Open and Resolved to move between active work and completed conversations. The count on each tab covers the whole inbox, not only the conversations currently loaded. Search by customer name, email, phone, conversation identifier, email subject, channel, location, tag, label, assignee, or words from any message in the conversation.

Use the left panel to narrow the current tab by Labels, Tags, and Participants. Filters work together, and search can be used at the same time. Select Clear filters to return to the full tab.

Labels are shared with everyone who can access the agent. Teammates with reply access can create, assign, and delete labels; view-only teammates can still use them as filters. Follow up is always available as a starter label, and each agent can have up to 50 labels in total. A conversation can have several labels. Deleting a custom label removes it from every conversation but does not delete the conversations.

Labels is the first section of the conversation details panel, so the labels on the open conversation are always visible. The applied labels show as chips: select the small cross on a chip to remove it. Select Add label to search the agent's labels and turn any of them on or off. Type a name that does not exist yet and choose Create "name" to add the label and apply it to the open conversation in one step, without going back to the left panel. New labels immediately become available to your teammates and in the left-side filter.

On laptop and larger screens a channel sidebar sits on the left edge of the inbox. Views switches between all conversations, unread conversations, and conversations that need an agent. Channels lists each source the agent receives on, with its icon, name, and how many unread messages it holds, so you can see at a glance where new work is waiting and jump straight to one channel. Only channels the selected agent is connected to or has received conversations on appear, so the list stays focused on the sources you actually use. Select a view or channel to filter the list; select it again to return to all conversations. Use the arrow button at the top of the sidebar to collapse it to a narrow icon strip when you want more room, and the same button to expand it again; the inbox remembers your choice. On smaller screens the same filters appear as a compact icon row above the conversation list, and pointing to an icon shows its label and count.

Conversation rows show the total message count, while an envelope badge shows how many messages are unread. Channel icons stay attached to the customer marker so the source is easy to scan without taking space from the message preview.

The list loads the newest conversations first. Select Load more at the bottom to bring in the next batch. Anything you have loaded stays loaded: opening a conversation, receiving a new message, or applying a label refreshes the list in place instead of collapsing it back to the first batch, so a conversation you found deep in the list is still there when you come back to it. Changing the tab, the search box, or a filter starts a fresh list, because the results are different.

Realtime status shows whether the list is live or resynchronizing. If live updates are temporarily unavailable, successful actions still appear immediately and Fetchply reconciles the list when the connection returns.

Open a conversation to review messages, attachments, ratings, device details, available location information, and shopping activity captured during that conversation. Opening it immediately marks its unread messages as read. The customer-details panel stays attached on laptop and larger screens and can be collapsed when you need more room for the conversation. On a phone the conversation fills the screen: the header keeps a back arrow, the customer's name with their current status, one button to resolve or reopen, and a menu for everything else. Tap the customer's name to open the full details, and use the back arrow to return to the list. When something affects your reply, such as a blocked visitor or a closed WhatsApp messaging window, the header shows a short line explaining it instead of hiding it behind a menu. The panel leads with the most important details, labels first, then status and owner, then the customer, then their order history, so critical information is visible without scrolling. Order history shows the five most recent orders in a scrollable list with a count such as "Showing 5 of 23"; select Load older orders to fetch the next five whenever you need to look further back. Status and owner show the current status next to the section label. Secondary sections such as customer context, tags, participants, the shopping cart, browsed pages, and discussed products start collapsed; expand any of them when you need it, and it stays that way while you work. Missing information appears as a clear fallback instead of an internal identifier.

The main dashboard menu collapses automatically when you enter the inbox to leave more room for triage. Use its edge button whenever you need to open it again.

On desktop and laptop screens, drag the divider beside the conversation list or customer details panel to resize either side. Fetchply remembers your preferred widths on that browser. You can also focus a divider and use the arrow keys, or double-click it to restore the default width.

For WhatsApp conversations, the chat header shows the WhatsApp icon and the customer's phone number so you can identify the contact without opening the details panel.

Conversation avatars use up to two initials from the visitor's name and keep a consistent background color so repeat visitors are easier to scan. If no visitor name is available, the avatar shows V for Visitor.

Review storefront context

The conversation details panel groups storefront activity into compact sections that you can expand or collapse:

• Shopping cart appears only when the agent is connected to Shopify, since the live cart snapshot comes from the Shopify storefront widget. It shows the latest cart, including quantities and the captured total. A warning appears when the snapshot may be out of date; always confirm the current cart with the visitor before making a time-sensitive promise.
• Browsed pages shows up to twelve recent storefront pages captured for this conversation. Fetchply removes query details, sign-in details, and page fragments from stored addresses so those private address details do not appear in the inbox.
• Products discussed lists products that appeared in verified shopping results during the conversation.

These sections deliberately stay empty when no dependable information is available. Cart and page activity comes from the website widget; connected messaging channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Slack do not provide the visitor's storefront browsing session. Page history older than 30 days is not shown.

Visitor messages appear on the left. AI and teammate replies appear on the right and are labelled so you can tell who answered. Fetchply does not show a Seen receipt unless the visitor's channel provides a dependable receipt.

The conversation opens at the latest message. If you scroll up to review earlier messages, new incoming messages do not move you away from your reading position. Scroll back to the bottom when you are ready to follow new messages live.

Messages read oldest to newest, and each customer message stays above the reply it produced, even when both were recorded in the same instant. Notes such as a resolved or reopened marker, a browsed page, or a completed action sit between messages at the moment they happened.

Voice messages from customers

When a customer sends a voice message on WhatsApp or Instagram, Fetchply writes out what they said as text so it reads like a normal message in the conversation. The customer's original recording is attached to that same message, so you can play it in the inbox and hear their own voice, tone, and pronunciation whenever the wording alone is not enough.

Voice messages are understood best in English and Urdu, including messages that mix the two. A recording in another language may still be written out, but the text can be less accurate.

The player appears directly under the customer's message. Select play to listen. The written text is what the chatbot and any automatic reply use, so the conversation stays searchable and easy to scan.

Troubleshooting voice messages

• The customer was asked to type their message instead: Fetchply could not make out the recording, usually because it was silent, very short, in a noisy setting, or in an unsupported language. Ask the customer to send the message again clearly or type it.
• The message text appears but there is no player to listen: The original recording could not be saved, for example when it was larger than 10 MB or in a format that cannot be stored. The written text is still complete and correct to work from.
• The player will not play the recording: Select Download below the player to listen in your usual audio app. Some browsers cannot play voice recordings from every messaging app, so trying another browser also helps. The written text always reflects what was said.
• A voice message answered a guided flow question: The written text appears as the customer's answer, but the recording is not attached for those replies. Ask the customer to resend the voice message outside the flow if you need to hear it.
• A voice message is not written out at all: Voice transcription may be unavailable for your workspace at that moment, so the voice message is skipped. Ask the customer to type their question, and try a new test voice message later.

Send a voice reply

Select the microphone beside the inbox reply box to record a voice reply. Recording starts right away and the reply box turns into a recording bar that shows a red dot, the elapsed time, and the sound of your voice as you speak, so you can tell at a glance that you are being picked up.

While recording you can:

• Send with the arrow button to stop and send in one step.
• Pause and then Resume to collect your thoughts mid-message.
• Review to stop recording and listen before you send.
• Discard to throw the recording away and go back to typing.

After Review, the bar shows a play button and the shape of your recording. Select play to listen, drag or select any point on the waveform to skip to it, choose Record again to start over, or Send voice to deliver it. Press Enter to send and Esc to discard without reaching for the mouse.

Voice replies are available for the website Widget, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Email and Slack conversations continue to use text replies.

The recording stops automatically at the voice reply limit set under Settings → Voice replies for that agent. The default is 2 minutes, and the limit can be set from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. The limit applies to every teammate replying for that agent.

Fetchply converts your recording to the format each channel accepts, so the same clip arrives as a normal voice note on WhatsApp and Instagram no matter which browser you recorded it in. Widget recordings are converted to a format every phone and computer can play, including iPhone and Safari. The conversion runs as the reply is sent, so a longer clip can take a few seconds to leave the inbox.

A voice reply is only added to the conversation once the customer's channel has accepted it. If sending fails, the message is marked Not sent with a Retry link and nothing is stored, so retrying never leaves a duplicate recording in the conversation.

Troubleshooting voice replies

• The microphone does not start: The bar shows Microphone unavailable with the reason. Allow microphone access for the Fetchply dashboard in your browser settings, then select Try again, or select Back to typing to send a text reply instead. If the browser does not support recording, use a current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari.
• The recording stops by itself: It reached the agent's voice reply limit. The bar counts down and shows how much time is left in the final seconds. Listen to it and send, or record a shorter message.
• The bar shows no sound while you talk: Your microphone is muted or the wrong input is selected. Select Discard, check the microphone your browser is using, then record again.
• The reply shows Not sent with a Retry link: The channel refused the recording or was briefly unreachable. Select Retry once. If it fails again, record a shorter message, or send the same information as text so the customer is not left waiting.
• A note says the voice reply could not be prepared for WhatsApp or Instagram: Audio conversion was unavailable for that send. Select Retry once, and send the same information as text if it repeats so the customer is not kept waiting.
• The customer says the voice note plays as a file instead of a voice message: The clip still reached them and plays normally; only the voice-note bubble is missing. Nothing needs to be resent.
• WhatsApp will not accept the reply: The customer's 24-hour reply window may have closed, or WhatsApp may be disconnected. Use an approved template when the window is closed; reconnect the account when it is unavailable.
• Instagram or WhatsApp reports that it is disconnected: Reconnect that channel, then record and send the reply again.
• The upload fails: Record again with a shorter message. A voice reply cannot be larger than 10 MB.
• The conversation was closed while you were recording: Sending is refused with a note that the conversation is closed. Reopen it, then send the recording again.
• There is no microphone option for this channel: Voice replies are not available for email or Slack conversations.

Guided flow activity

A guided flow reaches the inbox as ordinary messages, so two short notes appear in the conversation to show what happened:

• Guided flow started: [flow name] appears above the first message of the flow, so you can see the chatbot opened a guided flow instead of answering freely.
• Customer selected "[option]" appears above the customer's message whenever they picked one of the flow's options, so a tap on a button is never mistaken for something they typed.

Both notes are only shown to your team in the inbox. The customer never sees them, and they are not part of the conversation the customer reads.

The notes appear for every channel that supports guided flows, including the website widget, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Answers a customer types themselves during a flow, such as an order number, appear as a normal message with no selection note, because nothing was chosen from a list.

Troubleshooting guided flow notes

• No notes appear in a flow conversation: The conversation may have run before guided flow notes were available, or the messages may not have come from a guided flow. Start a new test conversation and run the flow again to confirm.
• The note shows no flow name: The flow was renamed or removed after the conversation happened. The note still confirms a flow was running, and the messages below it show what the customer saw.
• A selection note appears without a "started" note above it: The flow began earlier than the messages currently loaded in this conversation. Scroll up to load the earlier part of the conversation.

Customer details captured from the conversation

Fetchply reads each visitor message and fills the customer's name, email, and phone in the details panel as soon as the visitor shares them, whatever the channel. If a visitor types something like "my name is Sarah, you can email me at [email protected] or call 202 555 0147", those values appear on the conversation without any manual entry. This works the same for the website widget, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Slack.

When a visitor places an order in the chat, the name, email, and phone they give for that order are added to the customer details too, so the inbox always reflects who ordered.

A detail is only captured when the message or order clearly contains it, so the panel never guesses. Once a value is set, later messages and orders do not overwrite it, and anything you edit by hand always stays. If a visitor gives a correction, update the field in the details panel.

Names and profile photos from messaging channels

Conversations from connected messaging channels also show who is writing without the customer having to introduce themselves:

• WhatsApp conversations show the customer's WhatsApp profile name. WhatsApp does not share profile photos, so those conversations keep the initials avatar.
• Instagram conversations show the sender's Instagram name (or username) and profile photo.
• Messenger conversations show the sender's Facebook name and profile photo once Meta has approved the profile access for the connected app.

The name fills the customer's name field only when it is still empty, so a name you typed by hand is never replaced. Profile photos refresh on their own while the customer keeps messaging; in older conversations the photo can expire, and the avatar simply shows the customer's initials again.

Troubleshooting channel names and photos

• A Messenger conversation shows "Visitor" and no photo: Meta grants profile access per app, and until that approval is in place Messenger conversations show initials only. Names and photos start appearing on new messages once access is granted; no reconnection is needed.
• An Instagram conversation has a name but no photo: Some Instagram accounts do not expose a profile photo. The initials avatar is shown instead.
• The photo disappeared from an old conversation: Channel photos expire after a while. It returns automatically the next time the customer sends a message.
• The customer changed their profile name: The conversation keeps the first captured name so your notes stay consistent. You can edit the name in the details panel at any time.

See where an answer came from

Every chatbot reply in the inbox states its origin in the small row under the message, so you always know exactly where an answer originated:

• Instant Answer means the reply came from an answer your team wrote. Select it to open the entry, which links to your Sources page.
• 1 source or N sources means the reply was grounded in your trained content. Select it to expand the list: each entry is labeled by kind (Website, File, Snippet, Product, Instant Answer, or Media file), and website sources open in a new tab.
• No sources means the chatbot answered from its general instructions without citing trained content. If the reply should have used your content, consider adding an Instant Answer with Fix answer or training more sources.

The same row also holds Fix answer and the message time, aligned under the reply.

Troubleshooting answer sources

• A source link does not open the right page: The page may have been moved or removed from your website since the answer was sent. The label still shows what the chatbot used at the time.
• An older reply shows "No sources": Replies sent before source tracking was available do not carry source details. New replies always include them.
• An Instant Answer source opens a list instead of the exact entry: Select the entry on the Sources page that matches the reply. If it was deleted, the reference remains so you can still see how the answer was produced.

Correct a chatbot answer

Team members who can manage knowledge sources see Fix answer below chatbot replies. Select it to turn the visitor question and chatbot response into an editable Instant Answer. Review the copied text, write the approved answer, and save it for future matching questions.

If an Instant Answer already exists for the question, Fetchply updates it instead of creating a conflicting copy. Saving also enables a matching answer that was previously disabled. The original conversation stays unchanged so the team can still review what the visitor saw.

If saving reports that the answer is not active yet, keep the dialog open and select Save Instant Answer again. Your edits remain in place, and retrying updates the same answer.

See Instant Answers for setup, testing, and troubleshooting.

Open and Resolved

• Open conversations are still being handled by AI or a teammate.
• Resolved conversations keep their full history but no longer accept teammate replies.
• Select Resolve when the visitor's current issue is complete.
• Select Reopen to reopen a conversation and assign it to yourself.

When a visitor sends a new message to a resolved conversation, Fetchply reopens it automatically under AI handling and marks the new message unread. This behavior is the same for the widget and connected WhatsApp, Instagram, and Slack conversations.

Within an open conversation, AI means the chatbot is handling replies, Needs agent means the visitor requested human help, and Assigned or Active means a teammate owns the conversation.

When a teammate is assigned, choose Release conversation from the Assignee menu to return the conversation to AI handling. When no teammate is assigned, the menu shows Unassigned instead.

Permissions

• Team members with conversation viewing access can read the inbox and customer details.
• Team members with conversation reply access can reply, resolve, reopen, delete, and reassign conversations to eligible teammates.
• Fix answer requires knowledge-management access.
• Transcript export permissions are unchanged.

If an assignee loses access, the conversation appears unassigned. Fetchply checks eligibility again when you reassign, so an outdated teammate list cannot grant access.

Troubleshooting

A conversation moved out of the current tab

Resolving or reopening moves a conversation between Open and Resolved. The thread remains visible long enough to confirm the change, while the list refreshes in the background. Select the other tab to find it again.

Messages look out of order

Refresh the conversation first. A reply you just sent stays at the bottom until it is confirmed, so it can briefly sit below a note that was recorded a moment earlier.

In a small number of older conversations from WhatsApp, Instagram, or Slack, a reply may still appear above the customer message it answers. This came from how those two messages were recorded at the time and cannot be corrected in the saved history. New conversations on every channel are recorded in the correct order. Use the timestamp under each message if you need to confirm the sequence in an older thread.

Search has no results

Clear filters and check the spelling of the visitor detail or message text. Search only covers conversations for the selected agent and never searches another workspace.

Customer or shopping details are unavailable

Some channels do not provide location, device, rating, order, or product information. Name, email, and phone are filled automatically only when the visitor states them in a message; until then the field stays empty. Fetchply shows only details captured during the conversation and does not invent store history. Ask the visitor for the missing detail, or add it in the details panel, and continue using the message thread when the panel shows Unavailable.

A captured name, email, or phone looks wrong

Fetchply keeps the first clear value a visitor shares and does not replace it when a later message repeats or corrects it. If a visitor mistyped a detail or a different person took over the chat, open the details panel and edit the field directly; your change is always kept.

The cart is empty, incomplete, or out of date

The cart section reflects the last successful snapshot, not a live checkout guarantee. The visitor may have changed the cart in another tab, blocked website storage, left before sending a message, or opened the conversation on a storefront where cart access is unavailable. Ask the visitor to refresh the store page or make a cart change, then wait for the panel to update. If Fetchply knows the item count but did not receive product details, it keeps the count and total visible and explains that the line details are unavailable.

A browsed page does not appear

Page history starts when the website widget loads and is attached after the visitor begins the conversation. Private browsing settings, blocked website storage, a disconnected widget, or an unavailable network can prevent an update. Fetchply retries temporary synchronization problems, keeps only the latest visit to the same address, and never displays query details or page fragments.

An expected order is missing

Order history matches a customer's past orders by the email or phone number saved on the conversation. Only the five most recent orders load at first, so an older order may simply be further down: select Load older orders until you reach it, or compare the count shown under the list. If an order is still missing, the customer's details may not be captured yet: add their email or phone in the Customer section of the details panel, and the matching orders will appear. Orders placed with a different email or phone will not match. If the list reports that orders could not be loaded, select Load older orders again once your connection is stable.

Conversation history is retained for 90 days unless product or legal requirements change.