What Are Team Inboxes In Engage
Team Inboxes in Engage are shared inboxes that collect specific conversations, so the right team members can see, reply to and close them.
Who Can Do This?
Plan: Team Inboxes are part of the Premium and above plans.
Create a Team Inbox and manage access: Space owners and admins.
Work in a Team Inbox: The users and user groups added as collaborators, with Can reply or Can view permission.
Team Inbox limits: You can create up to 500 Team Inboxes per organization.
What Is A Team Inbox?
A Team Inbox is a dedicated inbox for one type of conversation. It keeps related conversations in one place, so your team always knows where a conversation should go and who is responsible for replying.
For example, you can set up a Support Escalations Inbox and move escalations from all your social profiles into it. Or you can set up a rule that routes price-related questions to a Pricing Inbox.
You can move conversations into a Team Inbox manually or automatically with rules. Team Inboxes help you with:
Triaging: Sort conversations by type and urgency, and route them to the right inbox manually or automatically using rules.
Granular access: Set up shared inboxes for teams or private inboxes for individual members.
Notifications: Get alerts for all open conversations in your inbox, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Analytics: Track the volume of incoming conversations and how your team handles them.
Accountability: Each team or member knows which conversations they own, and you can follow the team's progress.
How Is A Team Inbox Different From An Engage View?
Create a Team Inbox when specific team members need a shared space to manage and collaborate on the same set of conversations. For example, customer support queries, messages for one client, or conversations shared across departments.
Create an Engage View when you only want to filter conversations. A view shows the conversations that matter to you right now, for example the conversations that contain specific keywords.
Use Case: An Escalation Inbox
As your support team grows, agents start to specialize. Some handle basic questions and others handle complex technical issues, so frontline agents need a reliable way to escalate.
Create an empty Tier 2 Support inbox managed by senior agents. Empty means no rule sends conversations to it, so new conversations first arrive in your main Support inbox. When a frontline agent needs help, they manually move the conversation into Tier 2 Support, and a senior agent replies to the customer.
Who Can See Conversations In A Team Inbox?
Team members with access to a Team Inbox can take every action on its conversations, just like a user with full access, but only inside that Team Inbox. Whether they can reply depends on their Can reply or Can view permission.
Access to a Team Inbox covers all conversations in it, regardless of a member's access to the social profiles. Even without access to a social profile in Statusbrew, a member can manage that profile's conversations if they are in a Team Inbox the member can access.
This way, you can share social media conversations with your team without giving them full access to a social profile.
How To Create A Team Inbox?
Go to Engage.
From the sidebar, click Create Team Inbox in front of the default Team Inboxes folder. You can also click Create options → Team Inbox in the top right corner of the sidebar.
Add a Name. You can also customize the icon.
Select the Folder to create the Team Inbox in.
Click Add collaborator and select the users or user groups to share the inbox with. Set each one's permission:
Can reply: Can view conversations and reply to them in the inbox.
Can view: Can only view conversations, and cannot reply or react to them.
Click Save.
The Team Inbox opens in Engage.
To create a Team Inbox inside a custom folder, click More (three dots) beside the folder and select Team inbox. The Create Team Inbox dialog opens with that folder already filled in.
How To Move A Conversation To A Team Inbox?
You can move conversations manually, one by one or in bulk, or set up rules to route them to a Team Inbox automatically.
Go to Engage.
Open the conversation you want to move.
In the conversation details panel, select Add to inbox, or press i on your keyboard.
Select the Team Inbox.
The conversation moves to that Team Inbox. The inbox's conversation count in the sidebar goes up, and the inbox name appears in the conversation details panel.
To move the conversation to a different Team Inbox, click the inbox name in the conversation details panel. The Add to inbox dialog opens with the current inbox highlighted. Select the new inbox.
To remove a conversation from its Team Inbox, hover over the inbox name and click (Remove).
How To Move Conversations In Bulk To A Team Inbox?
Go to Engage.
In the sidebar, select the view that holds the conversations you want to move.
Hover over a conversation in the list and select the checkbox beside it.
To select all conversations, click the Select all conversations checkbox above the list, or the Select all conversations button in the center of the screen.
In the center of the screen, select Add to inbox, or press i, and select the Team Inbox.
If some of the selected conversations are already in a different Team Inbox, they are removed from it and moved to the new one.
How To Automatically Move Conversations To A Team Inbox?
The Rule Engine automates actions on incoming social conversations. Create a rule to move every conversation that matches your criteria into a Team Inbox.
Here's how to create a rule that moves flagged Instagram and Facebook comments into a Flagged Comments Team Inbox:
Go to Rule Engine and click Add new rule.
Name the rule, for example "Move Flagged Comments to Inbox".
Select the relevant Data sources.
Define a Trigger type, for example Message received.
Select keyword matching and add all relevant keywords.
Add Filters:
Add condition → Instagram Comment
Add condition → Facebook Comment
Under Actions, click Add a new action → CONVERSATION ACTIONS → Move to Team Inbox. In the Move to Team Inbox select, choose Flagged Comments. The checkbox "Don't apply this action if the message is already in a Team Inbox." is checked by default. Click Add.
Click Submit to save and activate the rule.
If the Team Inbox doesn't exist yet, type its name in the Move to Team Inbox select and click + <the name you typed>. This creates a Team Inbox with that name right from the rule.
How To Manage Team Inboxes?
Rearrange inboxes: Drag and drop Team Inboxes to reorder them within a folder or move them across folders.
Edit or delete inboxes: You can edit or delete any Team Inbox. Deleted inboxes cannot be recovered.
How To Edit A Team Inbox?
In the sidebar, hover over the inbox and click More (three dots).
Select Edit. The Edit dialog opens with the inbox name in its title (for example, Edit Pricing).
Change the Name (and its icon) or the Folder.
Under Collaborators, pick a user or user group in Users and set Permission to Can reply or Can view. Click Add collaborator to add another, or click beside a collaborator to remove their access.
Click Save.
How To Delete A Team Inbox?
In the sidebar, hover over the inbox and click More (three dots).
Select Delete.
Confirm that you want to delete the inbox.
How To Show A Team Inbox In A Project?
You can bring a Team Inbox into a project as its own section, so clients and stakeholders who work in the project can follow the conversations behind it. Project viewers can read the conversations without Engage access.
Go to Publish and open the project.
Click Section in the section bar and select Team Inbox. The Create section dialog opens.
Enter a Section name, then pick the inbox under Team Inbox. The list shows only the Team Inboxes you have access to in Engage.
Click Save.
Viewers can reply only if they can already reply to that inbox in Engage; everyone else reads the threads. Learn more about the Team Inbox section and the other section types, such as Report, Updates and Assets, in Projects.
FAQs
If I Delete A Team Inbox, What Will Happen To Its Conversations?
The Team Inbox is deleted, but its conversations stay on the platform. A deleted Team Inbox cannot be recovered.
Can A Conversation Be In More Than One Team Inbox?
No. A conversation belongs to only one Team Inbox at a time. Moving it to another Team Inbox removes it from the current one.
Can Team Members Reply In A Team Inbox Without Access To The Social Profile?
Yes. Access to a Team Inbox covers all its conversations, even for profiles the member can't otherwise access in Statusbrew. Their Can reply or Can view permission on the inbox decides whether they can reply.
Can I Create A Separate Inbox For Specific Contacts?
Yes. Use contact tags with a Team Inbox:
Create a tag and make it available for "contact".
Add that tag to the contacts you want to track. This is a one-time manual step for each contact.
Create an Engage rule with that contact tag as the condition, and move the conversations to a Team Inbox in the rule action.
From then on, conversations from those contacts move to that Team Inbox automatically.
You cannot build an Engage view from contact tags. The Tags filter in an Engage view only filters conversation and message tags, not contact tags, so use a Team Inbox for this.
Can I Create A New Team Inbox From A Rule?
Yes. When you add the Move to Team Inbox action in the Rule Engine, type a name that doesn't match any existing Team Inbox and click + <the name you typed>. Statusbrew creates a Team Inbox with that name and uses it in the rule.
What Happened To The "Move To Engage Inboxes" Rule Action?
It was renamed. The rule action is now called Move to Team Inbox. Find it under Add a new action → CONVERSATION ACTIONS in the Rule Engine.
Can I Use A Team Inbox As A Rule Condition?
Yes. In the Rule Engine, click Add condition → Conversation and select Team Inbox to filter by the inbox a conversation is in.
How Can I Show Clients Or Guest Users The Conversations We Receive?
Put those conversations in a Team Inbox (by hand, or automatically with a rule), then add that inbox to a project as a Team Inbox section and share the project link with your client. They can switch between Open, Close and Snoozed, sort the list and read each thread, without a Statusbrew account or Engage access. They can't reply, add notes or take any action. To stop showing the conversations, uncheck the section under Sections in Edit shared link.
How Many Team Inboxes Can I Create?
You can create up to 500 Team Inboxes per organization. When you reach the maximum, you'll see a message asking you to contact support. Anything you already have above a limit is kept, but you can't add more until you are under it.