Universal Live Inbox

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What is the Universal Inbox?

The Universal Inbox is a single workspace-level pane that surfaces every customer conversation across all your connected channels — Messenger DMs, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp Business messages, and Live Chat sessions — alongside the AI conversations your assistant is already handling. From the inbox you can:

• See every conversation your AI is handling, with the ones that need a human flagged
• Claim a conversation so your teammates know you’re handling it
• Pause AI on a specific conversation and reply manually
• Let the AI explicitly hand off to a human when it judges the situation needs one
• Send internal notes that your team can see but the customer cannot

The inbox is available on every plan — including Free. Usage is bounded by your plan’s monthly credit allowance (Free includes 50), not by a feature gate. Note that the messaging channels the inbox surfaces (Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Shopify, WooCommerce) are a Pro/Enterprise feature; on Free the inbox mainly handles your website widget’s AI conversations and live-chat handoffs.

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Getting started

1. Make sure at least one channel is connected (Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Live Chat).
2. Open Inbox in the workspace sidebar.
3. Click any conversation to open it. Use Claim to mark it as yours before replying.

The list updates in real time — conversations appear, escalate, and change state the moment it happens, with no refresh or polling delay. The open conversation likewise updates live as new messages arrive.

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Filtering the list

By default the inbox shows only human-relevant conversations — anything that needs a person, is assigned to someone, or has been taken over. The AI-only conversations your assistant is quietly handling on its own are hidden so the list stays focused on what needs you.

• Turn on Include AI-handled in the Filters popover to reveal those AI-only conversations too.
• Per-channel volume rules — how much low-traffic widget chatter to surface — live in Workspace settings → Inbox, not in the inbox’s own filters.

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Claim and reply

To prevent two agents from replying to the same customer at the same time, conversations have a lightweight “claim” model:

• Any workspace member can view any conversation.
• The composer is disabled until you claim the conversation.
• Once you’ve claimed it, your name appears as the assignee and other agents see a read-only view with a “Claim instead” button.
• An admin (or you yourself) can release the claim with Unclaim, or transfer it to a different teammate.
• In the composer, Enter sends and Shift+Enter adds a new line.

When you Take over AI, the conversation is automatically claimed for you if it wasn’t already.

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Setting up Live Chat

Live Chat is the human-handoff layer of this inbox — there’s no separate dashboard to run.

1. Enable it. Turn on Live Chat in your assistant’s Live Chat settings, where you also set business hours (with timezone) and queue limits.
2. Set your availability. Use the Available / Away toggle in the inbox header. Visitors auto-route only to agents who are Available; outside business hours or when no agent is available, escalations queue (or fall back per your settings).
3. Work the queue in the inbox. Escalated visitors appear as Live Chat conversations here — see Live chat queue below.

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Live chat queue

When a website-widget visitor asks to talk to a human, the AI hands them off and a Live Chat conversation appears in the inbox:

• The list header shows your availability (Available / Away) and the current Queue count.
• Click Take next to claim the longest-waiting queued visitor, or open any queued Live Chat row and Claim it.
• The conversation shows the full history — the visitor’s earlier AI chat and the live messages — in one thread.
• Click End session to close the live chat when you’re done; the visitor’s widget returns to AI mode.

Escalated widget conversations always show up as their Live Chat row — you reply to the visitor from there.

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AI control

The inbox has two independent layers of AI control:

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Channel default

In each channel’s settings (Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp), the “AI replies to <Channel> messages” toggle controls whether the AI is on by default for that channel.

• On (default): the AI handles new conversations automatically.
• Off: conversations still land in the inbox but the AI does not reply. Your team handles them manually.

This is the right setting if you want the all-in-one inbox but you’d rather your team handle a specific social channel personally.

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Per-conversation pause

Inside any conversation you can Pause AI to switch that specific conversation to human-only mode. Resume AI flips it back. By default, paused conversations auto-resume after 60 minutes — adjustable in the takeover request. The effective AI state for any conversation is channel default AND per-conversation override: if either layer says off, the AI is off.

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Draft mode (AI drafts, human sends)

Some teams want the assistant’s help without ever letting it reply on its own. Draft mode does exactly that: the assistant still writes a reply for every incoming message, but instead of sending it, the reply is held as a draft in the inbox for a teammate to review, edit, and send. Turn it on per channel under Workspace settings → Inbox, using the AI drafts, human sends toggle. It’s available for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. When draft mode is on for a channel:

• Every inbound message still gets an AI-written reply, but nothing is sent to the customer automatically.
• The conversation is flagged Needs attention so it surfaces in the inbox.
• Open the conversation and the AI’s draft is pre-filled in the composer — edit it or replace it, then send. The draft is never shown to the customer as a sent message.
• Only the most recent draft is offered; once you send a reply (or a newer customer message arrives), the stale draft is dropped and the assistant drafts fresh on the next message.

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AI-initiated handoff

Your AI assistant can decide on its own to hand a conversation off to a human. It uses a built-in request_human_handoff tool whenever the user:

• Asks for human help directly
• Expresses frustration the AI cannot resolve
• Requests something requiring human judgment (refunds, account changes, complex complaints)

When the AI hands off, the conversation:

• Flips to human mode
• Appears in your Needs attention filter
• Triggers an escalation email to the assigned agent (or all admins if unassigned)

You’ll get one email per escalated conversation per recipient — no duplicates if the AI hands off the same conversation twice.

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Handoff context

Every AI handoff arrives with context, so the agent picking it up doesn’t have to reconstruct the whole conversation. When you open an escalated conversation you get:

• An escalation category — a structured reason shown as a labeled badge on the escalation strip at the top of the conversation. It’s one of five:

  Category	Label
  Customer request	Customer asked for a human
  Low confidence	AI wasn’t confident
  Sensitive topic	Sensitive topic
  Frustration	Customer frustrated
  Other	AI requested a human

• An AI handoff summary — a 2–4 sentence recap of the customer’s issue, what the AI already tried, and what the customer is waiting for. It appears as an amber “AI handoff summary” note pinned at the handoff point in the thread, and is repeated on the escalation strip.
• The full AI transcript — the complete pre-handoff conversation is right there in the thread, so you can read exactly what the customer said to the AI before you step in.

Widget escalations to Live Chat are categorized “Customer asked for a human” automatically, since the visitor explicitly asked to talk to a person.

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Manual takeovers

When you (rather than the AI) pause AI and step in yourself, the escalation strip shows “Taken over manually” — along with your custom reason if you entered one in the takeover request — instead of an AI category. A manual takeover is never labeled as an AI escalation.

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Internal notes

The Add internal note button below the composer flips it into note mode (yellow tint). Notes are saved to the conversation timeline and visible to your whole team, but never delivered to the customer. Use them for handoff context, follow-up reminders, or supervisor whispers. Any workspace member can leave a note — claiming the conversation is not required.

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Notifications

Three places surface unread / needs-attention counts:

• The Inbox entry in the workspace sidebar shows a red badge when conversations need attention.
• The browser tab title prepends the count (e.g., (3) IllumiChat).
• The inbox list header has three tiles you can click to filter: Total / Needs attention / Assigned to me.

Email reminders fire when a conversation has been flagged “needs attention” for over 15 minutes without a human reply. You’ll get at most one reminder per conversation per hour.

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Channel-specific notes

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FAQ

How do I add an agent? Any active member of the workspace can use the inbox. The member, admin, and owner roles all have access; only guest is excluded. How do I see this customer’s conversations across all channels? Open the right-side contact panel (visible on desktop). The “Other conversations” section lists every channel session linked to the same contact record. Why is AI replying when I’ve paused? Two possibilities: (1) the per-conversation pause auto-resumed after the configured timeout — flip it again or extend the timeout. (2) Someone else resumed it manually — check the conversation’s activity log. I want AI off on Instagram but on for Messenger. Open each channel’s settings and toggle “AI replies to <Channel> messages” independently. The channel default applies only to that channel. Can I disable the email notifications? Yes — turn off email notifications in your user profile settings. You’ll still see the in-app badges.