Inboxes and channels
How mailboxes group conversations by channel and carry the routing, SLA, and workflow defaults for everything that lands in them.
The inbox is where customer conversations arrive, get triaged, and get resolved. Behind it, an inbox (a mailbox) groups conversations for one channel or address and carries the defaults every conversation inherits when it lands there.
Channels
Every conversation has a channel that records where it came from:
| Channel | Source |
|---|---|
| A support email address you connected. | |
| CHAT | The embeddable chat widget on your site. |
| MANUAL | A conversation an agent created by hand. |
| API | A conversation created through the platform, for example by a chat flow. |
What an inbox carries
An inbox is more than a folder. Each one holds the defaults applied to new conversations that arrive in it:
- Channel (email or chat) and, for email, the support address it receives at.
- A default workflow for teams that use a custom status pipeline.
- A default SLA policy applied to new conversations unless a routing rule overrides it.
- A color and a name so the inbox is easy to find.
Every workspace has a default inbox, and you can create more to separate, say, Sales from Support or to give each product line its own mailbox.
Routing rules
New conversations can be triaged automatically by routing rules. Each rule is a set of conditions and actions, evaluated in order. When a conversation matches a rule's conditions, the rule's actions run: assign it to a team or an individual, set its priority, apply an SLA policy, or add tags. Rules can be scoped to one inbox or apply across the whole workspace, and each one can be turned on or off without deleting it.
The conversation list
The list is filterable and sortable. You can filter by state, assignee, team, tag, priority, and SLA status, and save a filter as a view (see Saved views under Office hours and SLA). Unread badges and last-message timestamps keep the busiest conversations visible.