Inbox
Inbox overview
Every conversation from every channel in one shared queue, where your team follows the agent and steps in when a person is needed.
The inbox is where your team works alongside your AI agent. Every customer conversation, from your website widget and all your connected channels, lands in one shared list. The agent answers what it can. When a customer needs a person, the conversation is handed to your team, and the agent stops replying. A teammate reads the conversation, replies from the same screen, and the customer gets the reply in whichever app they wrote from.
Open it from Inbox in the sidebar.
The layout
The inbox has three columns:
- The list on the left. It has search, the views (Mine, Queue, All, Closed) and filters. See Views and filters.
- The conversation in the middle, with the full message history and the reply box.
- Details on the right, with the customer's contact details, the linked lead, conversation facts and internal notes. See Notes and assignment.
On a small screen, the open conversation takes the whole screen. Use Back to list to return.
Who has each conversation
Every conversation has a status badge, so you can see at a glance who's handling it:
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| AI handling | Your agent is answering this customer. |
| In queue | The agent handed it to the team and nobody has taken it yet. The customer is waiting for a person. |
| Assigned | A teammate is handling it. The badge shows With you or the teammate's name. The agent won't reply. |
| Closed | The conversation is finished. |
A conversation moves to the queue when the agent decides a person is needed (with the Escalate to Human action), when your AI replies run out, or when the agent can't reply. When that happens, OrbitBase emails a link to the conversation. If someone is assigned, only they get the email. If not, your team does.
The agent can also finish conversations itself. With the Wrap up conversation action on, it closes a conversation once the customer says they're done.
Live updates
The inbox updates by itself. New conversations, new messages and changes your teammates make appear as they happen, without reloading.
Next to the title, Live means the inbox is listening for new messages. If it shows Not live, the connection has dropped. Reload the page to see the latest.
You can also see who else is working:
- "Sam has this open" appears on a conversation a teammate is viewing.
- "Sam is replying" appears when a teammate is typing a reply. In the conversation, you'll see a warning to check before you send, so two people don't answer the same customer.
Unread conversations
A conversation is unread when it has customer messages that nobody on your team has opened yet. Unread conversations appear in bold with a count. The total shows next to the inbox title, for example "3 unread".
- Unread is shared across the team. When anyone opens a conversation, it's marked read for everyone. This answers "has the team seen this?"
- The agent's replies don't mark anything read. A conversation the agent answered on its own stays unread until a person looks at it.
- Closed conversations never show as unread.
- You can change it yourself. Right-click a conversation and choose Mark as read or Mark as unread. To do this for several at once, select them and use Actions.
Playground sessions
Conversations you have with your agent in the Playground are saved to the inbox too, with a Playground badge. They're useful for reviewing how your agent answered during testing.
To see only playground sessions, open the Channel filter and choose Playground. Playground sessions are read-only. There's no customer to reply to, so they have no reply box, and you can't take them over, assign them or close them.
Pick up where you left off
When no conversation is open, the inbox shows Pick up where you left off, with the conversations you opened most recently on this device. A conversation where you left a reply unsent is marked Unsent reply. In the list, it shows Draft.