Ontraport Inbox makes managing your one-on-one business communications easier, and the Inbox messaging interface allows you to quickly reply to your leads and customers using either email or SMS messaging. You can set up different Inboxes to separate your conversations by topic, department or communication channel. For example, you might send your support queries to your support team and pricing questions to your sales team. You can decide if you want to get notified about new replies.

Check out this video to learn more:



Inbox is available to Plus-level accounts and above and account admins can assign Ontraport Inbox licenses to individual users and pay for access per user. Check out our pricing page to learn more.

Table of contents

Add an Inbox plan
Navigate Inbox
• Navigate your conversations
• Enable notifications
• Access conversations from the contact log
Inbox settings
• Channels
• Inboxes
• Spam blocklist
• Email signature
Start a new conversation
• SMS editor
• Email editor
• From form submissions
• Receive new conversations and replies
• Merge in conversation history
Inbox automations

Add an Inbox plan

Each user that you want to access the Inbox feature needs to have an inbox license. You can choose from different plans and select the users you want to license.

1. Log into your account as the owner.
2.  Go to   → Account. 
3. Locate the plan setting section and click Add plan next to Inbox.
4. Choose your plan, then add the users you’d like to give Inbox access.
5. Click Add plan.
6. Or click Start free trial if you are adding a trial.

Navigate Inbox

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To access your account’s Inbox, click on Inbox from your main navigation bar. You can view your existing conversations and create new ones.

You have three view options for your Inbox:

1. Inbox view - The standard option
2. List view - Use to view your conversations in a table
3. Card view - Use if you want to view and sort your conversations as cards

The rest of this section focuses on the Inbox view. The list and card views function like other objects in your account.



The rest of this section focuses on the Inbox view. The list and card views function like other objects in your account.

Navigate your conversations

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Conversations are the communication threads between your team and your contacts. The Inbox view shows the conversations screen which contains three sections.

Here’s an SMS example:



And here’s an email example:

1. Left panel

This is where you can view a list of your conversations and click on them to open for details.

The top row of the left panel allows you to perform four actions to your conversation list.

1. Choose which types of conversations you want to view.
   • Choose between options such as “All open” or “My unread.”
2. Sort your conversations.
   • Choose between new messages first or conversations in the order they were added.
3. Filter your conversations by Inbox.
4. Search your conversation list.
   • The search will honor the view and filter options you’ve selected.  

2. Central panel 

This section shows the details of a specific conversation when you click on it. From the central panel, you can send a new message. You’ll also see important events in your conversation timeline, such as phone calls and purchases.

The top row of the central panel allows you to perform five actions on the message:

1. Change assignee
2. Mark the message unread
3. Move conversation to another inbox
4. Mark the message as spam
5. Close the conversation

3. Right panel

This section shows you your customer data. You can view conversation details, contact details, notes and subcollections.

You can update these fields and subcollections in the same way you edit the widgets section of the record quick view.

You can also easily hide the right panel if you want more space to write your message. Just click on the button in the top right corner.

Enable notifications

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When notifications are enabled, you’ll see an alert at the bottom of your screen when you receive new messages.

• Toggle the “Notifications” setting at the top of your Inbox to enable notifications.

Access conversations from the contact log

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Conversations create an entry in your contact’s contact log. From the the details of this event, you can click View conversation to go to it in your inbox.

Inbox settings

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The Inbox settings include the same options as most objects, such as a field editor, default merge fields and import/export options.

To reach your Inbox settings, hover over Inbox and click Settings.

However, some settings are specific to Inbox:

• Channels — The channel settings allow you to configure and manage different communication channels. 
• Inboxes — The Inboxes settings allow you to create different inboxes so you can group and organize conversations for your business. 
• Spam blocklist — The spam blocklist collection allows you to manage unwanted communication.
• Email signature — Automatically add an email signature to all inbox emails.

Channels

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Channels are the method of communication. You can select from SMS and email messaging as channel options.

To create an SMS channel, you'll need an SMS plan.  Account owners can add SMS plans from the Account Details page.

To help you organize your messages, you can set up different SMS numbers as separate channels.

Settings will vary slightly depending on whether you’re creating an SMS or email channel.

Create an SMS channel

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1. Go to your Inbox → Settings → Channels.
2. Fill in the following settings:
   • Channel name: Name your channel. 
   • Channel type: Select SMS in the Channel type setting.
   • SMS number: Select your SMS number.
   • Route new conversations to: Choose a default inbox to route your messages to.
3. Click Save in the top right corner.

Create an email channel

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1. Go to your Inbox → Settings → Channels.
2. Fill in the following settings:
   • Channel name: Name your channel.
   • Channel type: Choose Email.
   • To create conversations, forward emails to: This setting is for reference. When emails are forwarded to this address, it will add the message in the same conversation thread in the inbox. 
     • Check out this article to learn how to set up forwarding.
   • Route new conversations to: Choose the inbox that your conversations should be added to.
   • Send email from: Choose the send from address you’d like to use when you sent messages.
     • Choose “Message author” to dynamically populate the sender information. This option pulls the sender details from the user who sent the message.
   • Autorespond to new conversations: To enable an autoresponder toggle this setting on and select the email you want to send.
   • Add signature to all emails: Toggle this option to add an email signature to all of your inbox emails. You must first add an email signature to your account.
3. Click Save in the top right corner. 

Inboxes

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Different teams in your business may use Inbox to facilitate different types of conversations. For example, your support team manages questions and solves issues for your customers, while your sales team’s conversations revolve around answering questions for your leads. You can set up different inboxes for these conversations.

1. Go to your Inbox → Settings → Inboxes.
2. Name your Inbox in the top left corner.
3. Select your default assignee.
   • This setting determines which user in your account will be assigned the conversation.
4. Click Save in the top right corner.

Spam blocklist

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You can add numbers to your spam blocklist to prevent conversations associated with a specific SMS number from appearing in your Inbox views. When you mark a message as spam in your inbox, all conversations that came in from that SMS number or from that contact will be moved to the spam blocklist.

Once a message is added, you can mark it as not spam so you can view the messages in your inbox again.

1. Go to Inbox → Settings →  Spam blocklist.
2. Select the conversation and click Mark as not spam.

Email signature

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Set the email signature that you want to use on emails sent by your inbox.

1. Go to Inbox → Settings → Email signature.
2. Draft your email signature.
   • Use merge fields to change the signature based on which user is related to the conversation.
3. Click Save.

Start a new conversation

You can send a message to any of your contacts by starting a conversation.

1. Go to Inbox and click New.
2. Select a channel and a contact.
   • If your contact has more than one SMS number, choose which number you’d like to send your message.
3. Click Start.
   • If you are sending a message from an email channel, add a subject line and any recipients you’d like to CC.
   • You will go to the new conversation where you can type your message and click  to send it.

SMS editor

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The SMS editor is very basic because SMS messages are predominantly plain text. Simply type your message and click  to add an emoji or click  to add an image.

Email editor

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The inbox email editor uses the Simple mail editor, and gives you all of the same options you see when you create a new email from the messages collection. However you’ll see the options in a slightly different format.

Subject — Add your email subject

CC — CC other recipients to include them in the conversation. You can choose from contacts and users from this dropdown. If your contacts send you a message with CCed recipients or a message sent to multiple recipients, they’ll be added to the CC field automatically.


 — Insert an emoji to the message.

 — Add an image to your message.

 — Attach a file to the message.

 — Insert a canned message.

 — Click to access your formatting options.

You’ll also see that email channels have a “Related Conversations” widget on the right-hand side of the screen. This allows you to jump to other conversations related to the contact quickly. Unlike SMS, email channels allow your contacts to open multiple conversations with you. This allows you to create separate ticking systems for your Support and Sales teams.

From form submissions

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Your leads and customers can start new conversations from forms when you select the “Start a new conversation from this form” option in your forms settings. This is a great option to create a support ticketing system or give your site visitors an easy way to talk with your sales team.

1. Create your form like normal.
2. Go to the form’s advanced settings and check the “Start a new conversation from this form” setting.
3. Choose your channel and save your settings.
4. Publish your page.
   
   

Receive new messages and replies

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When contacts send you a message, and you have notifications enabled, you’ll see an in app notification on the bottom left of your screen. Click View to go to your new message.

Merge in conversation history

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It’s common to send full conversation threads when a support or sales conversation is completed to send to your contact so they can reference the conversation later on. You can provide this for your leads and clients by simply using the Conversation history merge field.

1. Draft your inbox email and click  to add a merge field.
2. Choose “Conversation history” from the dropdown.
3. Save and send your message and the merge field will populate the whole conversation with your contact.
   
   

Inbox automations

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By creating automation maps for your inbox, you can effectively organize and manage your conversations. For instance, you can set up automation maps to alert your rep’s manager when a rep doesn’t respond to a contact within a specific timeframe or to close out conversations after your contact stops replying. This streamlines your workflow and ensures timely responses and efficient conversation closure. You can also automate responses to certain types of incoming messages, such as immediately letting a customer know you’ve received their inquiry and will be with them shortly.

Building inbox automations is just like creating contact automations, but you gain access to new triggers and unique fields that can be used in conditions. These fields help you optimize your inbox management, making it more efficient and tailored to your needs.

The Inbox won't create a conversation for each contact who receives a message through automation maps. It will only create a conversation when a contact responds.

Inbox specific triggers

• Conversation is created
• Conversation message is received
• Conversation message is sent

Inbox specific fields

• Conversation status - Shows if the conversation is open or closed
• Time to first response - The amount of time it took for a team member to respond when a contact starts a conversation
• Time to close - The time between the conversation starting and closing
• Time since last inbound message (In minutes) - The amount of time since the contact last sent you a message
• Time since last outbound message (In minutes) - The amount of time since a member of your team sent a message