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The inbox is where every message from every connected channel arrives in one place. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, TikTok, email and your website widget all land in the same list, and your team answers them from the same screen.

The inbox: folder navigation on the left, the conversation list, and the open conversation.

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The layout

On a desktop screen the inbox has three parts, left to right:
  1. The sidebar — the folders and views that decide which conversations the list shows.
  2. The conversation list — a scrolling list of conversations in the selected folder, newest activity first.
  3. The conversation pane — the open conversation: its thread, its composer, and the panels on the right.
Above the conversation pane sits a strip of tabs. Every conversation you open becomes a chip there — channel badge plus contact name — so you can jump between several without losing your place. Click a chip to bring it forward, click the X on it (or middle-click the chip) to close it. When there are more tabs than fit, chevron buttons appear at either end to scroll the strip. On a phone or a narrow window you see one pane at a time. The conversation list is the page; opening a conversation replaces it full width, and a Conversations link at the top takes you back. The right-hand panels are hidden on small screens — the phone shows the thread and the composer only.

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The sidebar

The Inbox section of the sidebar always starts with the same five rows, in this order: Call Logs is not a folder — clicking it leaves the inbox and opens the call log.
Unrouted appears empty on a brand-new workspace. The folder is created the first time routing runs on a conversation, so until your first message arrives — or if you have no routing rules at all — it shows its empty state rather than a list.
Below those rows come grouped sections, each shown only when it has something in it:
  • System — any other folders Callivox maintains for you.
  • Folders — the folders your workspace has created. The heading carries a + button (Manage folders) that opens the folder settings page.
  • Team inboxes — folders that belong to a team rather than to the workspace at large.
  • Saved views — your own saved combinations of folder, status and search.
See Folders and views for how to create and manage all of these.

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What a conversation row tells you

Each row in the list is designed to be readable at a glance, without opening it.
  • Avatar and channel badge — the contact’s initials, with a small badge in the corner showing which channel they wrote in. Hover the avatar (or tap it on a touch screen) and it becomes a selection checkbox.
  • Contact name — the name the channel gave, or their identifier when there is no name. It turns bold when the conversation has unread messages.
  • Time — the time of the last message: HH:MM if it was today, otherwise a date like Jun 8.
  • Subject or snippet — the second line, in grey.
  • “N past” chip — the contact has written to you before, in conversations that have since been closed. See the conversation lifecycle.
  • Unread count — a coloured pill with the number of unread messages, showing 9+ above nine.
  • Tags — up to two tag chips in their tag colours, plus a +N chip when there are more.
The row you have open is tinted and carries an accent bar down its left edge.
The row deliberately leaves out the assignee and the status — those change often and would make the list noisy. Both are shown in the header of the conversation once you open it.

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Searching and filtering

The bar above the list has three controls. Type in the box marked Search subject or sender. Results update as you type. Search is deliberately not limited to the folder you are standing in. As soon as the box has text, Callivox searches your whole workspace and a banner appears above the list:
Search results for ”…” · all folders
Click Clear search in the banner to drop back to the folder you were in. This means you never have to guess which folder a conversation was filed into to find it.

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Status

The Status filter dropdown narrows the list by where the conversation stands: On the Archive row the filter is fixed to Closed and greyed out, with the explanation “Archive shows closed conversations only”.

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Save current view

The third control is the bookmark button. It saves the folder, status and search you are currently looking at as a named view in the sidebar. See Folders and views. There is no sort control — the list is always ordered by most recent activity, and it loads more conversations as you scroll.

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Unread counts

Unread appears in two places:
  • On the row itself, as the count pill described above, with the contact’s name in bold.
  • On the Inbox item in the sidebar, as a single badge totalling the unread messages across your open conversations. It caps at 99+ and disappears at zero.
Opening a conversation clears its unread count straight away.

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The live indicator

Next to your avatar in the top bar is a coloured dot with a word beside it. It tells you whether the inbox is receiving messages in real time: While it reads Live you do not need to refresh anything — conversations reorder themselves, unread counts move, and typing indicators from teammates show up on their own.

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Acting on several conversations at once

Select a row’s checkbox and a toolbar appears above the list showing N selected, with these actions:
  • Assign… — hand them all to a teammate, or pick Unassign.
  • Move… — file them into a folder.
  • Close — finish them.
  • Reopen — put closed ones back into play.
  • Snooze… — hide them for 1 hour, 4 hours or 24 hours.
  • Clear — drop the selection.
Bulk selection is a desktop feature; on a phone, work one conversation at a time.

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Starting a conversation

The New message button at the top right of the list opens a dialog where you pick a channel and a recipient — either an existing contact or a raw address — and send the first message. On WhatsApp you choose an approved template instead of typing free text. If a conversation with that person is already open, your message lands in it rather than creating a second one.

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When the list is empty

  • No conversations in this folder — nothing matches the current folder and filter.
  • Couldn’t load conversations. with a Retry button — the list failed to load. Retry usually fixes it; if it does not, check the live indicator.

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Next steps

Working with conversations

Reply, assign, close and understand the conversation lifecycle.

Folders and views

Organise the inbox with folders, team inboxes and saved views.

Canned responses

Save the replies you send over and over.

AI in the inbox

What your team sees when an AI agent is involved.