Folders, rules and the blacklist

Three Settings pages decide where a conversation lands and who deals with it: Folders creates the places, Rules sorts conversations into them, and Blacklist stops the AI answering senders you do not want it to. Folders and Rules are Admin only. The Blacklist is available to everyone.

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Folders

Go to Settings → Folders. The page has a folder list on the left and the selected folder’s settings on the right. A folder is a place in the inbox where conversations sit. Agents work through folders rather than one undifferentiated pile, and folder membership is how you decide who can see which conversations. A folder can also carry its own AI behaviour — you can bind a specific agent to it so that agent takes over automatically for anything filed there (see Bindings). That is part of why getting a conversation into the right folder matters: it is not just organisation, it decides who — or which agent — answers next.

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System and personal folders

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Creating a folder

Click + New above the list. Give it a Name (for example Support), pick a Color from the six swatches, and pick an Icon — folder, inbox, message square, mail, star or tag. Click Create. The name, colour and icon can be changed at any time from the detail pane; click Save when you are done.

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Ordering

Drag folders by their grip handle to reorder them; the footer reads “Drag to reorder · system folders are pinned”. The order you set is the order agents see in the inbox. System folders cannot be dragged.

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Who can see a folder

The Members section on the right controls access. Click + Add member, search for the person, and choose their access: Remove someone with the ✕ on their row. You can also grant folder access when you create a user — see Workspace and users.

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Deleting a folder

Click Delete folder in the detail pane. The confirmation reads Delete '{name}'? Conversations in this folder will move to Unrouted. Nothing is lost — the conversations move rather than disappear.

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Routing rules

Go to Settings → Rules. The page is headed Routing rules. A rule watches for a conversation or message that matches your conditions, then performs actions on it — most often moving it into the right folder. Without any rules, everything stays in Unrouted; the empty state says exactly that: “No rules yet. New conversations land in Unrouted until a rule routes them.”

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Creating a rule

Click + New rule, give it a name (for example Route WhatsApp inquiries), and click Create rule. The new rule opens in the editor and starts disabled, so you can build it safely before turning it on.

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What a rule is made of

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Routing on AI-assigned tags

Callivox’s classifier reads every conversation and tags it by topic on its own — see Dashboards and tags. A rule can route on that tag: set the trigger to InboundMessage, add a Conversation tag (AI-assigned) condition, and pick the tag from the dropdown. The classifier assigns its first tags after the customer’s second message, and tag rules run right after tagging — so a tag rule fires a little later than one that matches on the sender or the first message. Rules are not the only way a conversation can be filed automatically — an AI agent can carry its own filing rules, natural-language conditions like “customer is asking about branch JLT” → JLT, with the same “never override a person or an earlier decision” guarantee. Filing rules are a judgment call rather than a pattern match, so keep exact, deterministic routing — a specific sender, a specific channel, an AI-assigned tag — here instead. See Behavior and handoff.

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Ordering matters

Rules are evaluated in priority order, and the lowest number goes first. Drag rules up and down the list to renumber them. Because every matching rule runs unless one stops the chain, order decides the outcome when two rules both match. Put your most specific rules at the top, and finish a rule with Stop processing further rules when nothing after it should apply.

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Testing before you turn a rule on

The editor has a Dry run panel. Fill in a sample conversation — Sender phone, Country, Channel, whether the Contact is known, a First message, and a comma-separated Tags list to try out a tag condition — then click Run dry-run. You get either ”✓ Would match.” with the list of actions that would fire, or ”✗ Would not match.” with the reason. It tests what is on screen, including edits you have not saved yet, so it is the safe way to check a rule before enabling it.

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Deleting a rule

Use the ⋮ menu on the rule’s row and choose Delete. If you only want to pause a rule, turn its switch off instead — the rule and its settings stay put.

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Blacklist

Go to Settings → Blacklist. Every user can open this page, not only Admins. The card is titled Blacklisted senders and states what blocking does:

AI replies are suppressed for these senders. Messages are still received and visible in the inbox.

That is the whole behaviour, and it is worth being clear about:

• What it stops: the AI answering that sender. No automatic reply goes out.
• What it does not stop: the messages themselves. They still arrive, still appear in the inbox, and a human can still read and reply to them.

Use it for spam, for a contact who must only ever hear from a person, or for a number that has got into an unproductive back-and-forth with an agent.

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Blocking a sender

Click Add entry. The dialog reads “AI replies will be suppressed for this sender. Messages will still appear in the inbox.” Click Add to blacklist. Phone numbers are tidied up for you, so you can paste a number in any format and it is stored consistently. Usernames on Instagram, Telegram and TikTok are stored as typed and are case-sensitive.

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Finding and removing entries

Search by identifier or label, or filter by channel. To unblock someone, click Remove on their row — the AI can answer them again from the next message.

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Next steps