Using the unified inbox

The Wassla inbox brings every customer conversation from WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, the web widget, SMS, and voice into one threaded view. From a single screen you can filter by status or queue, search by name or handle, open a conversation, reply as yourself or hand control back to the AI, attach files, leave internal notes for your team, and resolve threads when they close out.

What the inbox shows

The inbox is split into two panes on desktop and a stacked view on mobile. The left pane is the thread sidebar — a chronological list of active and recent conversations, grouped under Today, Yesterday, Earlier, and Older. The right pane is the active conversation, with the customer header at the top, the message thread in the middle, and the composer at the bottom.

Each row in the sidebar shows the customer's avatar, their display name, the channel badge in its brand color (WhatsApp green, Instagram pink, Facebook blue, Web in royal violet, Voice and Phone in the voice tone), the time of the last message, and a one-line preview. The preview is prefixed with "You:" for replies a teammate sent, "AI:" for replies the agent sent, or the customer's own words for inbound messages, so you can tell at a glance who spoke last. A green "Human" pill appears on any row where a teammate has taken over from the AI.

Filtering the inbox

The sidebar header has three controls stacked together: a search field, a status toggle, and a queue toggle. All three combine, so filters narrow the list rather than replace each other.

The search field at the top of the sidebar matches against the customer's display name, phone number or handle, and the last-message preview. Type any fragment and the list narrows as you type. The search is case-insensitive and works across channels.

Status: Open or Closed

Directly below the search field, the Open / Closed toggle switches between active conversations and ones your team has resolved. Open is the default. Closed conversations are kept indefinitely and remain fully searchable — they never disappear.

Queue: All, AI, Human, or Playground

Below the status toggle, the queue chips scope the list by who is currently handling the thread:

  • All — every active conversation regardless of who is on the keyboard
  • AI — conversations the AI agent is still responding to on its own
  • Human — conversations a teammate has explicitly taken over
  • Playground — test conversations from the agent Playground, kept out of the default operator view so live customer threads aren't drowned out

Playground threads are deliberately filtered out of All, AI, and Human so test traffic does not pollute your operator queue. Pick the Playground chip when you want to audit test runs.

Filtering by channel or agent

The sidebar does not yet have dedicated channel or agent filter chips. To scope to a single channel, search for a fragment that only appears on that channel (a phone prefix for WhatsApp, an @ for Instagram). To audit one agent's conversations across time, use the History page — it supports per-agent filtering across resolved threads.

Opening a conversation

Click any row in the sidebar to load it in the right pane. The conversation header shows the customer's avatar, their display name, the channel badge with the channel label, and the customer's handle (a phone number for WhatsApp or SMS, a username for Instagram or Facebook). Click the header itself to open a side panel with the customer's full profile, the agent handling the thread, any linked tickets, and — for voice calls — the call recording.

Messages render as chat bubbles down the pane, grouped by day with sticky Today / Yesterday / weekday separators. Customer messages sit on the inbound side in neutral grey. AI replies sit on the outbound side in royal violet with the agent's avatar and name above them. Replies a teammate sent appear on the outbound side in a green-tinted bubble with a headset icon and the sender's name, so the thread reads clearly at a glance. Internal notes appear centered with a dashed amber border. Voice calls collapse into a single recording card that you can expand to see the inline transcript.

Replying to a customer

Replying takes a single click and a keystroke.

Take over from the AI

The conversation header has an AI Active / Human Active toggle on the right. Click it once to take over — the badge flips to green "Human Active" and the AI stops responding to that thread until you hand control back. Click it again to release the conversation; the AI picks up at the next inbound turn with the full transcript as context.

You can also reply without explicitly taking over. If the badge is still on AI Active and you type a one-off message, Wassla sends your reply and immediately releases control back to the AI for the next customer turn. This matches how Intercom and Help Scout work — a single nudge does not silently lock the thread. Use the explicit toggle when you intend to own the conversation end to end.

Type and send

The composer at the bottom is a single textarea. Type your reply and press Enter to send (Shift+Enter inserts a newline). The message appears in the thread immediately with a clock "sending" indicator, then flips to a double check once delivered. If the send fails, the bubble shows a red alert and your text is restored to the composer so you can retry without retyping.

Attach files

Click the paperclip icon to the left of the textarea, or drag files anywhere into the composer area. Images, PDFs, audio, video, plain text, CSV, Word, and Excel files are accepted. Each upload shows as a chip with a spinner while it transfers, and failed uploads show a retry icon you can click to re-upload without re-picking the file. You can send multiple attachments in one message.

Dictate

Click the microphone icon to dictate your reply using the browser's built-in speech recognition (Chrome and Safari). Speak naturally and the text appears in the composer as you talk. Click the microphone again to stop.

WhatsApp 24-hour window

For WhatsApp threads, Meta only delivers free-form replies within 24 hours of the customer's last inbound message. Wassla shows a quiet heads-up in the conversation when the window has three hours or less remaining, and a full amber banner once it closes. Once closed, the composer disables the send button for free-form replies — you can still send an approved template or add an internal note. The window reopens the moment the customer messages again. See Hand off conversations to human agents for more on managing live conversations.

Adding an internal note

Start your message with a backslash (\) to flag it as an internal note. The composer turns amber and an "Internal note" hint appears above the textarea so you can see at a glance that the message will not be sent. Notes are saved to the conversation history and visible to anyone on your team who opens the thread, but they are never delivered to the customer. They are the standard way to brief a teammate during a handoff, leave a reminder for the next shift, or capture a decision in context. Notes work even when the WhatsApp 24-hour window is closed.

Tagging conversations

Per-conversation tagging is coming soon — the inbox data model is tag-aware but the in-thread tag picker is not yet shipped. In the meantime, use internal notes with hashtag conventions your team agrees on (for example \#refund-request or \#vip) so you can find recurring categories through the sidebar search until the dedicated tagging UI lands.

Marking a conversation as resolved

When the conversation is finished, switch the sidebar Status toggle from Open to view your active queue, then open the conversation header menu to close the thread. The thread moves out of the Open queue and into Closed, where it remains fully searchable and replayable. Any new inbound message from the same customer reopens the thread automatically with all prior context preserved — the AI sees the entire history, so customers never have to repeat themselves.

If you need to revisit a closed thread later, switch the sidebar Status toggle to Closed and search or scroll to find it. Closed conversations are also available on the History page with channel and outcome filters, which is the easier surface for reporting and weekly review.

If you find yourself escalating the same kinds of conversations repeatedly, the next step is to set up automatic handoff rules so the AI knows when to bring a teammate in without waiting for someone to take over manually. If a channel stops delivering messages into your inbox, the troubleshooting guide walks through the most common causes channel by channel.