Every message your business receives lands in one list. It is not a feed to scroll — it is a queue you narrow until only your work is left.
The four states a conversation can be in
A conversation always has exactly one status. Changing it is how your team signals what happens next.
| Status | What it means | What reopens it |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Somebody still has to deal with this | — |
| Pending | A bot is handling it, or it is parked for one | A human reply, or the bot handing it over |
| Snoozed | Deliberately out of the way until a moment you chose | The time you set, or the customer writing again |
| Resolved | Finished | The customer writing again |
Resolved is not closed. When a customer replies to a resolved conversation it comes back as open and rejoins the queue. On a channel with a bot attached it comes back as pending instead, so the bot gets first look.
Snooze has two shapes. "Until tomorrow", "until next week" and a date you pick all set a time, and the conversation reopens on its own then. "Until next reply" sets no time at all — nothing but a new message from the customer brings it back. If the customer never writes, it stays snoozed indefinitely.
Narrowing the list
Three controls stack on top of each other, and they are independent:
- Mine / Unassigned / All — who the conversation is assigned to.
- Status — open, pending, snoozed, resolved, or all of them.
- Sort — last activity, created date, priority, longest waiting, or unread count.
The sidebar adds views that are not filters you build:
| View | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Mentions | conversations where somebody wrote your name in a private note |
| Participating | conversations you have taken part in, even if you are not the assignee |
| Unattended | conversations nobody has ever replied to, plus conversations with a customer message still unanswered |
| Teams, channels, labels | everything belonging to one team, one of your channels, or one label |
A private note does not count as answering. A conversation you have only made notes on stays in Unattended.
Folders: a filter you saved
When a set of filters is one you will reuse — "open, urgent, WhatsApp, unassigned" — save it as a folder. It appears in the sidebar under Folders with its own unread count.
A conversation folder is yours alone. There is no way to share one, and nobody else will see it. If a whole team needs the same queue, give them a team or a label, because those are account-wide. (Contact audiences can be shared; conversation folders cannot. See shared audiences.)
Private notes
Switch the composer to Private Note and what you write is stored on the conversation and shown only to colleagues. It is never delivered to the customer, on any channel.
Use it for the handover sentence the next person needs: what you tried, what the customer actually wants, what you promised. Every agent who can open the conversation can read every note on it, so write accordingly.
Two things are switched off inside a note: canned responses and message variables. Both exist to compose a message to a customer, and a note is not one.
Mentioning a colleague
Type @ inside a private note and pick a person or a team. They get a notification, the conversation appears in
their Mentions view, and they become participants so they keep getting updates. Mentioning a team notifies
every member.
A mention only works inside a private note. Typing @name in a normal reply sends the text to the customer
and notifies nobody.
You can only mention a member of that channel, or an administrator. A name outside that list is ignored silently — so if a colleague never answered, check they are on the channel.
A worked example
A customer asks about a delayed order on Thursday. You cannot answer until the warehouse replies on Sunday.
- Add a private note: "Chased warehouse re order 10482, waiting on them."
- Mention the person who owns warehouse questions, so it reaches them.
- Snooze the conversation until next week.
On Monday it is back in the open queue with the note explaining itself. If the customer writes before then it reopens immediately.
Who can do this
Any agent can read, reply, note, mention and change the status of any conversation on a channel they belong to, or assigned to one of their teams. An administrator sees everything. A custom role can narrow this to unassigned conversations only, or to conversations the person is participating in — see roles and permissions.
Limits
- Selecting conversations in bulk covers only the page in front of you. Scroll and the earlier selection is not extended. Bulk actions reach status, snooze, agent, team and labels — not priority.
- A folder's conditions are limited to conversation facts: status, assignee, priority, channel, team, contact, campaign, labels, browser language, referrer, dates and your custom attributes. You cannot filter a folder by what the contact bought.
- Mute does more than mute. Muting a conversation resolves it and blocks the contact, so nothing further from that person opens a conversation. Use it for abuse, not for a noisy thread.
Related
If it does not work
The conversation is not in my list. Check the three filters first — the status filter is the usual culprit, because a resolved conversation vanishes from an open-only list. Then check you are a member of that channel.
I cannot type a reply, only send a template. That is the WhatsApp 24-hour window, not a permission problem. The WhatsApp 24-hour window explains it.
A snoozed conversation never came back. It was snoozed until next reply, and the customer has not replied. Open it from the snoozed list and change the status by hand.