Getting started
Set up Lynomia Chat and handle your first conversation.
Welcome to Lynomia Chat
Lynomia Chat is a shared inbox for talking to customers. Every message your business receives — on WhatsApp, on your website, by email — arrives in one place, where your whole team can see it, answer it, and hand it to each other without forwarding screenshots. It is built around WhatsApp, because that is where customers in this region actually are. What you get - One inbox for the whole team. No more one person holding the phone. - Context next to the conversation. Who this customer is, what they have bought, what they asked last time. - A way to reach people on purpose. Send an order update to one customer, or a message to a group of them. - A way to stop doing the same thing by hand. Rules that route, reply, tag and assign while you sleep. What it is not - It is not a marketing blast tool. WhatsApp decides what you may send and when, and sending the wrong thing costs you the channel. The WhatsApp 24-hour window explains the rule everything else follows from. - It is not a CRM. It knows your customers through their conversations and, if you connect a store, through their orders. It does not manage deals, quotes or pipelines. - It is not your store. Commerce reads from your store so an agent can see an order without leaving the conversation. It does not replace it. The five things to set up first Do these in order. Each takes a few minutes, and each one makes the next one useful. 1. Set up your account — your business name, your timezone, your language. 2. Invite your team — the people who will answer messages, and what each of them may do. 3. Connect your first channel — for most businesses this is WhatsApp. 4. Handle your first conversation — reply, assign, label, resolve. 5. Connect your store, if you have one — so an agent can see what a customer ordered. Who can do what Setting up an account, connecting channels and inviting people are administrator jobs. Answering conversations is what an agent does. Roles and permissions covers the difference, and what a custom role can change. Which language? Three different languages are involved, and it helps to keep them apart from the start: | | What it is | Where you set it | |---|---|---| | Your dashboard language | what you read while working | your own profile | | Your account language | the default for everyone in the business | account settings | | A WhatsApp template's language | the language the customer receives | on the template itself | They are independent. An Arabic-speaking agent can work in an Arabic dashboard and send an English template to an English-speaking customer. Next → Set up your account
Set up your account
Your account is the workspace your whole business shares. Contacts, channels, labels, templates and reports all belong to it, and everyone you add works inside it. Two things live in Account Settings → General, and an administrator normally sets them once: your business name and your account language. Everything else you set up — channels, people, labels, automation — lives on its own page and changes often. What you need first An administrator account. The page is not reachable by an agent, so if you cannot open Account Settings, ask whoever set the account up. Your business name The name is required. It is the name your colleagues see, and it is the name in the invitation email that goes to every person you add: "You are invited to join <your business>". You can change it whenever you like, and nothing else breaks when you do. Your account language Also required. The account language decides three separate things: - the dashboard language for anyone who has not chosen their own - the language of the notification emails Lynomia Chat sends - the language the website live-chat widget loads in Which language is which Three different languages are at work, and keeping them apart saves a lot of confusion. | Language | Where it is set | What it changes | Who it affects | |---|---|---|---| | Account language | Account Settings → General | default dashboard, system emails, live-chat widget | everyone in the business | | Your own language | Profile Settings | your dashboard | only you | | Template language | on each WhatsApp template | what the customer receives | that one message | Your own choice wins over the account default for your dashboard. It does not change the emails Lynomia Chat sends — those follow the account language, whoever receives them. If you set your personal language to Use account default, you follow whatever the account is set to. Where the timezone really is There is no account-wide timezone in Lynomia Chat, and this is worth knowing before you plan around one. Three different mechanisms use time, and they read it from three different places: | What | Timezone it uses | |---|---| | Business hours and out-of-office replies | the timezone on each channel, set per channel | | Reports | the timezone of the browser you are looking at them in | | The timezone asked during first-run setup | recorded as a business detail; it does not drive either of the above | A new channel is created with its timezone set to UTC. For the Gulf that is three hours behind local time, so "we are open 9 to 6" will behave wrongly until you set it. Open the channel, go to its business hours, and choose your own zone — for example Asia/Kuwait or Asia/Riyadh. A worked example A furniture retailer in Kuwait sets the business name to Al Manar Furnishings and the account language to Arabic, because most of the team reads Arabic. One agent handles English-speaking customers and sets her own language to English in her profile; her dashboard turns English, and everyone else's stays Arabic. The retailer then opens its WhatsApp channel, turns on business hours, and sets the channel timezone to Asia/Kuwait. Only now does "closed after 6pm" mean 6pm in Kuwait. Who can do this Administrators only, for both the name and the account language. Any person can set their own dashboard language in their own profile without help. Limits - There is no single account timezone. Business hours are per channel, and reports follow your browser. - A custom reply domain and a support email address appear on this page only if inbound email is enabled for your installation. If you do not see those fields, that is why. - Changing the account language does not retranslate anything that has already been written: canned responses, labels, templates and past messages keep the words you typed. Related - Invite your team - Connect your first channel - Roles and permissions If it does not work The form refuses to save. Both the business name and the language are required. An empty name is the usual cause. You changed the account language and your own dashboard did not change. You have a personal language set in your profile, and it takes priority. Set it to Use account default. Business hours fire at the wrong time. Check the timezone on that specific channel, not the account.
Invite your team
A person who answers customer messages in Lynomia Chat is called an agent. Adding someone creates their login, puts them in your account, and decides — through their role — what they are allowed to do once they are in. Adding a person and giving them a channel are two separate steps. This article covers the first. When to do this Before you connect a channel, not after. Auto-assignment hands a new conversation to an agent who is online and a member of that channel; if nobody is there yet, messages pile up unassigned. What you need first An administrator account, and the work email address of each person. You do not need their password, and you should never set one for them — they set their own. The roles | Role | What it covers | |---|---| | Administrator | everything: settings, channels, people, billing, reports, and every conversation in every channel | | Agent | conversations in the channels they have been added to, and the contacts behind them | | A custom role | a named set of permissions you define yourself | A custom role is built from a fixed list of permissions, so it is worth knowing what can and cannot be granted: - manage all conversations - manage unassigned conversations, and assign them to themselves - manage conversations they are assigned to or participating in - manage contacts - manage reports - change store order statuses and resend store emails That last one is the Commerce permission, and it stops short: refunds and cancellations stay with administrators and cannot be granted to a custom role. A team is a different idea from a role. A role is what a person may do; a team is a group you can hand a conversation to, such as Sales or Deliveries. A person can be in several teams and still have one role. Steps 1. Go to Settings → Agents and choose Add agent. 2. Enter the person's name, pick their role, and enter their email address. 3. Save. The invitation goes out by email. 4. Add them to the channels they should work in. Until you do, an agent sees no conversations at all. What the person receives If the email address is new to Lynomia Chat, they get a message headed "You are invited to join <your business>", naming you as the person who invited them. The button takes them to a page where they choose a password. Once they have set it they are signed in, and your business appears in their account. If the email address already belongs to someone who has a Lynomia Chat login — someone who works in another account on the same installation — no invitation email is sent. They are added immediately and will find your business waiting the next time they sign in. This surprises people, so tell them you have added them. A worked example A clinic in Riyadh adds three people. The practice manager becomes an administrator, so she can connect WhatsApp and change settings. Two receptionists become agents. Both receptionists are then added to the WhatsApp channel, and both are put in a team called Reception so that a conversation can be handed to the desk rather than to a named person. Later the clinic hires a bookkeeper who should see orders but never read patient conversations. That is a custom role: contacts and reports, nothing else. Who can do this Administrators. Adding, editing and removing people, and creating custom roles, are all administrator jobs. An administrator can also send a password-reset email to an agent from that agent's own page, which is the right fix when someone cannot get in. Limits - Role names are fixed at administrator and agent. Anything in between is a custom role. - Custom roles are limited to the permissions listed above. Refunds and cancellations are always administrator-only. - Adding a person grants no channel access. An agent must be made a member of each channel. Administrators see every channel without being a member. - If your plan limits how many people you may add, the save is refused with a message about licences rather than quietly succeeding. - An administrator can reset an agent's password by email, but cannot read or choose it. Related - Connect your first channel - Roles and permissions - Teams and agents If it does not work "This email address is already in use." That address is already in this account. Look for the person in the agent list rather than adding them again. They never got the email. Check the address for a typo, then check whether they already had a Lynomia Chat login — in that case there is no email, and they simply sign in. Otherwise ask an administrator to send a password reset from the agent's page. They are in, but see an empty conversation list. They are not a member of any channel yet. Open the channel and add them.
Connect your first channel
A channel is one way customers reach you — one WhatsApp number, one website widget, one mailbox. In the dashboard a channel appears as an inbox: the two words describe the same thing from different sides. The channel is the connection to the outside world; the inbox is where its conversations land. Everything else depends on having at least one. Contacts are created by the messages that arrive through a channel, automation reacts to them, and campaigns go out through them. Until a channel exists, the dashboard has nothing to show you. Which channels you can connect | Channel | What it connects | |---|---| | WhatsApp | a WhatsApp Business number | | Website | a live-chat widget on your own site | | Email | a mailbox, so replies arrive as conversations | | SMS | text messages through Twilio or Bandwidth | | Telegram | a Telegram bot | | Line | a Line account | | Facebook | a Facebook page's Messenger inbox | | Instagram | an Instagram account's direct messages | | API | your own application, through Lynomia Chat's API | Some of these depend on how your installation is configured, and you will see them greyed out rather than hidden. Facebook and Instagram need a Meta app set up on the installation itself. TikTok appears only where it has been configured. Voice and WhatsApp calling are marked beta and depend on being switched on for your account. If a channel you want is not selectable, that is an installation-level setting, not something you can change from your account. Why WhatsApp first In the Gulf, WhatsApp is usually not one channel among several — it is where the customers already are. It is also the channel with the most rules, which is the real reason to connect it early: the sooner you have a number connected, the sooner you find out what Meta will and will not let you send. The one rule that shapes everything else: once a customer messages you, you can reply freely for 24 hours. After that, a plain message will not go out. You may only send an approved template. See The WhatsApp 24-hour window. What you need first An administrator account. For WhatsApp you also need a phone number that is not already in use on personal WhatsApp, and access to the Meta Business account that owns it — or, if you are connecting through Twilio, your Twilio credentials. Steps 1. Go to Settings → Inboxes and choose to add an inbox. 2. Pick the channel. For WhatsApp, pick your provider next: | Provider | Use it when | |---|---| | WhatsApp Cloud — quick setup through Meta | you are connecting a number through Meta and want the connection configured for you | | WhatsApp Cloud — manual setup | the number is already on the WhatsApp Cloud API and you hold its credentials | | WhatsApp Business | the number is live in the WhatsApp Business app on a phone and you want to keep using it there | | Twilio | WhatsApp is already running through your Twilio account | 3. Complete the provider's own step. Quick setup sends you to Meta to sign in and choose the number. Manual setup asks for the phone number, its phone number ID, the business account ID, an API key and a webhook verify token. 4. Choose which agents work in this channel. An agent who is not a member sees nothing from it. Administrators see every channel without being added. 5. Finish. For WhatsApp you are shown a QR code — scan it with your own phone to send the channel a test message and watch it arrive. A worked example A perfume shop in Dubai connects its WhatsApp number using quick setup through Meta, adds its two sales staff as members, and finishes. It scans the QR code, sends "hello" from a personal phone, and the conversation appears in Conversations within seconds, unassigned. One of the two staff is online, so auto-assignment hands it to her. Only then does the shop set the channel's business hours, because a new channel is created on UTC time, and Dubai is four hours ahead. Who can do this Administrators. Agents cannot see the Inboxes settings at all, let alone connect a channel. Limits - A new channel's timezone is UTC until you change it. Business hours and out-of-office replies will be wrong by your local offset until you do. - Auto-assignment is on for a new channel and only considers members who are online. If nobody is online, conversations wait, unassigned. - WhatsApp templates belong to the WhatsApp number, not to Lynomia Chat. Only Meta can approve one, and it can reject one. - Quick setup through Meta is not available on every account, and Meta occasionally restricts it at their end. When that happens, the manual Cloud API route is still open for a number already on the Cloud API. Related - Connect WhatsApp - The WhatsApp 24-hour window - WhatsApp Business coexistence - Set up an inbox - Your first conversation If it does not work The channel you want is greyed out. It needs configuration on the installation, not in your account. Ask your provider. Meta's setup window closed without a number. Run quick setup again and add a phone number to the WhatsApp Business account during the Meta steps. A setup that finishes without one cannot produce a channel. Your test message never arrived. Confirm you messaged the connected number from a different phone, and that setup reached the final step rather than stopping at the agent step. Nothing you send goes out. Check whether the last incoming message is more than 24 hours old. On WhatsApp that is the window, not a fault.
Your first conversation
A conversation is one continuous thread with one customer on one channel. It is not a ticket you open and close once: it has a status, it can be handed between people, and it can be reopened months later when the same customer writes again. Almost everything an agent does is four moves on that thread — reply, assign, label, resolve. Learn those and the rest of Lynomia Chat is detail. What you need first A connected channel and an account that is a member of it. If Conversations is empty and you are an agent, you have probably not been added to any channel yet — see Invite your team. The four statuses A conversation is always in exactly one of these, and the list you are looking at is filtered by them. | Status | What it means | |---|---| | Open | live, needs someone | | Pending | waiting on you, deliberately parked | | Snoozed | hidden until a time you chose, or until the customer replies | | Resolved | done — until the customer writes again, which reopens it | Alongside the status filter you can narrow by assignment: Mine, Unassigned, or All. Most agents live in Mine, and look at Unassigned when they have capacity. A message arrives When a customer writes, a conversation appears in the channel's inbox. If auto-assignment is on for that channel, Lynomia Chat gives it to a member who is online at that moment. If nobody is online, it stays unassigned and waits — it is not lost, but nobody owns it. Reply The composer has two modes, and the difference matters. - Reply goes to the customer. - Private Note is visible only to your colleagues. Use it for what you would otherwise say in a side chat: context, a warning, a decision. Two shortcuts that pay for themselves: - Type / at the start of a reply to pick a saved canned response. This works in a reply, not in a private note. - Type @ in a private note to mention a colleague or a team, which notifies them. Shift + Enter gives you a new line instead of sending. Assign Assignment answers "whose job is this". In the conversation's side panel you can set: - an agent — the one person responsible, or yourself with the self-assign button - a team — a group such as Sales or Deliveries, when the right person is not yet known - a priority — low, medium, high or urgent Assigning does not reply for you. An assigned conversation with no answer is still an unanswered conversation. Label A label is a word you put on a conversation so you can find it later and report on it: complaint, wrong-size, vip. Press L or use the add-label control in the side panel. Agents choose from the labels that already exist. Only an administrator can create a new one from here, which is deliberate — it stops the same idea being spelled five ways by five people. Resolve Resolving says you are finished. Use the Resolve button in the conversation header. If the customer writes again, the conversation reopens with its history intact, so resolving is never destructive. Two neighbours of Resolve: - Snooze parks it and brings it back — in an hour, tomorrow, next week, next month, at a time you pick, or as soon as the customer replies. - Reopen brings a resolved or snoozed conversation back to open. If your account has been set up to require certain fields before resolving, you will be asked for them at this point rather than afterwards. A worked example A customer messages a WhatsApp number: "The sofa arrived with a scratch." It arrives unassigned; Noura is online, so it lands with her. She replies with a canned response apologising and asking for a photo. She adds the label damage-claim, sets the priority to high, and leaves a private note: "Delivered 3 Oct, driver route 7." The photo arrives. She assigns the conversation to the Deliveries team, who arrange a replacement and resolve it. Three weeks later the same customer asks about a dining table — the conversation reopens, with the whole scratch story above it. Who can do this Any agent, in the channels they are a member of. Creating labels, and changing what the channel does automatically, are administrator jobs. Limits - WhatsApp only lets you reply freely for 24 hours after the customer's last message. After that, a plain reply is not delivered — it is marked as failed, and the error says the window is closed and an approved template is required. The composer will still let you type it. See The WhatsApp 24-hour window. - Auto-assignment considers only members who are online, so a quiet shift produces a queue of unassigned conversations rather than assigned ones. - Agents cannot create labels, only apply them. - Resolving is not archiving. A new message from the same contact reopens the same conversation. - A private note is private to your team, not to you. Every agent on the conversation can read it. Related - Work in the inbox - Labels - Macros - The WhatsApp 24-hour window - Troubleshooting If it does not work Your reply shows as failed on WhatsApp. Check the time of the customer's last message. More than 24 hours ago means you need an approved template, not a reply. The composer tells you that you can only reply with a template. Same cause, stated before you send. You cannot find a label you need. It does not exist yet. Ask an administrator to create it rather than inventing a near-duplicate. Nothing is assigned to anyone. No member of that channel was online. Set yourself online, or assign by hand from the Unassigned list.