Inbox
Manage customer conversations across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and webchat from one place.
The inbox is where every customer conversation lands, whichever channel it came from. It's available on every plan, including Free, and it stays available even when automations pause at a usage limit.
Layout
The inbox has three panels:
| Panel | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Conversation list | Every conversation, with channel, last message, unread state, assignment, and status. |
| Chat area | The message thread, plus the reply composer. |
| Contact sidebar | Who you're talking to — profile, Shopify orders, consent, tags, loyalty. |
Conversation states
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open | Active and unassigned. |
| Assigned | A specific team member owns it. |
| AI handling | An AI agent is currently answering. |
| Resolved | Closed. |
A resolved conversation reopens automatically if the customer messages again.
How conversations close
| Closed reason | When |
|---|---|
| Agent closed | A person marked it resolved. |
| AI resolved | An AI agent solved it and closed it. This is the billable AI outcome. |
| Idle timeout | Auto-closed after a period of silence. Never billed. |
Idle auto-close defaults to 24 hours of silence in either direction. You can change the window or turn it off entirely in Settings → General — anywhere from 1 hour to 30 days. With it off, conversations only close when a human or the AI closes them.
Replying
Open a conversation, type, send. Enscale routes the reply through the right channel automatically.
You can send text, emoji, images, video, documents, and voice notes, subject to what each channel supports.
The 24-hour service window
On WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, free-form replies are only deliverable within 24 hours of the customer's last message. Outside that window you must use an approved template.
This is a Meta platform rule, not an Enscale one. The composer tells you when a conversation's window has closed.
Automatic messages
Three automatic replies are configurable in Settings → General:
| Message | When it sends |
|---|---|
| Welcome message | The first time a contact starts a conversation. |
| Out-of-hours message | A conversation starts outside your business hours. |
| Idle auto-close | Optional, before a silent conversation is closed. |
Out-of-hours needs business hours configured — see First-run setup.
Assignment
Assign a conversation to a teammate to make ownership explicit, or to an AI agent to let it take a first pass. Workflows can assign automatically with the Assign to Agent node.
Presence shows which teammates are currently online, so you're not assigning to someone who logged off.
AI handover
When AI agents are enabled, an agent handles eligible conversations and hands over when it should — low confidence, a customer asking for a person, anything involving payment or account changes, or a configured failure limit.
A handed-over conversation arrives with the full AI exchange visible, so you can pick up without making the customer repeat themselves. Handover also fires the AI Handed to Human workflow trigger, which is useful for alerting a specific team.
See AI handover.
Contact context
The sidebar shows the customer's profile, channel identities, Shopify customer and order history, WhatsApp consent status, tags and segments, loyalty balance, and recent activity.
Consent status is worth watching. A contact showing opted-out cannot receive outbound WhatsApp messages, and campaigns will skip them.
See Contacts.
Filtering
Filter the conversation list by channel, status, assignment, and tag. Combine filters to build the view your team works from — "unassigned WhatsApp conversations tagged urgent", for example.
Where to work
Enscale gives you the same inbox in two places:
- Inside Shopify admin — convenient if you're already there.
- The team inbox — a standalone app for agents who spend all day in it, and for staff who shouldn't have Shopify admin access.
Both show identical data in real time. See Team inbox.
Usage
Each 24-hour messaging window with one contact on one channel counts as one conversation against your plan. See Plans and limits.
If you exhaust your conversation allowance, a 72-hour grace period starts. After it, the inbox becomes reply-read-only — you keep full access to history, contacts, and settings, but can't send until you upgrade or the month resets.
Next steps
- Contacts — customer profiles and consent.
- Segments — building audiences.
- Team and roles — inviting your team.
- Team inbox — the standalone agent app.