Talk inbox

Ortto’s Talk inbox is the user interface where agents manage and engage in conversations with contacts and visitors.

Access the inbox

To access Ortto’s talk inbox:

  1. Ensure you are signed in to Ortto.

  2. Click Inbox in the navigation drawer on the left to open Ortto’s inbox.

Setup up the inbox

Inbox setup is managed in Ortto at Settings  Inbox.

Learn more about inbox setup under Inbox.

Teams and inboxes

If you have teams set up, they will be visible in the left-hand sidebar of the inbox. Agents who are members of teams will have their teams automatically added to the favorites section of the menu. Agents can also add teams they are not a member of to their favorites menu.

Learn more about configuring teams in Talk widget.

Inbox assignment rules

Conversation assignment rules are set at Settings  Inbox  Assignment rules.

New inbound conversations that don’t meet an assignment rule will be assigned to the default team set at Settings  Inbox  Assignment rules.

If you have no teams, a new conversation will appear in the Unassigned inbox.

Within the inbox, conversations can be manually assigned or reassigned a number of ways:

  • When an agent replies to an unassigned conversation, it will automatically be assigned to them.

  • Team and agent assignment can be changed using the drop-down menus at the top of a conversation

    manual assign drop down
    Example manual agent assignment

  • Agents can also be assigned to a conversation when another agent tags them in a comment.

Views

Conversations are organized into views, based on teams, assignment, or mentions or spam.

These are the default views (you’ll see some differences depending on whether or not you have teams):

  • My inbox contains conversations that are assigned to you.

  • Unassigned contains conversations that are not assigned to any agent. If you have teams, this will contain unassigned conversations that belong to your team/s.

  • Assigned contains conversations that are assigned to all agents. If you have teams, this will contain assigned conversations that belong to your team/s.

  • All contains all conversations from all views.

Additional views can include:

  • Mentions, which contains conversations that you have been mentioned in (where another agent has mentioned you in a comment).

  • Spam, which contains conversations marked as spam.

  • Team-based inboxes, which contain conversations that belong to that team (e.g. Sales, Support).

Clicking on a view will show you the relevant conversations in the conversation list, where you can view conversations by status (open, closed, or snoozed) and by time (newest or waiting longest).

Agent and team statuses

Agents have two states:

  • Online: the inbox is open in a browser tab and the agent has set their status to Online.

  • Away: the browser tab with the inbox is closed or the agent has set their status to Away.

Following this, a team can have two statuses:

  • Online: at least one agent is online.

  • Away: all agents are away.

Who’s online

You can see which agents are online by:

  • Hovering over your agent avatar to see the names of online agents.

  • Clicking on your agent avatar to see online agents and their avatars. If you have teams, agents are grouped by team.

  • When manually assigning a conversation, by clicking the assignment drop-down carat.

Agent settings

In the left-hand sidebar, click Inbox to access links to:

  • Ortto support and submit feedback to Ortto,

  • switch to dark mode or mute notification sounds,

  • access settings, and

  • navigate back to the Ortto app.

In the sidebar, an agent can click on their profile image to set their status as online or away.

Contact details and activities

Learn more about the contact details and activities sidebar at Contact details and activities.

Conversations list

Conversations between agents and contacts/visitors are captured in individual threads and are accessed from the left-hand sidebar in the inbox.

Change which conversations are shown in the list using the selectors at the top of the list:

  • By default, Open shows all open conversations. Click on it to be able to select Closed or Snoozed conversations.

  • Sort the order of conversations by clicking Unreplied first and change to Newest or Waiting longest as required.

Conversations in bold are awaiting a response from an agent. These are unassigned or not assigned to you.

Conversations assigned to you that are awaiting your response will be indicated with a blue badge (dot). The blue badge will only show for the agent to which the conversation is assigned, where the agent hasn’t read the message yet or have marked it as unread.

A tick beside a message indicates the last message sent by an agent hasn’t been seen by the contact/visitor. A double tick indicates the message has been seen by the contact/visitor.

Conversations

Learn about managing conversations, including conversation statuses, audio conversations (calls), agent ratings, group conversations, and agent conversation options in Manage conversations.

For details on creating conversation messages, read Create a conversation message.

Agent-initiated conversations

Often, agents will reply to conversations initiated by the contact or visitor via the Talk messenger widget or email. However, if required, agents can compose message to start a new conversation with a contact.

To create an agent-initiated conversation:

  1. In the top-left section of the inbox, click the compose compose icon.

  2. Search for and select the contact you want to send a message to.

  3. Compose and send a message to start the conversation.

The contact will be sent an email with the conversation message, and they can reply via email or the Talk messenger widget.

Use the search function in the top-left corner to find terms in conversations.

Add filters to your search terms to narrow-down the results, such as searching for a term in conversations associated with a particular agent and a particular tag.

Search results will appear as a list of conversations that fit the search parameters (search term plus any filters).

Email handoff

In conversations initiated via the talk capture widget (outbound) or a contact/visitor using the talk widget (inbound), there will be a handoff to email after a period of contact/visitor inactivity.

After approximately 2 minutes of contact/visitor inactivity, unseen messages sent by the agent will be sent to the contact/visitor’s email address (collected at the beginning of the conversation for unknown visitors, or based on the CDP email field value for known contacts). Email handoff will include a preview of the live chat, including the unseen message, with the option for the contact/agent to reply via email or return to the talk widget/talk capture widget to continue the conversation.

After an unseen message is sent via email, if a contact/visitor replies via the talk widget/talk capture widget, then becomes inactive again, any unseen replies will again be sent via email. Alternatively, if the conversation is handed off to email and the contact/visitor replies via email, any agent replies will continue to be sent via email.

When a conversation is closed (marked closed by the agent), a transcript will be emailed to the contact/visitor.

Emails sent as part of the handoff process will be delivered from the email address you set for the team at Settings  Talk widget  Teams.

Read-only mode

Users with limited permissions can view conversations in read-only mode.

In read-only mode, users are unable to:

  • Change the status of a conversation.

  • Change which agent the conversation is assigned to.

  • Create a new conversation.

  • Add a reply.

  • Change the online/away status.

  • View an inbox or snoozed conversations.

However, read-only users can add a comment to a conversation.