Chats Page Fundamentals

In this lesson, we’re going to cover the fundamentals of the Chats page. To keep things simple, we’ve broken this lesson into two parts:

1. Inbox Filtering
2. Text Functionality

Let’s dive in.

---

Inbox Filtering

On the left side of the Chat screen, you’ll see several Inbox filter options:

• All Chats
• Unread Chats
• Your Chats
• Failed Chats

These are pretty self-explanatory, but let’s click on Your Chats.

As you can see, my inbox is now filtered to only show conversations assigned to me. If I click on a contact, I can view—on the right-hand side—which users are assigned to that conversation.

Back on the left, if I click the Open Filters button, I can access additional filtering options to further refine which conversations I want to work with. The most popular filters are:

• Locations
• Tags
• Users

If I use these filters frequently, I can pin them by clicking the Pin icon. Once pinned, they’ll appear at the top of the Chat screen for quick access. If I change my mind, I can click Open Filters again and unpin them to reduce screen clutter.

For example, I like having the Tags filter pinned, because I use it most often. When I select a tag, Chatavise shows me only the conversations that match it. In this case, I see three contacts tagged from an event I attended.

Now, I know I met more people at that event. So why am I only seeing three?

That’s because by default, Chatavise only shows the last 30 days of conversation history. To view older conversations, go to the top right of the screen and toggle on Show Archived. This will display all conversations you’ve ever had in your account.

We do this for technical reasons. Some clients handle high conversation volume, and showing every conversation by default could slow down their system. If your business has lower volume, feel free to leave that toggle on.

---

Text Functionality

Let’s focus on this text message thread right here. At the top of the thread, you’ll see four key buttons:

1. Mark as Unread / Read
   • Click once to mark the conversation as unread.
   • Click again to mark it as read.
2. Scheduled Messages
   • This shows any messages scheduled for this contact.
   • You can edit a scheduled message by clicking the pencil icon, adjust the message content, or reschedule the send time.
   • You can send it now using the paper airplane icon.
   • Or cancel it using the trash can icon.
   • Clicking the main button again will hide the schedule view.
3. Mark as Inactive (Red Trash Can)
   • Clicking this will archive the conversation and remove it from your inbox.
   • To find it again, search by name or number. Archived contacts will have a line through their name.
   • Click the contact, then click Restore to bring it back. After refreshing, the line will be gone and the conversation will return to your inbox.
4. More Options (Three Dots Icon)
   • You’ll see four options:
     • Positive Feedback (covered in the Reviews lesson)
     • Negative Feedback
     • Reminder
       • Add a note like “Call this customer” or “Send an email,”
       • Set a date and time,
       • Assign the reminder to yourself or another user.
     • Block
       • This stops all future outbound messages from being sent to that contact.

---

Composing a Message

At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find everything you need to craft a powerful message:

• AI Assistant (Kelly)
  • Click the AI icon to open the prompt box.
  • Kelly reviews your message history and notes to help you write a thoughtful, relevant message.
  • You can also ask her to shorten long messages to a specific character limit.
  • When you’re done, click the button to close the prompt.
• Templates
  • Click the star icon to access your favorite templates.
  • To view more, click the browse icon to search and select a different template.
• Workflows
  • Use this button to assign the contact to a workflow.
  • Once assigned, it’ll trigger the automation you’ve set—whether that’s a single message, a sequence, or another action.
• Emoji Keyboard
  • Click here to insert emojis into your message.
• Image Upload
  • Use this to attach an image to your message.
• Reply Button
  • Sends your message immediately.
• Send a Call
  • A feature available to Enterprise clients, allowing calls directly from the chat interface.
• Send Later
  • Schedule a message to send at any future date and time—up to four years out.
• Message Variables
  • Add personalization by pressing Shift + 3 (#) inside the message box to access the Insert Message Variable menu.
  • We’ll cover how to use these more in the next lesson.

---

What We Skipped (On Purpose)

There are a few features on the Chats page that we’re saving for other lessons:

• Customer Information Side Panel
  • We’ll go over this in the Managing Contacts lesson, along with the CRM Contacts tab.
• Channels (Soon to be Stages)
  • This feature is getting a revamp and will be covered in a future Stages lesson.
• Bulk Text Feature
  • This tool is being sunset. Don’t use it.
  • Instead, use Campaigns—a more modern, elegant way to send mass messages. We’ll cover Campaigns later in this course.

---

Wrap-Up

And that’s it for this lesson! You now know how to:

• Filter your inbox effectively
• Navigate message threads
• Use the full power of Chatavise’s one-on-one text functionality

I’ll see you in the next lesson!

In this lesson, we are going to cover the fundamentals of the Chats page. To do this, we’re going to break up this lesson into two parts: Inbox Filtering and Text Functionality. So let’s get started.

Here on the Chat screen, if we go to the left panel, we’ll see the following inbox filter options: All Chats, Unread Chats, Your Chats, and Failed Chats. They’re all pretty self-explanatory, but let’s click on the Your Chats option. As you can see, my inbox was filtered accordingly. And if I click on a specific contact and go to the right side, I’ll see which users are assigned to that contact. Coming back to the left, if I click on this Open Filters button, I can see additional filter options available to me that make it even easier to isolate contacts I want to work with. The most popular filter options are Locations, Tags, and Users. If I’m also using those filter options very frequently, I can click on this Pin button here, like so, click away, and see those options available to me at the top of the Chat screen. If I find that I’m not using it as often as I thought, I can click on the Open Filter button and remove those filter options to make the screen look a little bit less busy. I personally like the Tags one up here because that’s what I use the most often. And when I click here, I can search for contacts that are tagged a specific way. Like I just did here, I can see that Chatavise is telling me there are three contacts tagged that way. Now, I know that I met more people at that event—which is the purpose of that specific tag—and it’s only showing me these three because it’s only showing me 30 days’ worth of conversations in my inbox. If we come to this top right part of the screen and click on this toggle button for Show Archived, now Chat will reveal all the conversations that you’ve ever had in your Chatavise account. And as you can see, I had more contacts tagged that way. We do this for a technical reason: because we have some clients that have a tremendous amount of volume in their Chatavise accounts, and if we were to show all conversations by default, their system would move a little slower than they would like. So if you have a lower-volume business and you want to see all your contacts all the time, you can leave the toggle on.

For this part of the lesson, let’s focus on this text message thread right here, and let’s focus our attention at the top of the message thread on these four buttons:

• The first button, if we click on it, will mark the conversation as unread. If we click on it again, it will mark it as read.
• The button to the right of that will show any Scheduled Messages that we have for this message thread. As you can see here, we have a message scheduled to go out tomorrow. And if we want to edit this message, we can click this pencil button here and edit the message itself as well as the day and time that the message is scheduled to go out.
• The button to the right of that will allow us to Send that scheduled message out right away.
• The button to the right of that will Remove or Cancel that scheduled message altogether.

Going back to the top, if we click on the same button again, it will hide that scheduled message from our view. The button to the right of that—this red Trash Can button—will mark the conversation as Inactive, and when we click “Yes,” we can see it disappear from our inbox here. Now, I’m going to search for that conversation by name or phone number, and you can see that there’s a line through that contact’s name here. If I click on it, where the red trash can button was, we’ll see a Restore button there. If we click on that, we will be restoring the conversation, and when we refresh our inbox screen, we can see that the line through the name is no longer there. To the right of the red trash can button is this Three Vertical Dot button here, and four options will come up. In the Reviews lesson, we discussed the Positive Feedback and Negative Feedback buttons, but down below that, we have this Reminder button. When we click on it, we can type the reminder that we like—for example, “Call this customer,” “Send this email to this customer,” “Remember to do something for them,” etc. Then, you can edit the day and time that you want that reminder to be sent out, and you can assign who that reminder belongs to—you can put yourself or any other users that you have in your Chatavise system. The fourth option here, the Block option, will stop all future outbound messages from going out to this contact.

Now let’s moving our attention to the bottom of the screen. This button right here is Chatavise’s AI Assistant. When you click on it, a prompt box will appear. Kelly will actually look at the message history that you’re having with that contact, as well as any notes that you have for that contact, to help you craft the perfect message. Some people, when they’re writing a very long text message, will also use Kelly to reduce the size of that text message by prompting her to reduce it to a certain character size. When you’re done crafting the perfect message, you can press this button right here, and that will close out the prompt box. The button to the right is our Templates button. When you click on it, you can see the templates that you have marked as a favorite. If you want to access other templates, you can press this button here, search for the template that you would like, click on it like such, and then when you’ve got the right template, you can press this button here to close it out—and you’ll see the template there. The button to the right of that is Workflows. If you created a workflow, you can assign this contact to that workflow, and when you click Assign, it will send out the message or string of messages or take action on whatever workflow you created. The button to the right of that is our Emoji Keyboard, and here you can see the full library of emojis available to you. The button to the right of that is our Image button, where you can attach an image to this text message. To the right of that, you’ll see the Reply button, which will send out the text message right away. To the right of that, you will see an option to Send a Call, which is a feature that we use for Enterprise-level clients. Below that, you’ll see the Send Later option. When you click there, you can schedule the text message to go out as far in advance as you like—I think the longest message that we have is about four years out. And then you can choose the time as well.

Last, but definitely not least, is Message Variables. You can access the message variable menu by putting your cursor anywhere in the text message box and pressing Shift + 3 for the hashtag symbol. This is the Insert Message Variable menu. We’ll go more in depth about how to use this in the next lesson. In this lesson, we skipped over a few parts of the Chats page, including the Customer Information side panel, which we’re going to include in the Managing Contacts lesson, along with the CRM Contacts tab. We also skipped over Channels, which we’re going to rename into Stages. We are currently revamping this feature, and when that is complete, we’ll make a separate Stages lesson. The last feature we skipped over is this Bulk Text feature over here. Do not use this feature—it’s being sunset and was replaced with our Campaigns, which is a way more modern and elegant way to send mass text messages. We’re going to cover that lesson a little bit later in this course.

And with that said, you now know how to filter your inbox and have a good foundational understanding of how to use the one-on-one text functionality in Chatavise. I’ll see you in the next lesson.