Shared Inbox

When someone replies to your WhatsApp message — a campaign, a template, an OTP — that conversation needs to land somewhere your team can answer. Chat is that somewhere: a WhatsApp Web-style inbox, shared by everyone in the workspace, backed by live data rather than a periodic sync.

How conversations get to the inbox

Anything inbound lands in Chat in the sidebar: WhatsApp messages from every number you have connected, and Website Chat conversations, in one list. Each row shows which number or website it came in on, and the All accounts filter shows one at a time when you need that. A reply always goes out from the number the customer wrote to.

Conversations are threaded per contact, so three messages from one person are one thread, not three.

Someone who messages you and isn't in your contacts yet is created as a contact automatically, with the name from their WhatsApp profile. You can reply at once; the contact panel next to the chat shows Not saved yet · Add details until someone fills in the rest. Bear it in mind before a campaign: such contacts usually have a phone number and a first name only.

Whose chats you see

The switch at the top of the list chooses whose chats are listed:

• Mine — chats assigned to you. Agents start here.
• Unassigned — chats nobody owns yet. A chat whose customer wrote last is marked Waiting.
• All team — everything. Admins and managers start here.

Your choice is remembered in this browser.

The lists

Below the switch:

• All — the open chats.
• Unread — chats with messages nobody has read yet.
• Needs you — chats the AI agent handed to the team.
• Closing — chats whose 24-hour window ends soon.
• Pending and Solved — see Pending and Solved.
• More — Archived chats, and Automated: chats that hold only messages from the API, campaigns or integrations, with no reply from the customer.

Search looks through every chat and every contact, whatever list it is in.

Automated messages do not bury your chats

The inbox is sorted by the last time a person was part of a chat — the customer wrote, or a member, the AI agent or the chatbot replied. Messages from the API, campaigns and integrations such as Shopify do not move a chat up. A chat that holds only those is under More → Automated; when the customer replies, it moves into the inbox at the top.

A row whose newest message is one of these reads API:, Campaign: or Integration: instead of You:.

The 24-hour service window

This is the single most important concept in the inbox.

When a recipient sends you a message, you have 24 hours from that message to reply with free-form content — any text, any media, no template required. This is the customer service window.

The conversation header shows how long is left on the window, in green while it's open. Once it closes it reads Window closed in amber, and the composer replaces the text box with a template picker — because outside the window, an approved template is the only thing WhatsApp will deliver. Each template is billed per message at its category's rate.

Replies inside the window are Service messages. Each WhatsApp number gets 1,000 free Service messages a month; after that, each reply is billed at the Service rate. A Utility template sent inside the window is always billed — the free Service messages do not cover it.

After 24 hours of recipient silence the window closes. To message them again you must either send an approved template, or wait for them to message you, which reopens it.

What you can send

From the composer:

• Text, with emoji
• Approved templates, via the template drawer, filling in any variables before sending
• Attachments — images, video, audio, documents
• Replies — quote a specific earlier message for context
• Reactions — emoji on an individual message

Outbound messages carry delivery ticks the same way WhatsApp does, so you can see at a glance whether something was sent, delivered, or read. Opening a thread sends a read receipt back to the customer, and typing shows them a typing indicator.

If you have a product catalog set up, you can also send product messages straight into a conversation — see Product Catalog.

Contact notes

The right-hand panel shows who you're talking to, and lets your team keep notes on that contact — context that the customer never sees. Use them to hand off: "Spoken to twice already, wants a refund." Notes live on the contact, so they follow the person across every future conversation rather than being trapped in one thread.

When the AI agent is involved

If the AI Agent is switched on, it answers inbound messages within the rules you set and steps back when it isn't confident or the customer trips a handoff keyword. A conversation the agent has been handling carries a banner at the top of the thread, so whoever picks it up can see what the customer has already been told before replying.

Working as a team

The inbox is shared: everyone in the workspace sees the same chats and messages, updating live. When a colleague is writing a reply, you see "… is replying" above the message box, so two people do not answer the same customer.

Assign a chat

Open a chat's menu — the ⋮ button on its row, a right-click, or a long press on a phone — or use the Assign button in the chat header:

• Assign to me — take the chat.
• Assign to… — give it to a colleague. The list shows who is online, their role, and how many open chats they already have.
• Unassign — release it.

The owner's initials show on the row, and the new owner gets a notification.

Your first reply takes the chat. When you answer an unassigned chat from the inbox, it becomes yours. An admin can turn this off in Settings → Account → Organization.

A chat keeps its owner when the owner goes Away, when the chat is marked Pending or Solved, and when the customer writes again. A member who is deactivated or removed has their chats returned to Unassigned.

See who replied

Every message you send carries the name of the person who sent it, under the bubble. Messages from the AI agent, the chatbot, a campaign, the API or an integration carry that name instead. Messages sent before this existed have no label.

Pending and Solved

The chat header has two buttons:

• Pending — you wait for the customer (an order number, a photo). The chat leaves the inbox and goes to Pending.
• Solve — the work is done. The chat goes to Solved, and Lynkist records who solved it and when.

When the customer writes again, a Pending or Solved chat comes back to the inbox at once. Use Reopen to bring one back yourself. Archive still hides a chat without marking it solved — use it for spam and chats that need no answer.

Habits that help

• Use contact notes to hand off, so the next person doesn't restart the conversation.
• Watch the window timer, not the unread count. A chat with 20 hours left is fine; one with 40 minutes is the one to answer now.
• Restrict who can reach settings. Agents who work the inbox rarely need billing or the WhatsApp connection — see Team & Settings.
• On Pro and Business, the team report shows how fast each member answers.

Reply with templates after the window closes

When the 24-hour window has closed, the composer offers the template picker instead of the text box. Pick the template, fill in its variables, send. This counts as a new conversation in WhatsApp's pricing model and is billed accordingly.

For teams doing this often, keep a small set of "re-engagement" templates approved and ready — "Hey, following up on your last message, are you still looking for help?" — so you're never waiting on Meta approval at the moment you need to reply.

Not available yet

Worth knowing before you build a process around them:

• Automatic routing — chats are not given out round-robin or by rule; a person assigns them, or the first reply does.
• Snooze — Pending waits for the customer, but it does not come back at a time you choose.
• Canned replies / saved responses — approved templates are the closest thing today.
• Conversation tags — tagging lives on contacts, not on threads.
• Out-of-hours auto-replies — the AI agent is the only automatic responder.
• Customer ratings (CSAT) and SLA alerts.
• Voice-note transcription — inbound audio plays as audio; it isn't transcribed.
• Voice and video calls — not offered by the WhatsApp Business API at all.

Next steps