Handling emails

Accepting an email

To be offered messages from a queue, you must have started inbound.

As the message is offered, you will see: The contact's name (or email address for new contacts) The subject of the email. The project associated with this email. The message type. The icon indicates this is an email. A blue dot appears next to the email icon to show there are unread messages. To accept a message offered to you: Click the Accept button.

When you accept the message, the message will be selected automatically:

• Your number of active contacts will increase by 1. This number is shown to the right of Active.
• The message, and any other contact history, will be displayed in the middle of the screen.
• The Contact details will be displayed on the right.

The message will remain in your Active list until you have assigned it an outcome (or until you transfer the message elsewhere).

Contact's history

In the History tab, you will see the history of conversations that the contact has had the the Customer Service team, with the most recent message at the top.

• You can filter the history to show only unfinished activities or only unread messages by ticking the appropriate checkbox.
• For longer messages, click the View in full screen link to see more of the message.
• A message is only marked as Read when you reply to it, or when you click the Mark as read link. For more on unread messages, see Unread messages.

Further tabs

Next to the History tab you may see further tabs. In the screenshot above, there is a tab called Optional, for example. These may be added by your Admin to a project for all sorts of reasons, including providing access to knowledge bases or external systems. 

Replying to an email

Wen you are ready to reply to an email:

1. You can check to see who was copied in on the email. Hover your mouse pointer over the  icon to see a list of everyone included on the original message.
2. To reply to the message, either click the Reply button, or click  and select Reply all to reply to everyone on the original email. You can also click to Forward a message. Note that you should not use Forward to send the message to another queue!
3. To change the list of recipients, click the Recipients button, . You can remove a recipient by clicking the x next to their email address. You can type new addresses to include.

4. Click the Cc or Bcc link to show fields to Cc or Bcc a recipient. 
5. Write your message. You can use use normal rich text formatting, including adding links and images to your message.

You can show or hide the rich text menu bar by clicking the A button.

You can use canned messages in your emails. Canned messages are ready templates your Admin has created for common replies, or for signatures, any text that might get used frequently in an email.

6. Click the  to select the appropriate canned message from the list.
7. To attach files, click the  button. Maximum file size of attachments is 20MB.

To send the email:

8. Click the Send button.
9. If this concluded the current conversation, click the Close button to choose an outcome and close the conversation. See Close a contact.