The unified inbox

The Inbox is where the day happens. Every message from every connected Channel — WhatsApp first, plus Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, Live Chat, SMS and the rest — arrives in one list, and you reply from the same place. Behind each conversation is a Contact record — workspace-owned, and able to hold identities on more than one channel. It won’t stitch channels together on its own, though: the person who WhatsApps you today and comments on your Facebook post tomorrow arrives as two contacts, and stays that way until you merge them by hand. That’s what View full profile & merge is for. It is called Unified Inbox in the sidebar and just Inbox once you open it. Same thing.

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The active channel does not scope the Inbox

This is the one that catches people, so read it before anything else. Most of DMLY works on the channel you have selected — Bot Setup, Broadcasts and Growth Tools all act on that one channel, and switching profiles changes what they show you. The Inbox does not work that way. It has no channel picker of its own and it ignores the one you set elsewhere. The Inbox always spans every channel you have connected. If your sidebar shows WhatsApp selected, the Inbox still lists your Instagram DMs and your Live Chat threads alongside your WhatsApp chats.

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How you work in it

Three panes, left to right: the conversation list, the open thread, and a details panel for the contact. On a phone you see one at a time — open a conversation to read it, and use the back arrow to return to the list. The details panel is hidden on narrower screens. The rhythm is: pick a conversation from the list, read and reply in the middle, and use the details panel on the right for everything about the person — Assigned to, Pipeline stage, Labels, Internal notes, upcoming appointments, and View full profile & merge if you need the whole client record. Opening a conversation marks it read and drops its unread count straight away.

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Folders

The list has four folders: An archived conversation only shows under Archive — All won’t surface it. Two things worth knowing on day one:

• Nothing closes itself. A conversation only becomes Done when someone selects Mark as done in the details panel. There is no auto-close after a quiet period.
• A reply from the contact reopens it. If a done conversation gets a new inbound message, it flips back to Open and un-archives itself, so you can’t miss a follow-up.

Marking done takes you out of the thread and back to the list, keeping your folder and filters — which is what you want when you’re clearing a queue. See conversation status.

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Narrowing the list

Search conversations at the top of the list is the fastest tool you have, and you’ll need it more than you expect: the list shows the 100 most recent conversations and there is no paging or infinite scroll. Anything older is reachable by search, not by scrolling. Alongside search:

• Channel pills across the top of the list: WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and SMS, plus All. Telegram, Live Chat, TikTok and Google Business Profile reviews are all in the list — they just don’t have a pill.
• All channels — a picker in the extra filters that narrows to one specific connected profile, including the channels with no pill. Use this if you run two WhatsApp numbers and only want one of them.
• Anyone / Unassigned — filter by who owns the conversation.
• Unread only — what it says.

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One contact, two threads

A contact is one CRM record but can have up to two separate conversation threads: DMs and Comments. Someone who both messages your Facebook page and comments on a post appears as two rows in the list — same person, two conversations, because a public comment and a private DM are answered differently. They stay separate throughout. Archiving or deleting one thread leaves the other untouched.

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What you can send

From the reply box: A few rules that shape what you’ll actually see:

• SMS is text only. The media, file and microphone buttons are hidden on SMS conversations.
• Templates are WhatsApp only, and the picker only lists templates Meta has approved. You fill in each placeholder before it sends — a template with an empty {{1}} is rejected rather than sent with a gap showing.
• Booking links and payment links send as ordinary text. They’re a link in a normal message, not a special card. Request a payment creates the payment link for you and sends it; the booking picker only appears if you have active meeting types with a public booking page.
• Suggest a reply with AI appears only when AI is set up for your workspace and your plan includes it.

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When a message won’t send

WhatsApp: the 24-hour window has closed

WhatsApp allows free-form replies only for 24 hours after the contact’s last message. Once it closes, DMLY blocks the send — this is Meta’s rule, enforced on our side too, so there’s no workaround in the reply box. To re-engage, send an approved template. See WhatsApp limits.

Messenger or Instagram: the 7-day window has closed

You can reply for 7 days after the contact’s last message. After that, you can only message again once they send something new. Replying to a public Comment is not subject to this — the window applies to DMs.

The contact is blocked

Blocked contacts hide the reply box entirely and the block is enforced on the server, so nothing gets through. Use Unblock contact in the details panel to message again.

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Working as a team

The Inbox assumes several people are in it at once, so a few things happen without you asking:

• Replying assigns the conversation to you. The conversation follows whoever answered it last — so if a teammate replies to a chat assigned to you, it becomes theirs, quietly. Worth knowing before you wonder where your queue went. See assigning chats.
• You can see when a teammate is typing. Above the reply box you’ll see <name> is typing… on every channel, so two people don’t answer the same message. If the contact is typing, that takes precedence in the display.
• Notes and @mentions are for the team. Internal notes in the details panel are never sent to the contact, and mentioning a teammate pings them. See notes and collaboration.

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Taking over from the bot

If an automation is handling a conversation and you want to step in, select Pause bot (human takeover) in the details panel. That stops every automated reply on that conversation — flows, sequences, AI, auto-replies — while leaving you free to type normally. Resume bot hands it back. Some things pause the bot for you: an AI agent handing over to a human, a flow with a handover step, and blocking a contact all set it.

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New messages and sound

When real-time updates are available, a chime plays for each inbound message. It’s on by default and you can mute it from the Inbox — the setting is per browser, so muting on your laptop doesn’t mute your colleague’s. The Inbox updates live. If real-time updates aren’t available on your setup it falls back to refreshing every few seconds, so messages still arrive without you reloading the page — but they arrive silently, with no chime.

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Who can see the Inbox

The Inbox is a permission-gated area — a role without the Inbox module doesn’t see it in the sidebar at all. A teammate may also see a contact’s phone number and email masked rather than in full, so what they see may be less than what you see.

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