Inbox automation: saved replies, triggers and live translation
Answer faster in the intoCHAT inbox: saved replies with variables, triggers that tag, prioritise, answer and notify on their own, and live translation of chats for your team.
Three tools help your team handle conversations that reach a person:
- Saved replies: answers you give often, inserted in the reply box with
/and filled in for the visitor. - Triggers: rules that tag, prioritise, answer or notify when something happens in the inbox.
- Live translation: each team member reads visitors' messages in their own language and replies in it, while the visitor gets the reply in theirs.
Saved replies are under Settings, Saved replies. Triggers and live translation are under Settings, Inbox automation, together with satisfaction emails.
| Free | Starter | Pro | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saved replies | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Triggers | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Live translation | No | No | Yes | Yes |
On a plan without a feature, its card says which plans include it. What you set up is kept: saved replies work again and triggers run again after an upgrade.
Saved replies
Add a saved reply
- Go to Settings, Saved replies and click Add a saved reply.
- Give it a Title, for example "Refund policy".
- Optionally add a Shortcut, for example
refund: letters, digits,-and_, up to 30 characters, unique in the account. - Write the Text, up to 4,000 characters. Click a variable under the text box to add it.
- Optionally choose what happens after the reply is sent: set status to Open, Pending or Solved, and add tags (comma-separated, up to 5).
- Switch on Share with the team to make it everyone's, then click Save.
Variables
| Variable | Filled with |
|---|---|
{{visitor.name}} | The visitor's name: from identity verification, otherwise from the lead saved in the conversation |
{{visitor.email}} | The visitor's email: verified identity, then the conversation's lead, then the address they gave for a hand-off |
{{agent.name}} | The agent's name |
{{member.name}} | The first name of the team member inserting the reply |
Add a fallback after a bar for when the value is unknown: Hi {{visitor.name|there}}, reads "Hi there," for a visitor without a name. Without a fallback, an unknown value is left out. Anything else in double braces, such as {{order.number}}, is inserted exactly as written, and the editor warns you about it.
Use a saved reply
In the live chat reply box, on the Live chat page or in the Inbox, type /, at the start of the box or after a space. A list of saved replies opens, and what you type next filters it: an exact shortcut comes first, then shortcuts starting with what you typed, then replies whose title or text contains every word. Use the arrow keys to choose, and Enter or Tab to insert. Esc closes the list. The Saved replies button next to the box opens the same list with a search field.
The reply replaces what you typed after /, with its variables filled for this conversation. Nothing is sent: edit the text if you like and send it as usual. A reply's follow-up (status and tags) runs after you send, and counts as your change, so it can start triggers.
Shared and personal replies
- Shared replies are the whole team's. Creating, editing or deleting one needs Manage on Conversations & live chat on all agents: the owner and admins, or a custom role with that level.
- Personal replies are only yours. Anyone who can reply to conversations (Editor and up) can keep them. Nobody else sees them.
An account can keep up to 500 saved replies.
Triggers
A trigger runs actions when an event happens on a conversation that is in the inbox and all of its conditions hold. Open Settings, Inbox automation and click Add a trigger.
Events
| Event | When |
|---|---|
| Conversation enters the inbox | A visitor asks for a person, or the conversation is passed to the team |
| Status changes | Someone, or a saved reply's follow-up, sets the conversation open, pending, snoozed or solved |
| Visitor sends a message | Each new visitor message in a conversation that is in the inbox |
| Tag is added | A team member or a saved reply's follow-up adds a tag |
| No team reply after a wait | The visitor has waited the set time without an answer from a person |
Conditions
All conditions must hold. A trigger without conditions runs on every event of its kind.
| Condition | Compares |
|---|---|
| Agent | The AI agent the conversation is with (is / is not) |
| Assigned to | The teammate it is assigned to, or Unassigned (is / is not) |
| Channel | Website widget, Slack or Email (is / is not) |
| Tag | The conversation's tags (has any of / has none of), ignoring upper and lower case |
| Priority | Low, normal, high or urgent (is / is not) |
| Status | Open, pending, snoozed or solved (is / is not). A snooze that ran out counts as open |
| Visitor message | Words or phrases in the visitor's message (contains any of / contains none of): the message that started the trigger, or their latest one. Whole words only, ignoring case: "refund" doesn't match "refunding" |
| Waiting for a team reply | The visitor has waited at least this many minutes since their latest message, with no reply from a person after it |
A No team reply after a wait trigger needs a Waiting for a team reply condition: it sets the wait, from 1 minute to 7 days.
Actions
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Add tag, Remove tag | Changes the conversation's tags |
| Set priority | Low, normal, high or urgent |
| Set status | Open, pending or solved |
| Send a message to the visitor | Adds your message to the conversation, with the saved reply variables filled in ({{member.name}} is the assigned teammate's first name, or "Team"). Website widget conversations only |
| Notify by email | Emails the account owner or the assigned teammate, with the trigger's name, the agent, the visitor's latest message and a link to the conversation. A teammate gets it only while they are on the team and can see that agent's conversations |
| Notify in Slack | Posts the same to the agent's Slack channel, if Slack alerts are connected |
A message sent by a trigger appears in the chat window as a message from the agent, exactly as you wrote it. The visitor sees it the next time their chat window loads the conversation, for example when they reload the page, or within seconds while the window is checking for messages from your team (see Live chat).
Order and loops
- Triggers run top to bottom in the order on the settings page. Use the arrows to change it. Each trigger sees the changes the ones above it made: a trigger that adds the tag
viplets a later trigger with the condition Tag has any of vip run in the same go. - A trigger's own changes never start triggers again. A trigger that solves a conversation doesn't run your Status changes triggers, and one that adds a tag doesn't run your Tag is added triggers.
- One event runs at most 10 actions in total, across all triggers. Actions past the tenth are skipped.
- A trigger that solves a conversation still sends the satisfaction email, if it is on.
- Triggers run only for conversations in the inbox, not for chats the AI handles alone.
When "No team reply" triggers run
intoCHAT checks for waits that have run out once a day for every account, and every 2 minutes for your account while someone has the inbox open, at most once a minute. So a 15-minute wait runs at the first check after 15 minutes, which can be later than 15 minutes when nobody has the inbox open. Each trigger runs once per wait: it can run again after the visitor writes again and waits again.
Who can change triggers
Everyone in the account can see the triggers. Creating, changing, reordering, switching on or off and deleting them needs Manage on Conversations & live chat on all agents: the owner and admins, or a custom role with that level. Every change is in the audit log. An account can have up to 50 triggers, each with up to 10 conditions and 10 actions. Emails from triggers are limited to 60 an hour per account.
Live translation
Live translation works in live chats, on the Live chat page (Live chat) and in the Inbox. The Translate switch is also in the conversation's header there. Each team member switches it on for themselves:
- Go to Settings, Inbox automation.
- Under Live translation (just for you), choose Your language and switch on Translate.
The setting is yours, in every account you work in. It needs the Editor role or above.
What you see
- Visitor messages in another language show a translation under the original, labelled "Translated from" and the language. Messages already in your language show no translation.
- Your replies: write in your language. Before your reply is sent, it is translated into the visitor's language. The conversation shows both versions to the team: the visitor's version, and under it what you wrote, labelled "Written in" your language, "sent in" the visitor's.
- When the visitor writes in your language, your reply is sent exactly as you wrote it.
What the visitor sees
Only their language. The visitor's chat window, the transcript they load and the agent's later answers all use the translated reply; what you wrote in your language stays with your team.
If a reply can't be translated at that moment, nothing is sent and you see "Your reply couldn't be translated right now". Try again, or switch translation off to send it as written.
Good to know
- Translations are made by AI and stored with the message, so a message isn't translated again while your team reads in the same language. When teammates read in different languages, each one's view translates the message into theirs again.
- The visitor's language is detected from their messages.
- Translations don't use your plan's messages. Each person can make up to 300 translation requests an hour.
- Live translation covers live chat replies. A saved reply you insert in the reply box is translated with the rest of your reply when you send it. Trigger messages are sent as written, and replies in Slack or email conversations aren't translated.
Next steps
- Ask visitors how it went after a conversation is solved: Satisfaction emails.
- Take over chats from the AI: Live chat.
- Decide who can manage automation: Team members and roles.