Chat Notifications and Teams

Notifications make sure someone hears about a conversation even when nobody has the inbox open. Alerts go to teams, such as Support and Sales, and each team has its own Slack channel and email addresses. Set them up under Inbox, then Messenger settings, then Notifications.

Teams

Every conversation is routed to one team, and all of its alerts go to that team. Each team has:

Field	What it's for
Team name	For example "Support" or "Sales". Shown in alerts and in the inbox.
Which conversations belong to this team	A short description the AI uses to route conversations, for example "Prospects: pricing, plans, demos, trials, comparisons".
Always for these pages	Optional page paths, such as `/pricing/*` or `/request-a-demo/`. Chats started there always go to this team.
Slack channel	Where this team's alerts post. Test sends a test message.
Email alerts to	This team's email addresses. Test sends a test email.
Reply-to on emails to visitors	For example `sales@example.com`, so replies to follow-up emails reach this team

The first team is the default. Click Add a team to add more.

How a conversation finds its team

If it started from a proactive message that names a team, it goes to that team.
Otherwise, the first team whose pages match the page the chat started on.
Otherwise, the AI reads the visitor's first message and picks the team whose description fits best.
If none of these decide, it goes to the first team.

A teammate can move a conversation to another team from the inbox. Its later alerts then go to the new team.

Connecting Slack

Slack alerts use your project's Slack connection. Connect Slack in your project's Settings, then pick a channel for each team. Public channels work straight away. For a private channel, invite the HelpGuides app to it first.

When alerts are sent

Setting	Default	What it does
Alert when a new chat starts	On	Every new conversation, with the visitor's first message, even while the AI is answering
Alert when a conversation needs a person	On	When the AI hands off, or the visitor asks for someone
Alert when a visitor writes to the team	On	When a visitor writes in a conversation waiting for, or assigned to, a person. At most once every 10 minutes per conversation.
Only when nobody is online in the inbox	On	Skips the alert above while a teammate is Available in the inbox

Each Slack alert shows who the visitor is, what happened, their latest message and the page they're on, with an Open in inbox button.

Emailing visitors

When a teammate replies and the visitor hasn't seen it after a few minutes (3 by default), the reply is emailed to them, if they gave an email. The email includes a link that reopens the chat on the page they were on. Set the wait time and a default reply-to address in the same section. Replies to these emails go to your reply-to address. They don't come back into the chat.