Introduction

The WhatsApp Team Inbox is the shared inbox where your team answers customers. On a busy store it fills up fast — several hundred conversations is normal — and two things used to make it hard to work in. Finding an older chat meant scrolling the list until you spotted it, and the bar above an open conversation showed the seller name, which is the same on every chat and tells you nothing about who you are talking to.

This release fixes both. The chat list now has a search box that matches on the customer name, the phone number and the text inside the messages, so you can find a conversation from anything you remember about it. The open chat now shows the customer name at the top, and an Assigned to dropdown lets you hand the conversation to a named staff member so that person owns the reply.

This article shows you where the Team Inbox lives, how to search it, how to narrow it with the chat filters, how to read the chat header, how to assign a conversation to a staff member, and where the list of assignable people comes from.

What's New in the Team Inbox

•   Search by name, phone or message content — one box at the top of the chat list matches all three. It filters as you type; there is no Search button.

•   Customer name in the chat header — the bar above an open conversation now names the customer instead of the seller.

•   Assign a chat to a staff user — an Assigned to dropdown in the right-hand panel gives the conversation a named owner.

•   A personal queue for each person — the Assigned to me filter shows a staff member only the chats that were handed to them.

Before You Begin

•   Your WhatsApp Business API account must be approved and connected to AiTrillion. The Team Inbox only fills once a sender number is connected and customers have messaged it.

•   You need at least one staff user on the account. The Assigned to dropdown is built from your staff list, so with nobody added there is nobody to assign to.

•   Staff users need the WhatsApp Marketing module enabled on their profile, otherwise the Team inbox menu does not appear for them.

Step 1: Open the Team Inbox

Every conversation that arrives on your connected WhatsApp number lands here, for the whole team — not only for the person who sent the last campaign. A green counter beside the menu entry shows how many conversations are unread.

Figure 1: Expand WhatsApp Marketing and open Team inbox.

The inbox opens in three columns: the chat list on the left, the selected conversation in the middle, and the contact panel on the right.

Step 2: Search for a Chat by Name, Phone or Message

At the top of the chat list is the search box, labelled Search name, phone or message. Type into it and the list filters as you type.

Figure 2: The search box sits at the top of the chat list.

You can search on any of three things:

1.   Customer name — a full name or just part of one.

2.   Phone number — the number the customer messages you from.

3.   Message content — words from inside the conversation, such as invoice, refund or an order number.

Searching on message content is the one worth remembering. If a customer wrote “my order arrived broken” three weeks ago, typing “broken” finds that chat immediately — even if you never knew their name.

 

Figure 4: The chat filters, opened from the All chats header.

•   All chats — everything in the inbox. This is the default.

•   Active chats — conversations still inside the 24-hour WhatsApp session window, where you can reply with a free-form message.

•   Expired chats — conversations where that window has closed. You can still re-engage these, but only with an approved template.

•   Unread Chats — anything nobody on the team has opened yet.

•   Assigned to me — the conversations handed to you. This is the other half of the assignment feature.

•   Hold chats — conversations parked on hold rather than open or solved.

•   AI Bot — conversations currently being handled by the bot instead of a person.

•   Last 24 hours — recent activity only.

Step 4: Identify the Customer from the Chat Header

Click a conversation to open it, then look at the bar above the messages. It now shows the customer name and their availability, where it used to show the seller name.

Figure 5: The chat header names the customer you are talking to.

To the right of the header are Hand back to bot, which returns the conversation to the AI bot, and an expand icon that widens the conversation pane. With the customer named here, you always know which of several open conversations you are replying to.

Step 5: Assign the Chat to a Staff Member

In the right-hand panel, under Conversation, open the Assigned to dropdown and choose a staff user. The change saves immediately — there is no separate save button.

                     

Figure 6: Assigned to, in the Conversation section of the contact panel.

Directly beneath it is Status, which can be set to Open, Hold or Solved. The two controls answer different questions, so use both: assignment says who is handling this, status says where it stands.

Once a conversation is assigned, the owner finds it under the Assigned to me filter from Step 3, and the rest of the team can see at a glance that it is already being handled.

Note: The customer’s phone number has been blurred in the screenshot above for privacy. Your own contact panel will show it in full.

Step 6: Check Who Is Available to Assign

The Assigned to list is built from your staff accounts. To see or extend it, open the account menu from the avatar in the top-right corner and choose Staff users.

Figure 7: Staff accounts — the people who can be assigned a conversation.

 Each row shows a Full name and Email, a Created date and a Status badge. The names here are exactly what appears in the Assigned to dropdown, and only Active users can be assigned a conversation. Use + Add user to add someone new.

Working the Inbox Day to Day

You are looking for one specific conversation

Leave the filter on All chats and search on whatever you remember — a name, a number, or a phrase from the message. Search is the fastest route when you know what you are after.

You are working through your own queue

Set the filter to Assigned to me and leave it there. You then see only the conversations that are yours, and the search box searches inside that set.

You are triaging the whole inbox

Use Unread Chats to see what nobody has picked up, then assign each one to a staff member so it leaves the unclaimed pile and lands in somebody’s queue.

The conversation needs somebody else

Change Assigned to to the right person and leave Status on Open. Re-assigning is how a chat is handed over — there is no separate transfer action.

Important Notes

Note: Assigning a chat does not notify the customer. It is an internal ownership marker only.

Note: Assigning a chat does not reopen the 24-hour WhatsApp session window. If the window has expired, the new owner still has to re-engage with an approved template.

Note: Only Active staff users appear in the Assigned to dropdown. Deactivating a user removes them from it.

Note: Search and the chat filters work together. A search only looks inside the filter that is currently applied.

Troubleshooting

Search returns nothing

Check the filter above the search box. If it is set to Active chats or Assigned to me, you are searching inside that subset — switch back to All chats and search again. On a multi-number account, also check the All numbers dropdown.

A staff member is missing from the Assigned to list

Open Staff users from the account menu. The person must exist there and their status must be Active.

The chat header still shows the old name

Hard-refresh the page with Ctrl + F5. The inbox is a single-page app, and a tab left open from before the release can still be running the previous build.

The assigned person cannot see the conversation

Their profile needs the WhatsApp Marketing module enabled, otherwise the Team inbox menu never appears for them.

The chat list is empty

No WhatsApp sender is connected to the account yet, or no customer has messaged it. Open WhatsApp Marketing › Settings and use Request for WhatsApp Sender.

Next ⏭️

•   WhatsApp Failed Message Auto-Retry

•   Enable the Connect on WhatsApp Button for AI Bot Fallback Messages

•   Test a WhatsApp Message Before Sending