An inbox stops being useful the moment it is too long to scroll. The tools for narrowing it live along the top and left of Sohay → Conversations.
Searching
The search box matches the text of the messages themselves, not just titles.
Searching for refund finds every conversation where somebody used the word,
whoever said it.
That makes it a reporting tool as much as a lookup one. Searching for a product name shows you every conversation it came up in; searching for a phrase you know the chatbot uses when it is stuck shows you your Knowledge Base gaps.
The views
The sidebar holds the standing views — the whole inbox, unassigned conversations, and the ones assigned to you. If human handoff is switched on, two more appear:
- Waiting for a Person — visitors waiting right now, oldest first.
- Handled by a Person — every conversation somebody on the team has been in, including finished ones.
Waiting for a Person is a queue, not a list. It deliberately ignores pinning, so nothing can jump ahead of somebody who has been waiting longer. Every other view is a list you can order as you like.
Filtering by status
Conversations are open or closed. The default view hides closed ones, which is almost always what you want — closing is how you say “dealt with”, and a view that keeps showing you dealt-with things trains you to ignore it.
Sorting
Sort by most recent activity or by when the conversation started. Recent activity is the better default: a conversation from last week that a visitor just added to is more urgent than one that started this morning and stopped.
Pinned conversations stay at the top of any view that respects pinning.
A workflow that holds up
The routine that works for most teams:
- Start on Unassigned, sorted by recent activity.
- Assign anything that needs a person to that person.
- Close everything the assistant handled correctly.
- Once a week, search for the phrases the chatbot uses when it does not know, and write the articles those point at.
Step four is the one people skip, and it is the one that actually reduces the volume in steps one to three.
Where to go next
Assigning, pinning and closing conversations.
