How To Get Started With Social Inbox

Social Inbox is a unified inbox of all of your Twitter and Facebook Page direct messages. It allows you to keep an eye on your incoming messages as you’re managing your other social media tasks in SmarterQueue, so you can deliver responses quickly and keep your customers happy 🙌

Read more tips on how to use Social Inbox and what's new on our blog!

Video Walkthrough

What Is Social Inbox?

Social Inbox is a feature that allows you to view and respond to direct messages on Facebook Pages and Twitter Profiles.

This means that you no longer have to jump between Facebook and Twitter to respond to messages - Save time by conveniently and easily handling and replying all from within SmarterQueue 💪

How To Get Started & Add Profiles To Social Inbox

To get started with Social Inbox, you'll first need to connect your desired Social Profiles. Please note that adding Profiles to Inbox is done separately after adding a Profile to SmarterQueue. You can learn more about how to add or remove Social Profiles from SmarterQueue here. To learn how to then connect your Profiles to Inbox, read on, and follow these easy steps! 💪

1. Navigate to the ' Inbox' section of SmarterQueue then click the green 'Get Started' button

2. You'll then see a screen of all Twitter Profiles and Facebook Pages that are available to connect to Inbox (you won't see Instagram Profiles, Facebook Groups, or LinkedIn Profiles as these aren't yet an option to connect)

Note: If you don't see your Twitter Profile or Facebook Page here, then you'll first need to add it to SmarterQueue! If the Profile is already connected, you may need to refresh the connection or edit your Facebook Business Integration settings.

3. Click the plus sign next to the Profile you'd like to connect to add it to Inbox

4. As you add Profiles, you'll see the list of available and connected Profiles update. Once you've added all the Profiles you'd like, click 'Done'

5. You'll then see a list of all of your most recent messages organized by Profile 🎉

Note: If you aren't seeing some of your older Twitter direct messages, please note that Twitter doesn't let us fetch messages that were over 30 days old when you connected your Profile.

Viewing Messages

After you've connected your Profiles to Inbox, you can then view and reply to messages all from within SmarterQueue! Inbox automatically checks for new messages, so you'll always have the latest!

1. Switch between Profiles using the drop-down menu on the left pane. You can choose to view messages for 'All Profiles' or narrow your view to a single Profile

2. Conversations with new messages are shown at the top in bold and marked with a green dot

Note: Inbox automatically checks for new messages, so there's no need to refresh your browser.

When you have new messages, you'll also notice a red badge icon number on the Inbox tab at the top of your SmarterQueue navigation menu

3. To view a message, click on the message card. You can see which conversation you're viewing by the blue bar on the left-hand side as well as the blue background in the left pane.

4. If there is a long history of messages, then you can scroll up to " Load older messages" and click to fetch another page of messages. You can keep scrolling up and clicking until all of the oldest messages available inside of Inbox are fetched.

5. From the left pane, you can see a preview of each conversation including the name of your Profile that received a message, who sent the message, as well as a preview of the message.

In this example, Smart Fabrics (a customer) sent a message to SmartCoLtd (a Profile connected inside of SmarterQueue) saying "Amazing! Are you open on weekends? 🤔"

6. From the right pane, you can see more detailed information about each conversation. Messages received are shown on the left while messages sent are shown on the right.

Here we can see more clearly that our connected Profile @SmartCoLtd is sending a reply to @SmartFabrics_

💡 For Twitter messages, click the username of who you're responding to and view their profile in a new tab! This is handy to check more details about who has contacted you before replying. Please note this isn't available for Facebook users.

Responding To Messages

To respond to your messages follow this simple guide. We also recommend saving a bookmark for Social Inbox on your smartphone so you can quickly and easily respond to messages on the fly from your mobile phone!

1. To respond to a message, select the conversation then type your response in the reply area. You can add line breaks by hitting enter - rest assured this won't send your message 😊

💡 Use the emoji keyboard to easily add emojis to your reply!

2. When you're done composing your message, click 'Submit'

3. When responding to Facebook messages, keep in mind that Facebook currently only allows you to send a reply within 24 hours of receiving a message from a customer. This is to prevent companies from sending repeated marketing messages without permission.

We recommend aiming to reply to customers as soon as possible to provide a better customer experience. As a bonus, if you regularly reply within 15 minutes, you'll also earn Facebook's "very responsive" badge on your Page 💪

Please note that Facebook messages should show up in Social Inbox within 5 seconds of the message being sent and your reply will appear immediately in the recipient's Facebook Messenger inbox.

4. When responding to Twitter messages, due to restrictions with Twitter's API, there is a 2-3 minute delay for third-party tools when checking messages, so it may take 2-3 minutes before a new Twitter DM appears in your Social Inbox. That said, your reply will appear immediately in the recipient's Twitter DM inbox. ✨

5. Got any feedback? Click the green 'Send Feedback' button to open a line to our Customer Success team and let your voice be heard! At SmarterQueue, we're always looking for ways to improve your experience 😊

How To Use Snippets To Save Common Replies

When responding to direct messages using Inbox, speed up your workflow by saving your most common replies as Snippets!

All of your existing saved Snippets are also available, so you can create prepared responses for your most common questions, saving you from typing the same replies over and over!

1. To access and create Snippets, click the clipboard icon inside of the reply area of a conversation

2. In the pop-up that appears, you can then access and add any of your existing Snippets or create a new Snippet

3. Create new Snippets for all of your most frequently asked questions and replies so you don't have to type them out over and over!

4. Once you've created a Snippet, you'll see it appear in your library of saved replies and can quickly add it to your responses 😊

How To Manage Your Connected Profiles

1. If ever you'd like to add or remove Profiles from Inbox, you can do so by clicking 'Manage Social Profiles'

2. You can then click the 'x' next to any Profile to remove it, or the '+' next to any available Profile to add it

Note: If you remove a Profile, you'll see a pop-up confirmation like the one below confirming that you'll no longer be able to send or receive messages within SmarterQueue. Your existing messages will still be stored for 30 days. Though you may remove a Profile from Inbox, it will still be connected to SmarterQueue for publishing and analytics.

3. You may need to re-connect your Profiles if ever they become disconnected. If this happens you may see the following error on a particular conversation thread:

Or this note on a conversation thread:

Or this 'Profile Disconnected' error inside of the Manage Social Profiles page:

Or this indication that your Profile is disconnected from the Profile selector:

4. To re-connect your Profile, click the green arrows button on the 'Manage Social Profiles' page then follow the prompts in the pop-ups that appear for the particular Profile. For more information on what this looks like for Facebook, check out this helpful article on re-authorizing your Business Integrations.

Common Questions

How can I send an image, GIF, or video in my response?

At the moment, while you can view and receive media, you can only send text replies. If you'd also like the ability to send media, get in touch and let us know your feedback!

Why can't I see the profile image for people who wrote to my Facebook Page?

At the moment, only Twitter allows us to show the profile photo for the person in the conversation. Facebook, however, doesn't allow this, so instead the user's initials are shown.

How long can my replies be on Facebook and Twitter? Is there a limit on the number of characters?

Twitter allows for 10,000 characters in direct messages.

Facebook also allows for significantly long messages though doesn't specify the exact limit.

What is the format for timestamps and dates?

We show timestamps in this format 01:23 if you receive a message today.

We show an abbreviation of the day of the week, ex. Thu, if you received the message this week.

We show the date in this format 23 Feb if you received the message this year and 31/12/2019 if it's before this year.

Can I respond to group chats using Inbox?

At the moment, it's not possible to create a group chat with a Facebook Page. You also won't be able to view and respond to Twitter group chats using Inbox.

Why are some of my Facebook messages in yellow?

If your messages are showing in yellow, you may also see the error that "this message has been temporarily removed." If your messages show in yellow and the recipient shows as "Facebook User" rather than their name, this likely means that their profile has been removed or suspended.

My Facebook Page is missing when I try to add it to Inbox. How can I fix this?

You may need to edit your Facebook Business Integration settings to grant access to Pages if you don't see your Facebook Page when trying to add it to Inbox. To do so, please follow the steps in this article: My Facebook Page Or Group Is Missing When I Try To Add It