A shared inbox gathers the conversations of many channels into one list that a whole team works from. A message on Instagram, an email and a WhatsApp chat sit side by side; whoever answers does it in the same place, and the reply goes back on the channel the customer used.
What it is made of
- Inboxes: one per connected channel. A WhatsApp number, a Telegram bot, a mailbox and a website chat are four inboxes of one account.
- Contacts: the people who write, each with the addresses they write from.
- Conversations: one thread with one contact in one inbox, open, pending, snoozed or resolved.
- Messages: a customer's, your team's reply, or a private note that only the team sees.
- Labels, teams and assignments: how a team decides who answers what.
Each organization gets an inbox account of its own, made the first time it is needed. Everything else in the Inbox API acts on that account only, and you never name it: a call that tries to is refused.
The installed app has an Inbox screen built on the same account: a member signs in, sees every channel's conversations, replies, adds a private note, assigns a conversation to a colleague, labels it and resolves it, and can have the phone ring when a customer writes.
Questions people ask
Can an AI agent answer from the shared inbox?
Yes. The Inbox API's AI agent is an MCP server at /inbox/mcp, and the all-in-one agent at /mcp carries it beside every other API. In a project room, an AI agent of your own can be given it under Can use.
Does the inbox take a seat?
Its account counts like a WhatsApp number or a LinkedIn account: your seats are whichever of those you have most of. The trial's one seat covers it unless a room already uses another inbox account.