Find and read a conversation

Conversations is the shared WhatsApp inbox for your workspace. Every message your connected numbers receive lands here, so whoever is free can pick a chat up instead of it sitting unread on one person’s phone.

This page is about getting to the right chat and reading it. For answering one — text, photos, voice notes, templates — see Reply to a customer.

Open the inbox and read a chat

Open Conversations

In the sidebar, under Messaging, click Conversations.

On a phone, tap Menu in the bottom bar, then Messaging → Conversations.

Eight grey placeholder rows appear while the inbox loads, then fill with your chats. The list is one flat run sorted by whoever messaged most recently — there are no date headings to scroll past. New messages arrive live, and the list refreshes itself every 30 seconds on top of that, so you can leave it open.

The three controls above the list are, left to right, the owner filter, the number filter and search

Open the chat you need

Click a row. On a wide screen the chat fills the pane on the right; on a phone it takes over the whole screen, and the chevron at the top left goes back to the list.

Opening a chat marks it read, so the count on the row clears straight away. Inside the chat, a tinted <n> unread rule marks where you left off — it is the last place to look before that count disappears. Load older, above the oldest message, pulls in more history, and once you have scrolled away from the newest message a round button appears at the bottom right to jump you back to the latest.

Check the header before you answer

The header is the whole context for the chat, left to right:

• the contact’s name, then their number on a wide pane, then via and the name of your number this chat is on
• on a wide pane, a clock and 3h left — but only when the 24-hour reply window has three hours or less to run
• a stack of up to three owner photos, closed by a dashed +. Hover it for Owner: and the name, or Assign an owner when nobody owns them yet
• a magnifier that searches inside this one chat
• last of all, at the far right, the button that opens the contact’s record

The owner stack and its dashed + are on the right, next to the search magnifier and the record button

Open the contact’s record

Click the record button at the right of the header — its tooltip reads View Leads details, or your own database’s name if you have renamed it. On a wide screen the record opens as a panel beside the chat, and the same button closes it again.

Once the panel is open it follows you: move down the list and it refills with each contact you land on, which is the fastest way to work a call list. It is never opened for you — you open it once, yourself.

On a narrow window, and on a phone, there is no room for a panel beside the chat, so the record opens as a drawer that covers the list instead. Same button, same behaviour, different surface.

If the contact has no record yet, that far-right button is a + instead, tooltip Add to Leads, and it opens the usual add form with their name, their phone and a WhatsApp source already filled in. It is not the dashed + in the owner stack further left — that one assigns an owner.

Hand a chat to a colleague

Click the owner photos in the chat header — or the dashed + when nobody owns the contact yet. The form that opens is the same one your database uses for assigning.

• It opens with nobody ticked. It does not show you who already owns the contact; the stack of photos you just clicked is the only place that is shown. Pick who should own it from the list.
• The fields that move across with the record start fully ticked. Untick anything the new owner should not get.
• If you already own this contact there is a toggle for keeping it. Leave it on to stay an owner alongside them; turn it off to hand the contact over completely and come off the record yourself.

A confirmation names who it went to. Picking somebody who already owns the contact is not an error — you get This lead is already owned by the selected member(s), so nothing was assigned. and nothing changes. If it is taking a moment, Assignment is processing in the background — the new owner will show shortly. means it is on its way.

The control is only in the header when your role includes Lead Distribution and the contact already has a record. If it is missing altogether, add them to your database first with the + at the far right of the header.

Work the list from the keyboard

On a desktop, three keys do most of the work. They are ignored while you are typing in a field and while a menu or dialog is open, and they do nothing on a phone.

Enter does nothing at all when that contact has no record yet, or when the window is too narrow to dock a panel beside the chat. Both are silent — nothing is broken.

Narrow a long list

By owner

Click the owner chip above the list — the leftmost one — and tick the people whose chats you want. The menu is headed Filter by owner, with Select all and Clear in the corner and a Search owner field if your team is long. Unassigned sits at the top, under No owner assigned; every teammate below carries their email, so two people with the same first name can still be told apart.

The chip itself says what is on: Anyone when nothing is filtered out (the default), Me for your own chats, a teammate’s name when you pick one person, Unassigned, All assigned, or No one when you have unticked everybody. Clear takes you back to Me.

Not in database sits at the bottom of the same menu, under the team list

One thing worth knowing, because it looks like a fault: pick exactly one teammate and the filter covers your whole inbox — scroll as far as you like and it keeps paging. Pick Unassigned on its own, or two or more people, and the filter only narrows the chats already loaded, so more matches keep appearing as you scroll further down.

By number

Click the number chip — the one directly right of the owner chip — and pick one of your numbers, or All numbers to see them all. The chip shows the number’s name; the digits are the second line in the dropdown. With no numbers connected, the chip is not there at all.

Contacts with no record

At the bottom of the owner menu is a separate lens: Not in database, subtitled Contacts with no record yet, with a count beside it. Turn it on to see only the people messaging you who are not in your database — the ones worth adding.

It cannot be combined with an owner filter. Turning it on clears the owner selection, because a contact with no record cannot have an owner and the two together would always come back empty. Like the partial owner filters above, it narrows the chats already loaded rather than asking the server for more.

Nothing left in the list

With filters on and nothing matching, the list reads Nothing matches, No conversations in this view — try a different owner or number., with a Clear filters button.

Search the whole inbox

Press / or click the round magnifier chip at the right of that same row. The chip turns into a field in place, with the placeholder Search name, phone or message. How much gets searched depends on how much you type:

Results arrive in two groups, Contacts and Messages — the line beneath them says what is being searched at the length you have typed so far

Results come back in two labelled groups, Contacts and Messages. A message hit shows the matching text; if the match came from a voice note, you see its transcript with a captions glyph. Click any hit to open that contact’s chat.

Search is a capped one-shot, not a list you can scroll for more. When there are more matches than fit, a line reads More contacts match — refine your search. or More messages match — refine your search. Add a word rather than scrolling. Nothing matching at all reads No results.

Closing the search clears it. A hidden query must never keep filtering the list, so closing the field and pressing Esc in it both clear the query as well. While there is still a query in it, the field stays open on its own.

Search inside one chat

The magnifier in the chat header searches that one conversation instead of the inbox. Type at least two characters into Search in this conversation and a counter beside it reads which hit you are on out of how many — 0/0 when there are none. The previous and next arrows only appear once there is something to step through.

If a hit is older than the part of the chat that is loaded, a message reads Older result — load more messages to reach it. Press Load older until you have paged back far enough, then search again.

What a row is telling you

The delivery marks, by the names you hear or see on hover:

The same contact on two of your numbers

If somebody has written to two of your numbers, those are two separate chats. The small count with a caret under their avatar in the list is the total number of your numbers they are on; the via menu in the header shows a + and the number of other ones. A contact on two of your numbers therefore shows 2 in the list and +1 in the header. Both are right — they are counting different things.

Click either one to switch to the chat on that number. Each entry names the number and carries its own unread count, and the badge turns blue when one of the other numbers has something waiting.

Message someone new

You do not have to wait for a customer to write first.

1. Click New Conversation in the top bar. On a phone, tap New in the band above the list.
2. In From, choose which of your numbers to send from. This only appears when you have more than one — with a single number, the caption underneath tells you which one will send.
3. In To, type their number with the country code, in the shape of the placeholder 60123456789.
4. Click Start conversation, or press Enter.

No message box, on purpose — the first message to a new contact has to be a template, and the composer handles that

If that person has messaged you before, this opens the conversation you already have with them rather than starting a blank one, and says so: You already have a conversation with this contact - opening it.

For a genuinely new contact, the chat opens with the composer in template-only mode: WhatsApp only allows an approved template as the first message to somebody who has not written to you in the last 24 hours. See Send a template.

If something looks wrong

Next

• Reply to a customerEverything you can send from a chat in Conversations — a typed reply, a photo→
• Work in Table viewTable view is the spreadsheet-style list: one row per contact, one column per→
• Keyboard shortcutsRaion Hub is built to be driven from the keyboard.→