Ytel customers have access to Ytel Inbox!

Use this Ytel feature to see and respond to conversations generated by inbound SMS communications.

As we continue to release new and improved functionality that enriches customer communications, we’re offering our customers a preview into the future of interactive SMS engagements between customers and organizations. We call that future Ytel Inbox.

Even if the SMS message isn’t intended to evoke a response, Ytel Inbox allows you to respond to the inevitable enquiry, comment or other elements of feedback customers are sending. It also allows you to capture and respond to texted communications sent to a number(s) used for voice communications, normally lost forever.

The inbox holds a history of conversations and interactions. It will show SMS message, RCS messages voicemails, calls histories and any third part event that is pushed into the conversation API. With this history you can see what is going on with the global conversation around this customer and specific contact across multiple types of communication channels.

Feature sets include the ability to

• use the global inbox by default for all users.
• send and receive sms messages from free form text or a predefined template and see what the message count looks like
• see messages that other uses have sent in the global inbox
• start a new SMS conversation
• add a contact to the do not contact list
• single click a contact phone number to call out using the webphone
• assign a dedicated inbox to a user(s)
• assign a dedicated inbox phone number(s) for use for a specific user
• search based on message body to quickly retrieve a conversation where you forgot the name
• open and close conversations for a clear view of action items

Begin by reviewing our article on A2P 10DLC - registration of your Brand and Campaign(s) is required

Setting up Inbox

There are a few strategies you can deploy with inbox based on what you are setting up for your company team.

Team of 1-5

If you are a team of one to five people you may choose to work together out of the same global inbox. Here you can responding to a message - Know what messages were read, responded or unread with the Message panel. Simply click ‘Messages’ and craft a response. You can see when other users are typing, so that you don't step on each others toes. Closing Conversations - Focus on the conversations that need attention. Mark conversations as closed and reopened when needed. Filtering conversations is an easy way to revisit the communications that need the most action and attention.

Teams over 5 

In inbox you have the ability to set up individual inboxes per a user or a workgroup of users. You will create your inbox per user, assign that user or users to the inbox to work out of and then create a routing to assign what messages are allowed to be seen and sent to that inbox.

Create an Inbox

From app.ytel.com navigate to Inbox and then in the top right you will see a gear icon. Click on the gear icons. Click Create Inbox in the top right hand corner. The inbox name is the key for how messages get tagged to be shown to that inbox. It is important to think about your strategy of naming inboxes. For example is you have an Inbox named Katelyn Rose and Katelyn stops working for your company and you rename the Inbox to Matt Smith you will lose all previously tagged messages of Katelyn Rose. To help with this we suggest you use an company or employee identifier number for the inbox name and then use the Display Name to display the friendly name of Katelyn Rose or Matt Smith. You can change the Display name any many times as needed, but retain the inbox name (Key) as the same to be able to pass along historic messages and conversations. 

Assign a user to an Inbox

On that same page you are able to assign one of many users to that individual inbox. We still customers use this in a few way. Either they create inboxes for a Department to share or they use inboxes per each individual users. Once you have your Inbox Name, Display Name and User(s) set up - hit save.

Route sms message to an inbox

Based on your strategy you can chose how a message qualifies for the inbox. Routing needs to be set up to direct messages to your inbox. Some customers use a dedicated phone numbers to assign messages and other use a contact attribute to designate that a message should go to a certain user or user group assigned to an inbox. To set up the routing for your inbox you are going to head over to app.ytel.com-> Workflow and the Workflows. You will create an inbound workflow.

You will use the building blocks to pull over and connect a Number Rule and an Inbox action for each of your dedicated inboxes.

Add these to the head
<link href="https://inbox-widget-test.web.app/main.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://inbox-widget-test.web.app/main.js"></script>
Add this to the body
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
const username = 'your-username';
const password = 'your-password';
const inputContainerId = 'your-container-id';
const inputWidth = '500px';
const inputHeight = '400px';
const features = {
inboxManagement: true,
startConversation: true,
sendSms: true,
selectInbox: true,
defaultInbox: true,
openCloseConversation: true,
viewSms: true,
viewCall: true,
viewThirdPartyEvent: true,
viewRcs: true,
viewVoicemail: true,
viewCloseConversation: true,
audioNotification: true,
};
YtelInbox.init({
username,
password,
containerId: inputContainerId,
styles: {
width: inputWidth,
height: inputHeight,
},
features,
});
});

Disabling Features of Inbox

With your inbox there are many feature you can use. One feature that you might not want users to use is the template section. If you would like to turn off templates you can do so by going to app.ytel.com -> Settings -> Accounts, clicking into you account and toggling off the Show SMS Templates in inbox section.

For customer support, email us at support@ytel.com or start a live chat by clicking the icon at the lower right of your screen, we are available M-F 6am-6pm PST