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The VGraple CRM inbox is a two-pane screen: a filterable conversation list on the left and the open conversation, with its own header of controls, on the right. This tour walks through every tab, filter and header control so a new agent can find anything in the first five minutes.
Inbox tour: first 5 of 8 steps
- 1Open the Inbox from the main navigation
- 2Read the tabs
- 3Filter by stage, if your workspace uses
- 4Filter by WhatsApp number, if you run
- 5Use the channel-type chips, if your inbox
Before you start
- The inbox is available on every plan, including Free, with agent seats capped by plan.
- Your role decides what you see. Owners, Admins and Supervisors see every conversation in the workspace. Agents and Viewers only see conversations assigned to them or left unassigned; a conversation assigned to a colleague simply does not appear in their list.
- At least one channel needs to be connected (a WhatsApp number, Instagram, Messenger, your chat widget, or Facebook/Instagram comments) before conversations have anywhere to land. See connecting your WhatsApp number if you have not done this yet.
- No separate "open the inbox" permission exists beyond having inbox access at all; what changes by role is which conversations you can see and whether you can send, resolve, assign or manage quick replies.
Steps
- Open the Inbox from the main navigation. The sidebar loads on the left with five tabs across the top: All, Open, Unread, Snoozed and Resolved. Open is selected by default, which is what most agents work from all day.
Read the tabs. All shows every conversation regardless of status. Open shows conversations with status "open" and "escalated" together, since escalated is a sub-state of open used when a web chat or chatbot conversation is handed to a human. Unread is not a status at all, it is a cross-status filter: any conversation with unread messages or a manual "mark as unread" flag shows here, whether it happens to be open or resolved. Snoozed shows only conversations whose snooze timer has not yet passed; a snoozed conversation is otherwise invisible everywhere else in the inbox until it wakes up. Resolved shows closed conversations, each with a Reopen button in its header.
Filter by stage, if your workspace uses them. When your organisation has at least one conversation stage configured (Settings, then Chat Stages), a "Stage" pill appears under the tab strip. Click it to open a dropdown listing every stage with its colour, plus an "All stages" option to clear the filter. See tags, notes and stages for what stages are for.
Filter by WhatsApp number, if you run more than one. Workspaces with two or more active WhatsApp numbers see a row of number chips (showing each number's display name or phone number) below the stage filter. Click a chip to narrow the list to that number, or "All numbers" to clear it. See running multiple WhatsApp numbers.
Use the channel-type chips, if your inbox spans more than one channel. Below the search bar, a second row of pills shows every channel with a conversation count (WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, web chat, comments). This filter is separate from the WhatsApp number filter: it searches the whole organisation, not just the 50 most recently active conversations, so it can surface an old thread on a rarely-used channel that would otherwise be buried.
Scan the conversation list itself. Each row shows the contact's avatar with a small channel logo badge, their name (or phone number, or "Website Visitor" for an unidentified web chat visitor), the time of the last message, a preview of that message, and a stack of small badges on the right: an unread count or dot, an assignee initial, a stage dot, an SLA badge if a first-response target is close to breaching or already breached, a CSAT badge if the customer has rated the conversation, and a WhatsApp number chip if you run more than one number. Pinned conversations sit in their own "Pinned" section above everything else.
Open a conversation and read the header. Clicking a row opens the conversation on the right. Along the top of the thread sits the contact's name and channel, then a row of controls: stage picker, priority picker (High, Medium, Low), tag picker, assign picker, snooze, an AI Summary button, a 24-hour window countdown (WhatsApp only), and Resolve or Reopen depending on the current status. A collision banner appears here too if a teammate has this same conversation open.
Use the composer at the bottom. Inside the messaging window it is free text with an attachment button, emoji picker, voice-note recording and quick-reply suggestions when you type a forward slash. Once the window is closed, the composer switches automatically to a template picker; see sending a template from the inbox.
What you will see
A working inbox shows conversations grouped by recency inside whichever tab and filters are active, pinned conversations pulled to the top, and live badges (unread counts, SLA warnings, assignee initials) that update the instant a new message, reassignment or status change happens anywhere in the workspace, including from a teammate's screen or the Android app. Selecting a conversation opens it in the right pane without navigating away from the list; the URL updates so the conversation is directly linkable and bookmarkable.
Settings and options
| Setting or control | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Tab (All / Open / Unread / Snoozed / Resolved) | Sets which conversation statuses appear in the list | Open |
| Stage filter | Narrows the list to one conversation stage | All stages |
| WhatsApp number chips | Narrows the list to one connected number | All numbers |
| Channel chips | Narrows the list to one channel type, searching the whole org | All channels |
| Search box | Finds conversations by contact detail or message content | Empty |
| Pinned section | Keeps pinned conversations above the rest of the list regardless of recency | Off per conversation |
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| A conversation I know exists is not showing anywhere | It is assigned to a colleague and your role is Agent or Viewer, which only shows conversations assigned to you or unassigned | Ask an Owner, Admin or Supervisor to reassign it, or check with the assignee directly |
| A conversation disappeared from Unread but I never opened it | Someone else on your team read it from another device, or the Android app, which clears the unread flag for everyone | Check the conversation's last activity to see who replied |
| The Snoozed tab is empty even though I snoozed something recently | Its snooze timer already passed, moving it back to whichever tab matches its actual status | Check the Open or All tab; the conversation is there, just no longer snoozed |
| Scrolling the list does not load more conversations | You are inside a search or channel-chip filter, which loads a bounded result set rather than paginating | Clear the search box or channel chip to return to the paginated main list |
| A stage or number filter pill is missing entirely | Your workspace has zero stages configured, or only one connected WhatsApp number | Add stages in Settings, then Chat Stages; the number filter appears automatically once a second number is connected |
Related reading
Once you know your way around the inbox, look at assigning conversations for workload routing, SLA targets and alerts for response-time tracking, and searching the inbox for finding a specific message fast.