The DM inbox

The inbox holds the conversations your automations started, and lets you take them over. It is the hub everything is funnelled into: post replies arrive here alongside DMs.

Why it matters

An automation is a script. A person who replies to it with something the script did not anticipate needs a human, and without an inbox that person is stuck talking to a wall in a channel you are not reading.

Threads

Each conversation is a thread with its full history: what the automation sent, what the person replied, what you sent. Read state is tracked so the unread count means something.

Taking over

Replying yourself is the handoff. From that point the conversation is yours, and the notify a human action exists to trigger exactly this moment on purpose rather than by accident.

Public comments are a different screen

The inbox is private messages. Comments on your posts are at Comments, which is a different conversation in a different place with different rules: anyone can read a comment.

Contacts

Everyone in the inbox is a contact, with the tags and fields your automations set along the way. Opening a contact from a thread is how you see what someone asked about three weeks ago.

Sending rules apply to you too

The platform's messaging window governs replies you send by hand as well as automated ones. If a reply box is unavailable, the conversation has aged out. See staying inside platform rules.