Take over a conversation in Inbox

Inbox shows live visitor conversations from your deployments. When a conversation needs a person, you take it over, reply in the same thread, and hand it back to the AI agent. The visitor never starts over.

Members with the Owner, Admin or Member role can take over and reply. The Viewer role can't take over, reply, hand back or cancel a request.

Find conversations#

Open Inbox and filter by All conversations, Operator requested or Assigned to operator, or use Search conversations.... Each row shows the conversation, its agent and deployment, the visitor, who is handling it, the number of Messages, the last Operator Activity and the Last Message.

The Visitor column shows the visitor's name or email when your website passes it to the widget, and a Verified badge for visitors your site signed in. See Verify signed-in users (opens another site). Other visitors show a short anonymous ID.

Take over#

1. Open the conversation. The transcript updates live, including the agent's tool steps and sources.
2. Check the bar above the reply box. For a request, it says who asked: "Requested by the visitor" or "Requested by the AI agent".
3. Select Take over. If someone asked for a person, the button reads Accept request.
4. Type your reply. The bar now reads You're handling this.

You reply as your business, and the visitor sees "You're chatting with" followed by your initials, never your full name.

You can take over at any time, even while the AI agent is replying. The reply in progress finishes, and the visitor's next message comes to you.

Hand it back#

• Return to AI agent gives the conversation back. The agent continues from where the conversation stands.
• Cancel request declines a pending request without taking over, and the AI agent carries on.

When a request is cancelled, or nobody accepts it in time, the visitor sees: "Thanks for waiting — I'll keep helping you here. Let me know what you need and I'll do my best!"

Automatic return to the AI agent#

To stay marked available, see Let visitors talk to a person.

When the work outlasts the chat#

Open the Conversation menu in the composer and choose Track work from this chat to create a Case or link an existing one. See Track follow-up work with Cases. Download transcript, in the same menu, saves the conversation as a Markdown file.

What Inbox doesn't do yet#

Inbox covers visitor chats with your AI agents. Email, open and resolved statuses, assignment queues and SLA timers aren't part of it yet.