How the Shared Inbox Works

Every text sent to or from any of your synced numbers (Twilio or Telnyx, it does not matter) lands in one inbox that your whole team can see. There is no separate login per number, no raw carrier webhook data to interpret, and no need to check five different places to know whether a customer has been answered.

Conversations are grouped by the customer's phone number, not by which teammate happened to reply last. If three different people on your team talk to the same customer over the course of a week, all of it (every message, from every teammate) stays in a single continuous thread. That means whoever picks up the conversation next can see the full history instantly, instead of asking the customer to repeat themselves.

Color coding exists for a reason. Once you have more than one number connected, it becomes easy to lose track of which line a given conversation is actually happening on. Assigning each number its own color turns that into something you can recognize at a glance across a busy inbox, rather than having to open each conversation to check.

Anyone with inbox access can see and reply to anything. There is no per-conversation assignment system splitting messages up by teammate. This is a genuinely shared view, which is the point: if the person a customer originally talked to is out, anyone else on the team can pick up exactly where that conversation left off.

Features at a glance

• One inbox covering every synced number, regardless of carrier
• Conversations grouped by customer, not by teammate or number
• Per-number color coding for quick visual identification
• Full visibility for every teammate with inbox access: no silos
• Works identically whether a number is on Twilio or Telnyx

Setting up your colors

Colors are assigned per number on the Teams and Numbers page. Each number has a color swatch you can click to change, and the choice applies everywhere that number appears.

A few conventions that work in practice:

• Group by meaning, not prettiness. If two numbers both belong to sales, give them related colors so the whole category reads as one thing at a glance.
• Reserve a loud color for the line that matters most. If missing a message on your main sales line is worse than missing one anywhere else, make it the one that stands out.
• Avoid two similar colors on lines that are easy to confuse. Two nearly-identical blues on Support and Billing defeats the purpose entirely.

The color is also what makes reordering your numbers worth doing, since your most important line can sit at the top of the list in a color you recognise instantly.

Why there is no per-person assignment

This is a deliberate design choice rather than a missing feature, and it is worth explaining because it surprises people coming from a ticketing system.

Assignment systems solve a problem that mostly exists at larger scale: preventing two agents from duplicating work on the same ticket. For a small team answering texts, the cost of that structure usually outweighs the benefit. Messages sit unanswered because they were assigned to someone who is off that day, and a customer waits for a specific person rather than getting help from whoever is free.

The shared view takes the opposite trade. Everyone sees everything, and the coordination happens between people rather than in the software.

Who can see the inbox

Access follows your team roles. Both Admins and Agents can see and reply to conversations. The difference between the roles is about account settings, not inbox visibility.

If you run several businesses through sub-accounts, each one has its own separate inbox. The shared view is shared within a business, not across all of them, so a teammate on one business does not see another's conversations.

Getting the most out of it

Keep contact records filled in. A conversation with a name attached is far easier to pick up than one showing only a phone number. See full contact records.

Use notes for context the thread does not carry. Anything you learned on a phone call, or a detail worth knowing before replying, belongs in the contact's notes log rather than in the message thread.

Use templates for repeated answers. They keep wording consistent between teammates, which matters more in a shared inbox than in a personal one, because the customer sees replies from several people as one voice.