Create and Manage Inbox Views

Inbox Views allow you to sort and display conversations according to the criteria that you set into quick links on the left sidebar that work like custom folders. Use these Views to organize and monitor the queue in the way that works for your team.

Help Scout Administrators and Account Owners can create and manage Inbox Views.

When to Use Inbox Views

Create Inbox Views when you want to have quick access to a group of conversations, as well as a count of those conversations, that match specific criteria rather than having to run a search.

For example, if you want to keep an eye out for any conversations that have been waiting for longer than 24 hours for a reply from your team, a View can make this quick and easy. Create a View with that set for the condition and add it to your sidebar.

Now you'll have one-click access to see all of those in one View from the left sidebar.

Scenarios where Views will come in handy will depend totally on your team's needs and there are a lot of possible combinations of criteria you can specify — experiment with them to find what works for your team.

Some common uses we've seen:

• Watch for conversations that have not had a reply in X time period to make sure you're meeting SLAs or response time commitments.
• Keep track of conversations tagged with specific tags that need quicker action, for example vip      or urgent      tags
• Collaborate to watch for conversations assigned to a teammate that's on vacation or leave
• Separate conversations by subject so that form submissions can be quickly accessed

You can create a View with many different conditions and combinations of conditions to make accessing what you need quick and easy.

Create an Inbox View

Find the Views section of the left sidebar, under the default folder list. Click All, then Create a View.

For our example, we're going to create a View available to everyone with permissions to the J&G Sales Inbox. We will name it Waiting 24 Hours and set it to display all conversations that have been waiting for a reply for longer than 24 hours.

1. Click in the name field and replace the words New View with the name of this View, Waiting 24 Hours.
2. Click the dropdown box that says Just me to change the visibility to Everyone.
3. Click the plus sign button to add a new condition, then scroll down and click Waiting Since.
4. Click the drop down that says Waiting less than to change that to Waiting longer than.
5. Click the dropdown that says 1 hour to change that to 24 hours.
6. Click Add, then Create.

Add to Sidebar

Add a View to the sidebar to have single-click access. Click All to see the list of Views, hover over the one you want to add to the sidebar, then click on the star icon. You can add up to 20 Views to the sidebar and this is customizable for every user.

Manage Inbox Views

Click into any View, from the sidebar or from the All listing, and find the options menu in the top right corner (the 3 vertical dots) to manage it.

Show Closed Conversations

Toggle this switch to show or hide closed conversations in this view.

Edit

Choose edit to add, remove, or change any of the conditions of the view.

Add to or Remove from Sidebar

Choose Add to Sidebar so that the View appears in the sidebar.

Choose Remove from Sidebar to remove the View from the sidebar. The View will still appear in the All listing.

Delete View

Delete the View. This is permanent; there is no option to recover a View after deletion.

Available Conditions

These conditions will be familiar to you if you've worked with our Automatic Workflows in the past, but there are some slight differences in how they work for Views.

Custom Field, Company, and Customer Property conditions are only available on Plus and Pro plans.