Reply and Add Notes to Conversations

Conversations are the communications with your customers in Help Scout — you might be used to calling them tickets or just emails if you've been working with other systems. Emails, phone notes, and chat transcripts are different types of conversations in Help Scout, but replying or adding a note to any of these conversations is the same. 

This article will walk you through those actions.

Reply to a Conversation

Click the Reply arrow from the top toolbar, or type R to use the keyboard shortcut when you're in a conversation to open the reply editor. Type your reply in this box and click Send Reply when you're done. It's really that simple!

Let's get into the smaller details though and explain all of the options you see here. 

Anatomy of the Reply Editor

Cc/Bcc
Click Cc/Bcc to open fields where you can add any email addresses you'd like to copy or blind copy on your reply. 

Docs Search Bar
Check out Send Article Links With the Docs Search Bar for more on this handy way to quickly add Docs information to your replies. Don't see this bar when you hit Reply? The section Toggle Docs Search Bar On or Off will help you turn this on.  

Formatting and Action Menu
The bar just above the reply window contains formatting buttons along with a few other action items. There's a lot of power packed into a small space here! 

Attach files, format your text with bold, italic, and underline, create a list, insert a link, images, or HTML, and choose Saved Replies from the options on left side. Save your draft or discard the draft using the buttons on the right. 

• Upload Attachments: If the total amount of all attachments on a reply is more than 8 MB, we send the files as links in the email instead of attachments to the email. There is a 10 MB limit to any individual file — cloud filesharing services are better suited for sharing larger files. This conversion to links and the file size limit is to make sure your email gets through, as different email providers have different attachment size limits. 
• Bold, Italic, Underline, and List: Highlight the text you wish to format and click the button to add these options. Choose from Unordered (bulleted) or Ordered (numbered) for lists. These are the only text formatting options available in the reply editor. It is not possible to change other elements, such as font size or color in replies. 
• Link: Highlight the text you want to link and click here to add a link to the selected text. Note that you only need to use the Link button to link text other than an actual URL — the editor will recognize and automatically link a URL that is pasted in. 
• Insert Image: Upload an image to add to your email, or reference an image hosted elsewhere. See below for more detail on the options with the insert image button.
• Insert HTML: The editor allows you to add some basic HTML such as tables and headings, and will automatically strip out the bits it does not support. Use Insert HTML and tick the This is preformatted code box to send code snippets or examples. 
• Save Draft and Discard: The editor auto saves your draft replies as you're working, but click the check mark here to manually save your draft and exit the editor. Click the trashcan icon to delete the draft. This deletion is permanent — there is no way to recover a draft that was deleted, so make sure that's what you want to do! 

Send Options
The bottom of the reply editor offers you the opportunity to override the defaults for Status and Assignment before you send. There is a dropdown option next to Send Reply to override the default redirection after you send or change that default setting. 

Check out Move Between Conversations With Redirect Options for more on that feature. 

The defaults for Status and Assignment are set on the mailbox level and can be changed by your Account Owner or an Administrator. See Customize Your Mailbox Settings: Default Settings for more. 

Note: Looking for a spell checker? All of the supported web browsers offer spell checking built in to the browser itself. Enable your browser's spell check feature and that will work in the Help Scout editor as well!

Change the subject

To change the conversation subject line, click on the existing subject text. Type in your new subject, then click Save.

Add an Internal Note

Notes are internal memos that can be added to any conversation by a Help Scout User. To add a note to the conversation, click on the Note icon from the top toolbar. You'll notice that the editor window changes to yellow, along with the action button. Notes are never sent to the customer.

There are two differences in the formatting and action menu when in a note: 

• @ allows you to insert an @mention to reach out to other Help Scout users. Check out Use @mentions in Notes for more information on this useful collaboration tool. 
• No save draft button. You can't save a draft of a note.  

Image options

Use the Insert Image button to include inline images in your reply. Drag and drop to the box or click Choose File and browse to upload an image from your computer. 

Note: Images should be no more than 600px in width — images over that limit are automatically resized. 

To insert an image that is publicly hosted somewhere (e.g. an animated gif hosted on Giphy), click the Link tab and paste in the full URL for that image. Make sure that your URL ends with an image extension such as .gif, .png, or .jpg, as this will only work with direct links to image files. 

Note: Linked images wider than 600px have CSS applied to display them smaller. Click on the image and drag the bottom corner to expand the width if you want it to display differently.