Assign Conversations

Assigning conversations lets you give Users ownership of conversations within Help Scout, and easy access to see all that others are working on at any given moment. This article is all about assigning conversations in Help Scout.

Account Owners, Administrators, and Users are able to assign conversations and have conversations assigned to them. Light Users can't assign conversations nor have conversations assigned to them. See User Roles and Permissions for more information on the various User roles. 

How to Assign Conversations

There are a variety of ways that you can assign a conversation:

In a conversation

Click on the Assign icon at the top of the conversation. Select a User from the drop down menu, or start typing in the search bar to quickly find a User. Click the User's name to assign the conversation.

In a folder 

Select any conversation in a folder, and a floating menu will appear. Click on the Assign icon, and select any User from the dropdown list.

When replying or adding a note

You can choose a User to assign a conversation to right before you send a reply or add a note to the conversation. When the reply is sent or the note is added, the assignee is updated at the same time.

Manual or automatic workflows

A manual workflow lets you group certain actions together and run them altogether whenever you'd like. Select the Assign to User action, add the User, and then whenever you run that workflow, it will assign the conversation accordingly.

An automatic workflow can be set up with an Assign to User action based on certain conditions. Select the Assign to User action in the Actions section, and it will run whenever a conversation meets those conditions.

View Assigned Conversations

All Users can view assigned conversations and change assignment on all conversations

Let's take a look at what happens when conversations are assigned to certain Users:

• When you assign a conversation to Anyone, it will appear in the Unassigned folder
• When you assign a conversation to Me, it will appear in the Mine folder.
• When you assign a conversation to any other User, it will appear in the Assigned folder.
• If someone else assigns a conversation directly to you, it will appear in the Mine folder.
• If you are on the Plus plan, you can also assign to Teams. Conversations assigned to teams will appear in the corresponding team folder.

You can also view an audit entry of who assigned a conversation to whom, and when it happened. It will appear as a grey line item within a conversation: 

Search by Assignee

Running a search by assignee will show all of their assigned conversations. Type assigned: into the search bar, and a menu will appear with all of your Users names. You can search multiple Users as well to see conversations assigned to one or the other.

Assignee filtering will come in handy when you need to view only those conversations assigned to a specific User in a folder. Simply click on the Assigned To column, select the User from the dropdown menu, and the folder will automatically filter conversations by that User.

Common questions

Can I restrict a User to only view their assigned conversations?
No, Users can view all conversations in mailboxes they have permission to, including those assigned to others. 

Is it possible to prevent conversations from being assigned to certain Users?
Conversations can be assigned to all User roles except Light Users and there's no option to restrict assignment otherwise.