Conversation Tools
What an AI can do in your inbox from Copilot or a connected AI app: search and read conversations, assign and unassign them, add private notes for your team, and reply to visitors.
Overview
From Copilot or a connected AI app, an AI can search your conversations, read their messages, hand a conversation to a team member or put it back in the queue, leave a private note for your team, and reply to the visitor. The AI looks these actions up with find_actions and runs each one with the run tool for its kind — see MCP Server.
In Copilot, every change and every reply waits for your Confirm first; a reply gets a red card, because it cannot be taken back. Each one is recorded in the Audit Log as AI change or AI delete or send. Reading is not recorded.
Actions
| Action | Level | What it does |
|---|---|---|
conversations.search | Read | Finds conversations by message text, by visitor (name, email, phone), by assigned team member, or by the start of a conversation ID. |
conversations.read_messages | Read | Reads the latest messages of one conversation, and older ones page by page. |
conversations.assign | Change | Assigns or transfers a conversation to a team member and posts a transfer notice in it. |
conversations.unassign | Change | Removes the assigned team member and puts the conversation back in the Unassigned queue. |
conversations.add_private_note | Change | Adds an internal note that only your team sees. Not available to apps connected by browser login. |
conversations.send_reply | Delete or send | Sends a message to the visitor, and can also email it to them. |
How These Actions Behave
Searching
You don't have to pick the right kind of search. Text that looks like the start of a conversation ID is matched as an ID, and if that finds nothing, it is searched as message text. Results are whole conversations (not single messages), most recently updated first, with the total number of matches. The empty records the widget opens for every new visitor are never returned.
Unassigning
When an AI unassigns a conversation, the assigned team member is removed and the conversation goes to the Unassigned queue, waiting for someone to pick it up. Nothing is posted in the conversation and the visitor is not asked for a rating. This is different from Leave in the inbox, which posts a message in the conversation and asks the visitor for a rating when the widget's Collect Ratings switch is on.
Replying
- A reply needs the top access level, Read, change, delete and send.
- The reply is sent as the person the connection runs as — you, in Copilot or an app you connected by browser login; for an API key, the person who switched its AI access on. The visitor sees it at once.
- When the AI asks for it, the reply is also emailed to the visitor, if their email address is known.
- Facebook and Instagram conversations are refused. A reply from an AI connection cannot be delivered to those channels yet, so the AI gets a clear message that nothing was sent. Before this change, such a reply was saved in Yaplet but never reached the visitor.
What an AI Cannot Do Here
- Reply in a Facebook or Instagram conversation. Answer those visitors from the Inbox.
- Read or add private notes when connected by browser login. Use Copilot, an API key, or the Inbox.
- Resolve a conversation or ban a visitor. There is no action for these. Do them in the Inbox.
Example Prompts
- "Show me the unassigned conversations and summarize what each visitor wants."
- "Find every conversation with [email protected]."
- "Assign this conversation to Sarah and add a private note that the customer is on the enterprise plan."
- "Reply to the visitor that their refund has been processed, and send it by email too."
- "Unassign the conversations about billing so someone else can pick them up."