The Mumble Inbox: The Complete Guide

TL;DR

The inbox is the screen your team uses most in Mumble, and it’s where they handle every WhatsApp conversation in real time. This guide walks through the screen layout, conversation statuses, filtering and search, managing lists and custom fields, roles and permissions, best practices, and common issues.

Inbox overview

Screen layout

The inbox is split into three panels:

The inbox panel can be collapsed to make more room for the conversation. The collapsed state is saved per agent. At the top of the screen you’ll see tags for your saved filters, alongside a settings button that opens the inbox settings.

Conversation statuses

Every conversation is always in a particular status. The status affects how the conversation appears in the inbox, how it’s filtered, and how it’s counted in analytics. Mumble has 18 statuses, but three of them cover most day-to-day activity:

• New. Green tag. A conversation that has arrived but hasn’t been handled yet. This is what to check first thing in the morning.
• In progress. Turquoise tag. A conversation an agent has taken on and is currently handling.
• Closed. Gray tag. A conversation that has been handled and wrapped up.

The natural lifecycle of a conversation is: New → In progress → Closed. If the customer comes back after the configured time period, the conversation reopens automatically (see the Reopen conversation setting in General account settings).

The remaining 15 statuses are available for organizations that need a finer breakdown of their handling stages: Waiting for agent, Waiting for customer, Reopened, Following up, In process, Meeting scheduled, Escalated, Follow-up, Needs review, Resolved, Not relevant, Spam, Duplicate, Open, On hold. The statuses are identical in the UI and the API; teams that sync status to a CRM will receive the same value.

Three ways to change a status

1. Right-click the conversation in the list. A menu with the most common actions: Assign to me, Change status to In progress, Change status to Closed.
2. In the customer card, under Conversation status. A dropdown with all 18 statuses, for precise selection.
3. In the conversation header, the speech-bubble icon with a checkmark. Closes the conversation in a single click.

Filtering conversations

As the business grows, the “all conversations” view becomes less useful. In the left panel, below the search bar and the “New message” button, there are 11 filter categories:

Filters stack. You can select a status, a list, and a date range together, and all the conditions work in combination. Once you’ve set up a combination you use often, you can save it as a shortcut — it appears as a starred tag at the top of the screen. Saved filters are stored per agent and aren’t shared between team members.

Search

The inbox has two types of search:

• Search a contact in the conversation list. The search bar at the top of the inbox panel (Search contact (press Enter to search)) filters the list by the customer’s name or phone number. Useful when you’re looking for a specific conversation with an existing customer without knowing whether it’s active or closed.
• Search within a conversation. Once a conversation is open, there’s a second search bar in the header (Search in chat) that searches only within the message content. Useful for pulling out an order number or a request mentioned somewhere in a long conversation.

In addition, if the customer quotes an old message (Reply), clicking the quote jumps to the original message even if it’s deep in the history.

Managing customers in the inbox

Lists (labels)

Lists are colored labels attached to a customer. A customer can have several lists. In the inbox they appear as colored dots next to the customer’s name in the conversation list, and as tags on the customer card. They’re useful in several ways:

• Filtering the view. Under the Lists filter category, you can show only conversations of customers with a particular list — for example, to focus on customers who opened a marketing campaign.
• Quick visual identification. A unique color for each list lets you recognize a customer segment at a glance.
• Segmenting for campaigns. Lists created in the inbox are also available for audience selection when building a campaign.

To add: on the customer card (right panel), in the list management section, you can add an existing list or create a new one on the spot. To remove directly: in the conversation list, hovering over a list’s colored dot reveals a small X. Clicking it removes the list from the customer without opening the card. To hide for display only: from the three-dot menu in the conversation header, choose Hide lists to remove the list dots from the view without deleting them from the customer.

For deeper work, see the Importing and uploading contacts guide, which explains how to create lists during the CSV import itself.

Custom fields

Custom fields are additional columns of information about the customer beyond name, phone, and email. They’re defined at the account level and appear automatically on every customer’s card. An account is limited to 15 custom fields total — a hard cap enforced in both the UI and the API. The fields are free-text fields; there’s no built-in value type (no date, number, or dropdown), so it’s worth setting a consistent format for values that require ordering (for example Birthday: 1990-05-21 in ISO format).

The agent sees the customer’s full context before replying. Examples of useful fields:

• Birthday. Lets you send birthday wishes and flag customers for a dedicated campaign.
• Last order number. Saves the “what’s your order?” question when the customer reaches out with a query.
• Preferred language. Helps decide whether to reply in Hebrew, English, or Russian.
• Subscription plan. Lets you immediately recognize whether a customer is eligible for VIP handling.
• Customer since. Lets you distinguish a new customer from a long-standing one.

To set up: on the Customers page, in the Custom fields tab. To view and edit: on the customer card in the right panel of the inbox, in the Custom fields section — you can edit values directly without leaving the inbox. The fields are also available as dynamic variables in message templates, as a segmentation criterion for campaigns, and as parameters in automations, the chatbot, and the API.

Marking as “unread”

Messages are usually marked as read automatically when you open the conversation, but sometimes it’s worth marking a conversation as unread after you’ve already seen it — as a reminder to come back to it later, to flag it for the attention of the agent who should handle it, or to push it back to the top of the queue for teams that work from the “Unread” filter. To mark it: right-click the conversation in the list and choose Keep as unread.

Teams, agents, and permissions

The four roles and inbox visibility

Mumble has four permission roles. Most inbox visibility follows automatically from the agent’s role; the only exception is private admin conversations.

In the dropdown that appears when creating a new agent, this permission is labeled “Chat agent” — it’s the same role called “Agent” here. A guide to matching the role to the reality:

• Agent. A frontline service agent who needs to focus on their own queue. Most of the team fits this role.
• Team Manager. A team lead who oversees several agents, takes conversations when someone is overloaded, and can also send campaigns.
• Department Manager. A department head who manages several teams, or a strategic role that needs an overview. Can also build chatbots and manage the customer base.
• Admin. The account owner or senior management team. Full access, including account settings, user management, and the Meta access details.

A conversation assigned to an admin is visible only to the admin. Even a Department Manager, who sees all other conversations, won’t see conversations an admin is handling. This is useful for sensitive matters such as a VIP customer or internal issues. For a full breakdown of permissions, see Managing agents and teams.

Showing the agent’s name in messages to the customer

On a team with several agents, the customer who receives the message doesn’t know who wrote to them — from their point of view, every message comes from the business itself. Mumble has a setting that automatically adds the agent’s name before every outgoing message:

“Yossi: Hi, your order will arrive tomorrow at 10:00″

To enable it: in Settings, in the Technical profile tab, set the Add sender name to message option to Yes and click the Update details button. The change applies only to new messages from that point on; messages already sent won’t change retroactively.

The setting fits when several agents share the same number and the customer might get confused, or when service is personal and you want the customer to know who they spoke with. It’s less suitable if the brand speaks in a single consistent tone, if agents rotate frequently, or if some of the communication runs through a chatbot (an agent name next to an automated reply looks odd).

Best practices

• Build a status flow that fits the business. Most businesses will do fine with New → In progress → Closed. If you have a senior-approval process or additional handling stages, open up a tight list of 5–6 statuses the whole team understands.
• Save your filters as shortcuts. An agent who needs to see “my active conversations from today” should save the combination rather than rebuild it every morning.
• Plan 4–5 important custom fields, not 15. The maximum is 15, but the more fields you have, the less they get maintained. A field nobody fills in is more noise than help. Think not only about what the agent needs to see in the inbox, but also about which information will help you segment campaigns.
• Use the right-click shortcuts. The four most common actions (Assign to me, Change status to In progress, Change status to Closed, Keep as unread) are available by right-clicking in the list.
• Assign roles sensibly — don’t make everyone an admin. An admin also sees the sensitive settings (Meta details, API key). Reserve admin for those who genuinely need it.
• Turn on the agent name only if it serves the business. This is a business choice, not a default. Businesses that serve in a single brand tone will prefer not to show names.

Common issues

I can’t see a conversation I know came in

Three possible reasons. First: your role limits visibility — an agent sees only conversations assigned to them, so ask your team manager to route it to you. Second: the conversation is in Closed status and there’s an active filter hiding closed conversations; clear the filter. Third: the conversation was assigned to an admin as private, and you can’t see it unless you’re an admin yourself.

My saved filters disappeared

Saved filters are stored at the user level. You may have logged in from a different browser or account. Log into the same account where you saved them and the filters will reappear.

I changed a status and it didn’t save

If you made the change through the customer card, you may not have clicked save. A change made via right-click saves automatically. If this keeps happening, refresh the page.

I added a list and it isn’t showing in the conversation list

Check whether Hide lists is enabled from the three-dot menu in the conversation header. If so, the lists are hidden for display only and are still saved on the customer.

I added a new custom field and it isn’t showing on the customer card

A field defined on the “Custom fields” page appears on every customer’s card automatically, even if the value is empty. If the field doesn’t show, refresh the inbox page.

I’m an agent and I want to see what the other agents are working on

This isn’t possible in the agent role. Ask the account manager to promote you to Team Manager level, or add yourself to a team with the agents whose conversations you want to see.

I clicked the X on the dot in the list and the list was deleted entirely

That’s the expected behavior. The X removes the list from the customer. If you only wanted to hide it for display, use Hide lists from the three-dot menu.

Related articles

• Managing agents and teams
• Importing and uploading contacts
• General account settings
• Message templates, the complete guide

The bottom line

The inbox is the daily environment for your team of agents, and the decisions that shape it are the status flow, the set of saved filters, the custom fields, and role-based permissions.