What’s New
Until now, the Messaging Inbox could only reply to conversations that already existed. To text someone new you had to open their contact record first. Now you can start the conversation from the inbox itself.
Features
- New conversation from My Inbox. Click the + next to the report icon in the Conversations panel. Search for a contact by name or phone, pick them, write your first message and choose which of your numbers to send from. The new conversation opens in your Sent folder and moves to Inbox as soon as the contact replies.
- New contact. Texting someone who isn’t in the CRM yet? Choose New contact at the top of the list, enter their name and phone, and the composer opens ready for your first message.
- New group. Choose New group to start a group text. Search and add participants one after another, pick the line to send from, and the group opens as soon as it’s created.
- Sure Send teammates in groups. A group’s details panel now lists the Sure Send teammates in the group separately from your contacts. Teammates get the group’s messages in the CRM, not by SMS.
Improvements
- Contacts who opted out of texts are shown but can’t be selected, so you can’t write a text that would never be delivered.
- iMessage lines are only offered for contacts assigned to you. For anyone else’s contact the composer uses one of your SMS numbers, so the conversation shows up in your inbox.
- When you create a group, numbers that can’t be added are highlighted in the form with the reason, so you can fix them without starting over.
- Creating a group with the same people from a different line is no longer blocked. If Twilio already has a group with the same contacts on that line, the message now tells you which group it is and what to do.
Starting conversations is available in My Inbox for now. Company and team inboxes keep working as before.