What is Inbox in Partner Center?
In Partner Center, you can chat directly with your clients. Inbox is a way to send and receive messages through the platform to your clients in Business App. Inbox brings communication to all users of the platform ecosystem, allowing for org-to-org communication between channel Partners, client accounts, vendors, and Vendasta Account Managers.
Why is Inbox in Partner Center important?
Communicating with accounts is crucial for Partners. Today, emails are the most common form of communication for businesses, however, managing client communications via email can be challenging, particularly for large teams. Email threads can become unwieldy, context and details can be missed, and if someone wasn't cc'd, they have no visibility into the conversation until it's forwarded.
Inbox messages combat this with open shared channels that everyone on your team can participate in. With Inbox, anyone can pick up the chat, and ensure clients get fast, top-tier service even if someone is out sick, or leaves your company.
In addition, Inbox offers a great way to engage Vendors directly for sales assistance and support of products available in the marketplace.
How to use Inbox in Partner Center
- Partners can initiate a conversation by clicking the message icon beside the account they want to communicate with. Once clicked, a pop-up menu will appear with a list of accounts to choose from.
- Clients will receive the message in Business App > Inbox Messages and will get an email notification. They can reply to messages or even create new messages.
Client-to-Partner Messaging: In Business App, the 'contact us' button allows clients to initiate and send a message to your team through Inbox in the platform. Make sure that notifications are enabled in Partner Center so chats are not missed. See the instructions below on “How to enable notifications.”
Partner-to-Vendor Chat: Vendors and Partners can communicate directly with each other using Inbox. Vendors can efficiently provide after-sales support for their products. Additionally, this new feature allows Vendors to reach out to new resellers (Partners) to see if they have any questions regarding the product or service and support needed for activating accounts.
If a Vendor has enabled chat Support, Partners can click “Contact Us” on the Product Vendor Details page, and a new conversation will be started with the Vendor.
Message with Vendasta: To message a representative at Vendasta, click the contact card in the bottom left of the Partner Center navigation, and select “Send Message”.
How to Enable Inbox Notifications
Enabling notifications in Partner Center for Inbox will keep Partners on top of communication and prevent them from missing important messages. Enable them via the Bell Icon in Partner Center and then select the Settings Gear. Make sure to enable both "All events" and “Only my events".
Automations
Automation triggers and actions are available to work with Inbox, so you can start workflows when a message comes in, or send a message automatically when an event happens. Learn about Inbox-related automation triggers and actions here.
Features:
- Unlimited in-platform messaging
- Inbox can be opened as a side-panel that stays with you no matter what page you're on
- Users can be notified with in-platform notifications and email notifications.
- File sharing
- Following view
Following View
Filter your Inbox experience to focus on only the conversations you care about, with the ★ Following view. Following is unique to each user. When you follow a conversation, that conversation is added to your personal following view inside Inbox messages. You can also receive notifications for any new messages sent into that conversation, by subscribing to “Only My Events” in the Inbox messages notification settings.
How to Follow a Conversation
In a conversation in Inbox (in Partner Center, Task Manager, or Vendor Center) you’ll see a star button to ★ Follow a conversation in the header. Click the Follow/Star button to begin following a conversation.
Inbox will automatically subscribe a user to follow a conversation in these scenarios, to ensure important communication is not missed:
- When a user sends a message in a conversation, they will automatically be set to follow that conversation. A user can unfollow it again if they choose.
- When a user is set as an assigned Salesperson on an account, they will automatically follow any past or future conversations that include that account, so they don’t miss any new messages with the account they were assigned.
Why is the link in my message notification taking me to a certain center (Partner Center, Vendor Center, Task Manager)?
Notifications can contain only one link, so we try to determine what the best link for each user is, based on the user’s highest permission level, in this order:
- Partner Center Admin, Vendor Center users → Partner Center
- Digital Agent → Task Manager
- Salesperson → Sales Center
Inbox in Business App
Inbox in Business App allows your clients to communicate back and is included with every account at no additional cost. Use Business App customization settings to configure or turn this off.