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The shared inbox

Comms holds every text and email with your customers in one place, filed against the customer each message is about.

Nothing in Comms is anybody's personal mailbox. A message belongs to the customer, so whoever picks the conversation up sees all of it.

Admins and owners use Comms in Lupa Dash. Technicians have the same Comms panel in Lupa Tech, limited to their own customers and the customers of open-pool work, and without the Needs Triage queue. See Messaging customers from Lupa Tech.

Setting up texting is a separate job — see Registering your texting number. Getting a customer's permission to text them is in Getting customer consent.

See who is waiting on a reply

The Comms button in the left rail carries a red badge when customers have messages you have not read. The badge counts customers, not messages: three unread texts from one customer count as one. Above 99 it reads 99+.

Unread is tracked for each person separately. Opening a thread marks its messages read for you, not for the rest of the team.

Find a customer's conversation

  1. Choose Comms in the left rail. Lupa Dash opens on Comms when you sign in.
  2. Type part of the customer's name into Search clients…. The list narrows as you type and highlights the match. If nothing matches, it reads No clients match your search.
  3. Choose the customer.

The list is split into two sections:

  • Recents — customers with an unread message, or with any message in the last seven days. It is open by default.
  • All — every customer, alphabetically. When Recents has anyone in it, All starts collapsed; choose it to open it.

A customer can appear in both. Each row shows the customer's name, the locations they lead, their phone number (or email if there is no phone), and a count of their unread messages. Customers who share an account are grouped under the account name, with a line such as 2 members · 3 locations.

To go back to the list from a customer, choose Comms in the breadcrumb at the top of the panel, or use your browser's back button.

Read everything you've said to one customer

When you open a customer, their name, phone and email sit at the top, and three tabs sit below them:

  • Activity — every text and email with this customer in one feed, newest first. Each entry is marked SMS or EMAIL, and From client or From you.
  • Texts — the text-message thread on its own. Each customer has one text thread. See Texting a customer.
  • Email — the customer's email threads. A customer can have several. See Emailing a customer.

Texts and Email each show how many threads they hold. A customer always opens on Activity.

To read a customer's full history:

  1. Open the customer under Comms.
  2. Choose Activity, Texts or Email.

If there is nothing yet, Activity reads No activity yet, and Texts reads No SMS conversation yet — inbound texts from that customer land there when they arrive.

Times in Comms are shown in your company's timezone, with the zone named.

When your company has no conversations yet

Until the first message arrives, the top of the customer list shows No conversations yet. Get started: with two starting points:

  • Send your first SMS to a client — Open Clients tab takes you to Clients, where Message on a customer's file opens that customer in Comms. A customer with no text thread yet has no composer on Texts; see Texting a customer.
  • Your inbound email address — the address to forward customer email to, with a Copy button. See Get customer email threaded automatically.

Quick answers at the foot of the panel

How does this work? at the bottom of the Comms panel opens a short reference: your inbound email address, what Needs Triage is, what the partial-text badge means, and whether outbound texting is working. It stays short enough that the composer is never pushed off the screen.

If you can't find a customer

The Comms list in Lupa Dash shows every customer your company has. If it reads No clients in your scope yet, no customers have been added. Add one under Clients — see Customers.

Mail from someone who is not on file as a customer is not in the list at all — it waits in Needs Triage. See Mail from someone you don't recognise.