Starting a new conversation

Start a new conversation to text someone for the first time from one of your inboxes. You need an inbox before you can begin, because every conversation lives inside an inbox. If you have not set one up yet, see Creating your first inbox (the inbox wizard).

There are two ways to start a conversation: from an inbox, or from a contact.

Start a conversation from your inbox

Use this route when you have a phone number in mind, whether or not it belongs to an existing contact. Open the inbox, start a new conversation, and enter the phone number, then select Start Conversation.

As you type, emu.chat suggests matching contacts (once you have entered at least three digits). Picking one fills in the number and links that contact to the conversation, but linking a contact is optional: you can start a conversation with any valid phone number.

Suggestions are matched by phone number and only include contacts that are shared with the workspace or owned by you. To manage your contacts, see Creating and managing contacts.

Start a conversation from a contact

Use this route when you are already looking at a contact and want to message them. The phone number comes from the contact automatically. From the contact's Actions menu, choose to create a conversation, pick which inbox it should live in (if you have more than one), and select Start Conversation.

What happens next

emu.chat checks the inbox for an existing conversation with that number:

• If none exists, a new conversation is created and opened.
• If one already exists, you are taken to it instead of creating a duplicate.
• If the existing conversation was archived, it is reopened so you can pick up where you left off.

Once the conversation is open, you can send your first message. See Sending messages. If a message does not go through, see Why did my message fail? (message statuses explained).