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 person or phone number in mind, whether or not they belong to an existing contact. Open the inbox and use the Search or start a conversation... box at the top of the conversation list. The same box both finds your existing conversations and starts new ones, so there is no separate compose button to open.

1. Type at least three characters: a name, phone number, email, or company.

2. Matching existing conversations appear first. Below them, a Start a new conversation section lists contacts you do not yet have a conversation with, and, when you have typed a full phone number, a row to message that number directly.

3. Select a contact or the phone-number row to open the conversation. You can also move through the results with the up and down arrow keys and press Enter to open the highlighted one.

If nothing matches what you typed, emu.chat tells you so and prompts you to enter a full phone number to message someone new. A conversation is tied to the phone number, not to a single contact, so it shows whichever of your contacts match that number once it opens.

Contacts in the Start a new conversation section are matched on name, phone number, email, and company, 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.

A new conversation stays visible to you while you have it open, but it does not appear in the conversation list for your teammates until you send the first message. If you open one and never send anything, it is not kept: emu.chat removes empty conversations automatically after about a day, so abandoned drafts do not clutter the list.

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).