The inbox

Open Customers → WhatsApp Shop → Inbox. Every chat with your WhatsApp number appears here as it arrives, and the page updates live: the Live badge shows the connection is up, Reconnecting while it comes back. On a phone the inbox shows one pane at a time: the list, then the conversation, then Details.

Conversations and their states

Each conversation carries a state badge:

The tabs above the list filter by state: Open (everything but closed), Human requested, Agent, Waiting for customer, Bot and Closed. The search box finds a conversation by name, by at least 3 digits of the phone number, or by at least 3 characters of a message. The list shows 50 conversations at a time; Show more conversations loads the next ones.

Your team is told about chats in the notification bell (and by push, where it is switched on):

• when a new conversation starts, while Notify the team about new chats is on;
• every time a customer asks for a person;
• when a customer writes in a chat the bot is not answering, at most once every 10 minutes per chat.

Taking over and handing back

The timers

Two settings under Talking to your team in WhatsApp Shop settings give chats back to the bot, so no customer is left waiting forever:

Both take 60 to 86400 seconds. While a timer runs, the state badge counts down, for example The bot takes this chat back in 4:12.

Replying

• Type in the reply box: Enter sends, Shift+Enter starts a new line. A WhatsApp message holds up to 4096 characters.
• What you type and don't send is kept as a draft on this device for 7 days, for each chat.
• Quick replies inserts one of your saved answers. It is put in the box for you to edit, never sent by itself.
• Each message you send shows its progress: Queued, Sent, Delivered, Read, or Not delivered with Meta's error code. Your team's messages show who sent them; the bot's show Bot.
• Opening a chat with unread messages marks them as read on WhatsApp, so the customer sees blue ticks (inside the reply window only).

Manage the saved answers on Customers → WhatsApp Shop → Quick replies: give each one a Title (what agents see in the list) and the Message, and drag them, or use the arrows, to put the ones you use most at the top.

The 24-hour reply window

The conversation header shows how much of WhatsApp's reply window is left, for example Reply window: 5 h left. WhatsApp allows free-form messages only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. Once the window has closed, the reply box gives way to approved templates; you can write freely again as soon as the customer writes.

Photos, files, products and checkout links

The buttons above the reply box (Attach, Quick replies, Template, Product, Cart link) send more than text. All but Template need the reply window to be open:

• Attach a photo, video, audio file or document, with an optional caption (audio is sent without one). WhatsApp accepts JPEG and PNG photos up to 5 MB, MP4 and 3GP videos up to 16 MB, AAC, AMR, MP3, M4A and OGG audio up to 16 MB, and PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and text documents up to 100 MB.
• Product sends a product card: search for the product and the customer gets its photo, name, price and stock, exactly as the bot shows them.
• Cart link sends the checkout link for the chat's cart, as the bot's Checkout does. It needs a cart with items in it; the cart starts when the customer adds a product in the chat.

Photos, videos, voice messages, documents and stickers that customers send appear in the conversation: photos open full size, videos and audio play, documents download. Files come from WhatsApp through your store, never through a direct WhatsApp link. A copy is kept for 7 days after the message; after that the file is fetched from WhatsApp each time, for as long as WhatsApp keeps it. When WhatsApp no longer has it, the chat says so.

With AI answers on, a customer's voice message shows what was said under the recording (Transcript by CartWhizz AI), and a photo sent without text shows what CartWhizz AI saw in it (Seen in the photo by CartWhizz AI) — the words the bot answered or searched for. They are written automatically and can contain mistakes; play the recording or open the photo when it matters. They stay in the chat after WhatsApp no longer keeps the file. See Voice messages and photos.

Templates outside the window

Template opens your approved WhatsApp templates. Once the reply window has closed this is the only way to reach the customer; inside the window it is optional.

1. Pick a template. Its preview shows what the customer will see.
2. Fill in its values. The store's own details and the customer's WhatsApp name are filled in for you where the template uses them.
3. Click Send template.

A template is a message your store starts, so the customer's consent applies: a customer who unsubscribed doesn't get it, and an Offer (a marketing template) needs their opt-in for offers. A refused template shows why in the conversation. Sending a template does not reopen the reply window; it opens again when the customer replies.

Templates are the ones you set up for WhatsApp Notifications (Settings → Messaging → Templates) with the name Meta approved. One-time-code templates are never offered here.

Customer details

Details (the right-hand pane on a wide screen) shows who you are talking to:

• Contact: the phone number (with a copy button) and their WhatsApp profile name.
• Store account: the customer account the number belongs to, or Not linked. A number is linked automatically when exactly one customer has it as a verified phone number, or when the customer proves an order in the chat whose account has that number.
• Messages they accept: whether order updates are allowed or unsubscribed, and whether they opted in to offers.
• Chat cart: what the customer has added in the chat. Prices and shipping are confirmed when they check out.
• Internal notes (see below).

When the customer orders through the chat's checkout link, the conversation shows Order #1001 placed.

Sending a payment link

Unpaid orders in Details lists the customer's orders that still wait for an online payment — their account's orders, and the orders placed from their chats — with the card or gateway they chose. Cash on delivery, bank transfer and your other offline methods are not listed: there is nothing to pay online.

Click Send payment link under an order to send the customer a Pay now button to your store's own payment page for that order (the page a signed-in customer reaches with Pay again). Once the 24-hour reply window has closed, pick one of your approved WhatsApp templates that has a {{link}} variable and click Send in template; {{order_number}} and {{order_total}} are filled in too when the template has them. The message appears in the conversation, and the order shows when its link was last sent. No new way of paying is created: the customer pays on your store as at checkout.

Working as a team

• Assignment: Assigned to shows who is handling a chat. Anyone on the team can Assign to me a chat nobody has, or Unassign me; giving a chat to someone else needs the Manage WhatsApp Shop permission. The team is every active admin with access to the inbox.
• Presence: a dot next to each person shows Online (active in the inbox in the last minute), Idle (in the last 5 minutes) or Offline. Keeping the inbox open keeps you online. You can add a short Status message, up to 40 characters, such as Back at 3 pm.
• Tags: label chats, for example vip, refund or follow up. A tag holds up to 32 characters (letters, digits, spaces, -, _ and .) and is stored in lower case; a chat can carry up to 20.
• Internal notes: only your team sees them; they are never sent to the customer. A note holds up to 2000 characters. Only its author can edit or delete it; anyone who can manage the inbox can Pin it to the top.

Filters and search

• Filters narrows the list by Assigned to (anyone, me, nobody or a team member), by Tags (chats with every tag you pick) and by the date of the last message.
• Switch the search to Messages to search the text of every message (at least 3 characters). Whole-word matches come first; picking a result opens the chat at that message.

Changing many chats at once

Tick the conversations in the list (up to 200), then choose Actions: Close, Reopen, Assign, Unassign, Add tag, Remove tag, Pause bot or Resume bot. You confirm first. Each conversation is changed on its own; any that can't be changed (for example a closed chat whose customer already has a newer one) are listed afterwards and stay ticked, so you can try again.

The first reply target

First reply target (in WhatsApp Shop settings → Inbox, 10 minutes by default, 1 to 1440) flags chats still waiting for your team's first answer: a customer who asked for a person or, while Bot answers customers is off, any new chat. The badge shows how long they have been waiting. It turns amber at three quarters of the target and red once it is passed.

Who can do what

A team member without Manage WhatsApp Shop sees You can read this chat in place of the reply box.

More than one WhatsApp number

The number connected in Settings → Messaging is the store's. Other numbers on the same WhatsApp Business Account can be added under WhatsApp Shop settings → WhatsApp numbers:

1. In WhatsApp Manager, add the number to the store's WhatsApp Business Account and copy its Phone number ID (under API setup). It is a long string of digits, not the phone number itself.
2. Under WhatsApp numbers, enter the phone number ID and, if you like, a name only your team sees (such as Front desk), then click Add number. The number is checked with WhatsApp at once.
3. Once WhatsApp confirms it, the number is Active and shows the number and business name WhatsApp has for it. If WhatsApp does not know it for your store, it stays Waiting for verification and says why; fix it in WhatsApp Manager and click Verify again.

Each phone number ID can be added once. Switch off stops using a number without removing it; Remove takes it off the list. A message to a number nobody added is answered as the store, from the store's number.

On a marketplace: vendors' own numbers

On a marketplace, a number can belong to a vendor. Customers who write to it reach that vendor, not the store:

• Messages to a vendor's Active number open a conversation that belongs to the vendor. Replies — the bot's and the vendor's team's — go out from that number.
• The bot on a vendor's number shows only that vendor's products, in their categories and search. The cart and the checkout link work as usual.
• The vendor answers in their own inbox in the vendor panel (WhatsApp chats), with the same tools as the store's inbox: replies, files, templates, product cards, checkout links, their own quick replies, tags, notes and assignment within their own team. They see only their own conversations.
• The vendor's team is told about their chats; the store's team is not. Vendor staff need the messages permission (the vendor owner always has it).
• The store's inbox shows the store's conversations and the vendors', each with the vendor's name, and Number filters the list to the store's own number or to one vendor.

To give a vendor a number, choose them under Belongs to when you add it, or use Edit on an existing number. A vendor can also submit their own number's phone number ID in WhatsApp chats → Numbers; it waits there, and in your list, until you click Verify. Until a vendor's number is active, messages to it reach the store's inbox. If you switch off or remove a vendor's number, their conversations stay in both inboxes, but nothing more can be sent on them. The store's own number from Messaging always stays the store's.