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Triaging your inbox

What the unified inbox holds, which networks its comments can actually be read from, the difference between an empty inbox and an unread one, and why empathy analysis always refuses.

Updated

The inbox is one list of the comments, mentions, direct messages and reviews recorded against a workspace. You read them, and you mark them handled.

The thing to know first is where they come from, because the answer is different for different networks. Social Studio reads the comments under posts it published itself, on networks whose terms have been determined to permit that, through an account you have connected. One network qualifies today. For the other ten, nobody at easyMarketing has read their terms for this question yet, so they are not read at all — not because your account is missing something, and not because the network refused, but because the question has not been put to them.

That distinction is why the page opens with a panel naming every network. AN EMPTY INBOX AND AN UNREAD INBOX ARE DIFFERENT THINGS. If a network was read and there was nothing, the panel says so and the emptiness is real. If a network was never asked, the panel says that instead, and the emptiness tells you nothing about what your audience said. A product that showed both as the same blank list would be telling you nobody commented on your campaign when it had not looked.

Items also arrive without any of that: through the workspace inbox API, through a WhatsApp message pushed into the inbound endpoint, through a listening match somebody recorded, or through a review somebody recorded.

The second thing is empathy analysis. The inbox has a sentiment, emotion and intent field, and an Analyse control that appears only when a sentiment provider exists. None does. There is no provider in this product, so no credential, plan, setting or approval switches it on, and those three fields stay empty rather than guessed.

BEFORE YOU START

  • Access to the workspace, and active membership of the organisation.
  • The "reply" or "moderate" permission to mark an item handled.
  • The "create" or "edit" permission to record an item through the API.
  • Items. An empty inbox on a real account is the expected state.

STEPS

  1. Open Inbox for the workspace, or go to /app/workspaces/{workspace}/inbox.
  2. Read the table: the source and kind, who it is from, the message, its reading, and its status.
  3. Choose "Draft replies" on an item to run this workspace's reply rules against it. That is the only thing in Social Studio that makes a rule run, and it runs against that one item.
  4. Choose "Resolve" on an item you have dealt with. Its status becomes handled.
  5. Read the note about empathy analysis at the top of the page, which explains why the reading column is empty.
  6. To bring items in, have your own integration post them to the workspace inbox endpoint.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

"Item marked handled." and the row moving to handled. There are only two statuses: open and handled. "Draft replies" answers either with the number of drafts it made, which wait on the Reply rules page, or with "No active reply rule matched this item, so nothing was drafted."

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It will not fetch anything from Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, Threads, LinkedIn or Google Business Profile. Not because those networks refused — nobody at easyMarketing has read their terms for this question, and the panel at the top of the page says exactly that rather than guessing on their behalf.
  • It will not fetch a comment under a post you published somewhere other than Social Studio. It reads the posts it sent, and nothing else.
  • It will not analyse sentiment. "Empathy analysis is not built: no sentiment provider exists in this product, so no credential, plan, setting or provider approval makes it work." A comment it reads for you carries no sentiment either.
  • It will not send a reply on a network whose position has not been determined. The send is refused with the reason and whose decision it was, and the approved wording stays on the Reply rules page for you to post yourself.
  • It will not let you assign an item to a person. The capability exists behind the API and no screen in either client offers it.
  • It will not do any of this on your phone. The mobile inbox is a read-only list with no resolve control.

WORTH KNOWING

A review is one of the four item kinds, and on this page it is an ordinary item with no rating attached. The star rating, the flow that drafts a thank-you or an acknowledgement, and the reputation figure all live on the Reviews page instead. What has not changed is collection: there is still no review monitoring, no Google or Trustpilot integration and no way to post a reply to a review site from anywhere in this product. A reply rule can match on the review kind, which is genuinely useful for drafting a response you then post yourself.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • "reply or moderate permission required." means your role cannot resolve an item.
  • "generate or moderate permission required." is the refusal on the analyse endpoint, which then refuses again for the real reason.
  • "You do not have access to this workspace."
  • "Could not resolve the item." is the fallback when the server gave no message.
  • An empty inbox is not a fault, and whether it means a quiet audience depends on the panel at the top of the page. If every network there says it could not be read, nothing has been collected and the emptiness says nothing about your audience. If a network was read and reports no comments, that is a real finding.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Will connecting Instagram start filling the inbox?

No, and the reason is worth being precise about. Reading comments back is a different capability from publishing, and for Instagram nobody at easyMarketing has established whether Instagram's terms permit it. Connecting the account will not change that, so the panel names Instagram as unread and attributes the gap to easyMarketing rather than to you or to Instagram. On a network where the position HAS been determined, connecting an account is exactly what starts it.

Can I see who an item came from?

Yes, by handle. Each item is also matched to a contact in the CRM, which is where their history lives.

  • The contacts behind your inbox

    How the social CRM builds itself from recorded inbox activity, what you can add to a contact, and the things it deliberately does not do.

  • Drafting replies with rules

    Writing rules that draft a reply for a matching inbox item, approving the draft, and which networks Social Studio can actually post the approved reply to.

  • Keyword monitors and listening

    Setting up keyword monitors to label recorded mentions, why Social Studio searches no platform for you, and where competitor tracking actually stands.

  • Handling reviews and reputation

    What happens when a review is recorded, why a low rating raises a task and notifies a branch manager, what the reputation average is actually measured over, and why nothing is ever posted for you.