Channels

Connecting email, the chat widget with AI handoff, phone and voicemail, and what each channel can honestly do.

Channels lists the ways a customer can reach you. Each one lands messages as tickets in the same Inbox, tagged with where they came from. The page groups them into Connected, Available and Coming soon: a channel whose adapter does not exist yet shows a "Coming soon" badge and no Connect button, because a connection nothing can read would be a connection in name only.

Connecting a channel needs editor or above; disconnecting one needs admin.

The Channels page with connected and available channels

What each channel can do

Every channel card states its capabilities in plain words rather than a green dot:

Receives messages / Cannot receive messages
Sends replies / Cannot send replies

Today, email is the channel that can both receive and reply. SMS and WhatsApp receive messages as real tickets but have no outbound delivery yet; their cards say "Receiving only", replies not yet supported, and on their tickets the composer withholds the Reply tab and explains why. Internal notes always work. When any connected channel is receive-only, the Channels page says so at the top: "N channels can receive but not reply."

Email

Open Channels, then Email. Setup is one click: Connect email mints an inbound address for your workspace and enables the channel. Anything sent to that address becomes a ticket.

Then forward your support mailbox to the minted address, shown under Your inbound address with a copy control. A provider picker (Gmail, Microsoft 365, Other) adjusts the numbered forwarding steps for your mail system; it changes only the wording, never what is saved.

The page then waits with you: "Waiting for your first email" becomes "Receiving. Your first email became a ticket." once the forwarding rule works.

The email channel page with the minted inbound address

Rotating the inbound address

Issue a new inbound address replaces the minted address. Mail to the old address stops arriving immediately, so update your forwarding rule in the same sitting. The action is confirmation-gated and needs admin.

Connecting a Google mailbox

The Google mailbox section's Connect Google mailbox button starts a Google consent flow and returns you to the page with the outcome: connected, denied, expired, or refused. Needs admin.

Sending from your own domain

By default, replies go out from the minted address. The Reply from your own address section is optional: enter your domain and the address to reply as, click Get the DNS records, and publish the CNAME, MX and TXT records the table shows (they cover DKIM signing, MAIL FROM and DMARC alignment). Re-check now re-reads DNS and marks each record Published, Not found in DNS, or "A different value is published".

The sender line always tells you what a reply would go out as right now: "Replies go out as (address)", with the reason when it is falling back to the minted address or cannot send at all.

Email health

Wherever email is shown, a health pill reports one of: Receiving, Waiting for its first message, Receiving only, replies not yet supported, Needs attention (connected but disabled, or no adapter), or Disconnected. The same banner appears above the Inbox's conversation list when a channel needs an operator's attention, because the person working the queue is the one who notices mail has stopped.

The chat widget belongs to an AI agent rather than to the Channels page: configure it under AI Workforce, in the agent's Web widget surface. You get an appearance form and an embed snippet for HTML, Next.js, React or WordPress, plus a hosted live URL for trying it without embedding.

Conversations start with the AI agent. When the agent hands off to a human, the handoff creates an ordinary ticket with source AI handoff, carrying the agent's brief: intent, sentiment, a summary and the last turns. The ticket opens on the Copilot tab, the brief renders inline in the thread, and while the customer keeps the widget open the ticket shows a live On the line indicator; replies you send reach them in the widget in real time. A message sent from the widget without an agent lands with source Web widget.

An AI handoff ticket with the agent's brief

Phone and voicemail

Voice is an agent surface, not a Channels-page channel: phone numbers are provisioned under Settings, Phone numbers, and each number routes calls to one AI agent. Calls and voicemails surface as tickets with the Phone or Voicemail source, and their transcripts live with the agent's conversations. There is no reply box on those tickets; follow up on a channel that can send, or call back outside the product.