Skip to navigation

Overview

Omni Channel is the part of Hams for customer messages. It puts the messages of all your channels in one shared list: WhatsApp, email, the chat widget on your website, social media, and phone calls. Your team reads and answers every customer from the same dashboard. Workflows and AI agents answer the repeated questions for your team.

The conversations view shows the channels on the left, the conversation list in the middle, and the thread on the right.
The conversations view shows the channels on the left, the conversation list in the middle, and the thread on the right.

In this page, {account_id} is the number of your account in the dashboard URL.

Main terms

TermMeaning
InboxOne channel that you connect to your account, for example a WhatsApp number or an email address.
ConversationAll the messages between your team and one contact in one inbox.
ContactA customer who sends messages to your account. A contact can have conversations in different inboxes.
CompanyA group of the contacts who work for the same organization.
AgentA person on your team who answers conversations. An administrator is an agent who can also change the settings of the account.
AI agentAn automated agent that answers customers in a conversation. It can transfer the conversation to a human agent.
Conversation cycleOne visit of a contact through a conversation, from open to close. A conversation can have more than 1 cycle.

What you can do

AreaWhat it doesPages
InboxesConnect your channels. Get phone calls as conversations. Answer X direct messages and public X mentions.Inboxes and channels, Phone calls, X, X Mentions
ConversationsFollow each visit of a customer, and group contacts by organization.Conversation cycles, Companies
AutomationSend a WhatsApp template to many contacts. Automate the steps of a conversation.WhatsApp campaigns, Workflows
ReportsCount and read conversation cycles, analyze closed cycles, and compare WhatsApp campaigns.Conversation log, Post-chat analysis, WhatsApp campaign reports
AI AgentCreate AI agents, give them knowledge and tools, test them, and read their results.Assistants, Knowledge and documents, FAQ and responses, Scenarios, Tools, Playground, AI agent reports
Developer APISend messages and templates from your own systems, and read and change conversations and contacts.Quickstart, Messages, Templates, Conversations, Contacts, Pre-call context, Errors

Some features are off by default. Hams support turns them on for your account. The features are:

  • The X channel and the X Mentions view: X Channel (Mentions + Chat)
  • Phone calls: Call Center and Voice Channel
  • Companies: Companies
  • WhatsApp campaigns: WhatsApp Campaign
  • Workflows and the AI agent: Workflows + Agent
  • Post-chat analysis: Post-chat Analysis

The top of each page tells you who can use the feature and how to get it.

Set up your account

Do these steps in this order.

1

Connect a channel

Open Settings > Inboxes. Click Add Inbox. Select a channel. Then connect it. See Inboxes and channels.

2

Add your team

Open Settings > Agents at /app/accounts/{account_id}/settings?tab=agents. Click Add Agent. Enter the Agent Name and the Email Address. Select the Role: Administrator or Agent. Click Add agent. The system sends an invitation email to the new agent.

3

Give the agents access to the inbox

Add the agents to the inbox in the Add Agents step of the inbox wizard. You can also add them later on the Collaborators tab of the inbox settings. An agent sees only the conversations of the inboxes and teams of that agent.

4

Automate the repeated work

Build a workflow for the steps that are the same each time. Create an AI agent for the questions that are the same each time.

5

Connect your own systems

Create an API key. Then send your first template through the developer API. See Quickstart.

Switch to Cloud Call Center

The sidebar has a product switcher under the account name. Use it to move the dashboard between Omni Channel and Cloud Call Center. Use Cloud Call Center to take and make calls, route calls, and read call reports.

Your account, your login, and your contacts are the same in both products. A call shows as a conversation on the timeline of the contact. See Phone calls and the Cloud Call Center overview.

Personal settings

Each user can set a chat background for the message area of a conversation. Open Profile Settings and find Chat background in the Interface section. You can also open the More actions menu in the header of a conversation and click Chat background. The choices are Default, Sand, Sky, Lavender, Slate, Doodle, Dots, Waves, and Grid. The background applies only to the user who sets it. Other users see their own background.