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Conversations is the live inbox where a company’s team reads and replies to WhatsApp threads with contacts. This page explains how the inbox is organized (conversation list, thread, contact info), how to reply with the composer within the 24-hour reply window, what each message status means, and how contacts reached on several WhatsApp numbers are displayed. If your support team works in a helpdesk, you can also handle WhatsApp conversations from Crisp, Easiware, or Gorgias. The item is labeled Conversations in the left navigation.

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Layout

The Conversations screen has three panels:
  • Left: the conversation list, with Received / Ongoing / Handled tabs.
  • Center: the selected thread, with a header (the contact’s identifier), the date-separated message history, and the answer composer at the bottom.
  • Right: the contact information panel (Phone number, BSUID, Consent, Created at, Updated at, channel/opt-in pills, and Tags). The right panel can be collapsed with the toggle in its top-left corner.

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Conversation list and tabs

Conversations are organized into three tabs, each with a count next to its name: Conversations are sorted with the most recently active one first (based on the timestamp of the latest message, inbound or outbound); conversations with no messages at all sort to the very end of the list. For each conversation in the list, the inbox shows:
  • A round avatar with a one-letter initial, colored per contact.
  • The contact’s display name, using the best available identifier in this order of preference: their WhatsApp profile name, then first/last name on file, then their phone number, then their WhatsApp internal ID (BSUID), and finally just “Contact” if nothing else is available.
  • A preview of the latest message’s text on the second line. If the latest message is media-only (an image, audio clip, or document with no accompanying text), the preview is simply blank; no synthetic placeholder like “Photo” is shown.
  • A relative timestamp on the right (8h, 10h, 08/09/26, 12/08/26, …).
Conversation list updates arrive live: when a new message comes in or an existing message’s delivery status changes, connected inbox views are notified in real time and refresh automatically, without needing a manual page reload. If nothing happens for about a minute, the inbox also does a background refresh automatically as a safety net.

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The thread

The center panel shows the full conversation with the selected contact.
  • The header shows the contact’s identifier (typically the phone number, e.g. 33695682805).
  • Date separators (9 septembre 2026, 17 septembre 2026, …) group messages by calendar day.
  • Inbound messages from the contact appear as white bubbles on the left, with the time below.
  • Outbound messages sent from Simio appear as green bubbles on the right, with the time and a double-check delivery indicator.
  • Failed outbound messages appear as pink/red bubbles with a red error indicator next to the timestamp.
The thread updates in real time as new messages arrive and as delivery statuses change.

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Contact information panel

The right-hand panel summarizes what Simio knows about the contact. It has two sections:

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Information

Two status pills appear below: a channel pill (whatsapp) and an opt-in pill showing the WhatsApp business number the contact is opted in on (e.g. 33759623720).

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Tags

Tags applied to the contact appear here (e.g. 2026-08-04T08:00:28.751226Z). Tags are a contact-level attribute in Simio; there is no separate conversation-level tagging today. See Contacts and segments for how contact tags are managed.

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The Answer composer

The composer is at the bottom of the thread. It has:
  • An Answer tab label (the active reply mode).
  • A message field with the placeholder Reply as private message....
  • A 0 / 4096 character counter on the right.
  • A Send button (disabled until the field has content).
Below the text field, four action buttons open the outbound content pickers:

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What can be sent

An agent can send three kinds of outbound content:
  1. Free-form text, a plain text reply (up to 4,096 characters).
  2. Media, an image, video, document, voice/audio recording, or GIF.
  3. An approved WhatsApp template, used specifically for reaching a contact outside the normal reply window (see below).

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The 24-hour reply window

WhatsApp only allows a business to send free-form messages to a contact within 24 hours of that contact’s last inbound message. Outside that window, only a pre-approved utility or marketing template can be sent (see WhatsApp templates for how templates work). The composer is expected to hide or disable the free-text/media input once that 24-hour window has closed for a given contact, and instead prompt the user to send an approved template. When picking a template to send from within the inbox, only templates that are Approved, categorized as Marketing, without quick-reply buttons, and not a Carousel are offered. Quick-reply and Carousel templates are excluded from this specific send path because they need a guided automated flow or are not supported by this sending mechanism.

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Message statuses

Every message tracks a status reflecting where it is in the delivery lifecycle: Status updates (delivered / read / failed) arrive from WhatsApp asynchronously and update the message in place in real time.

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Known limitations

  • Read/unread state per conversation is tracked as a field but nothing currently updates it; there is no functioning “mark as read/unread” behavior yet.
  • There is no conversation-level tagging feature (tags in Simio today apply to contacts, not to conversations).
  • There is no function to assign a conversation with a contact to a user or to myself yet.