Two people answering the same customer separately, or everyone waiting because "somebody else will take it" — that is the most expensive mistake a shared inbox can make. Assignment fixes it: every conversation gets an owner. This guide covers assigning by hand, removing an assignment, and sharing new conversations out automatically.
⚠️ Today only the Owner and Admin roles can assign. Other roles never see the assignee badge in the chat header; they can reply to conversations but cannot change who owns them.
In this article you will find:
Assigning a conversation by hand
Sharing new conversations out automatically
Who the rule counts as a candidate
The traces an assignment leaves for the team
Common mistakes
Assigning a conversation by hand
Open the conversation in the inbox.
Tap the assignee badge in the header. It shows the owner's initials, or a dashed add-person icon when nobody owns the chat.
Pick a team member from the menu.
The menu closes, the badge switches to the new person's initials, and the conversation drops into their Mine tab.
Only team members who can reach this account appear in the list. Your portfolio may have ten people, but someone without access to that Instagram account is left out — they cannot own a conversation they cannot open.
The assignment takes effect immediately; the other person does not need to reload. Their screen refreshes on its own.
Removing an assignment
Open the conversation.
Tap the assignee badge.
Press Remove assignment.
The conversation returns to the Unassigned tab and everyone who can take work from the pool sees it. Removing an assignment does not close the conversation and does not delete any messages.
💡 When you remove someone from the portfolio, the conversations assigned to them become unassigned on their own, so nothing looks stuck with a person who has left.
Sharing new conversations out automatically
If you would rather not assign every new conversation by hand, set a rule. The rule lives at portfolio level: it applies to every account in the portfolio.
Press the settings icon next to the portfolio name in the account switcher.
Open the Chat assignment rules page.
Under Assigning new chats, choose one of these in the Rule field:
Do not assign — nothing is assigned and conversations stay Unassigned. This is the default.
Share evenly (least busy agent) — the eligible agent with the fewest open conversations takes it.
Always the same person — one person you choose takes everything.
If you picked Always the same person, choose them in the Fixed agent field.
Type a number into Max open chats per agent. 0 means unlimited.
Save the page. The rule applies to conversations that open from then on.
The limit counts open conversations across all of the portfolio's accounts. If an agent has 8 open chats on Instagram and 4 on WhatsApp, their load is 12; with a limit of 10 they get nothing new.
⚠️ The rule only touches new conversations. An assignment you make by hand always wins and the rule never undoes it. If nobody is eligible, the conversation simply stays unassigned; it is never forced onto someone.
Who the rule counts as a candidate
For even sharing or a fixed agent, an agent must meet all four conditions:
They must be on the portfolio team.
They must have access to this account.
They must be allowed to see the inbox.
They must be inside their own working hours right now. Every member has their own working hours and the calculation uses the account's time zone.
One account-level setting sits on top of that: if Do not auto-assign outside hours is on under Settings › Business hours and the account is currently closed, nothing is assigned at all and conversations pile up unassigned. Once you open again, new conversations start being shared out.
When even sharing produces a tie, the first person on the team list wins. If the fixed agent has left the team or cannot reach that account, the rule is effectively off: the conversation stays unassigned.
The traces an assignment leaves for the team
Every assignment change is recorded on the conversation and shows up in two places:
Conversation trail — lines such as "Ayse assigned the conversation to Mehmet" under the section in the contact panel.
The chat itself — when a conversation changes hands, a dim centred line appears between the messages: "Ayse handed the conversation to Mehmet". If someone took the chat for themselves, the line reads "took the conversation over from …".
Both are visible to your team only and never reach the person you are writing to. See The conversation trail.
A worked example
Picture a three-person boutique. Ayse works mornings, Mehmet afternoons, Zeynep weekends. The rule is Share evenly with a limit of 15 per agent. An Instagram message arriving at 10:00 can only go to Ayse, because the other two are outside their own working hours. Once Ayse hits 15 open conversations, new ones stay unassigned and collect in the Unassigned tab, where a manager hands them out or raises the limit.
Common mistakes
Setting the rule and finding that nothing gets assigned. The most common cause is working hours: none of the candidates is inside theirs right now. The second is the per-agent limit being full.
Removing the fixed agent from the team. The rule quietly switches off. When you reopen the page you will see it has fallen back to Do not assign.
Confusing assignment with closing. Assignment answers "who will handle this"; closing says "this is done". The two are independent.
Expecting past conversations to be shared out. The rule only touches new conversations; the backlog of unassigned chats has to be handed out by hand.
Trying to assign to someone without access. That person is simply not in the menu. If they should be, grant them account access first under Portfolio settings › Team.
Related concepts
Assignment is a different thing from automation pausing when an agent writes; for that see Taking over and handing back automation. Which conversations each role can see is set in the Access and visibility block on the same settings page.
If anything about assignment leaves you stuck, contact our Support team.