Merge conversations

A customer emails about a refund, calls ten minutes later about the same refund, then sends a chat message asking for an update. Three conversations, one issue. Merging combines them into one thread so the context lives in a single place.

When to merge

• The customer wrote in more than once about the same issue, across different channels.
• Duplicate conversations were created by automation or routing quirks.
• You want to consolidate history before a handoff or before marking Done.

When NOT to merge

• The conversations are about different issues, even from the same customer. Keep them separate.
• You just want one of them to “go away” — Snooze, mark Done, or wait for the resolution timer instead.
• The conversations belong to different customers. Nothing stops you — Atender will merge them and simply refers to the other conversation by its ticket identifier instead of its subject — but the result mixes two people’s threads and cannot be undone, so check the contact on every row before you confirm.

Before you start

• You need at least two conversations. The merge pane blocks with Need at least two conversations to merge below that.
• Already-merged conversations can’t be merged again — neither as the primary nor as one being folded in.
• Merging needs the Merge conversations permission. Owners, team leads and agents have it by default; readers and analytics users do not.
• The merge cannot be undone. There is no “unmerge.”

Steps

1. Select the conversations first. The merge pane never lets you add one — it only works on what you already selected. Three places offer it:
   Inbox list — tick two or more rows, then the merge icon in the selection toolbar (tooltip Merge conversations).
   Search panel — tick two or more results, then Merge conversations in the bulk action menu.
   Previous Conversations panel — tick one or more of this contact’s other conversations, then Merge. The conversation you have open is added automatically, and the pane says so: “The conversation you have open is included, on top of the N you selected.”
2. The merge pane opens on Merge N Conversations, listing exactly the conversations you selected with each one’s subject, status, created date and contact.
3. Under Select primary conversation:, pick the survivor with the radio buttons. The oldest is preselected and carries an Oldest badge, but you decide. Every other conversation in the list becomes a secondary and is folded in.
4. If a red Merge is blocked: banner appears, fix what it names — one of the conversations is already merged, or fewer than two are in the list — and start again. The confirm button stays disabled until then.
5. If Atender shows a note that the merge will not restore a tag someone removed from the primary, read it before you continue. It names the tag, who removed it and when, and it never blocks the merge.
6. Read the This action cannot be undone. warning. It stays pinned below the list, so you do not have to scroll to find it.
7. Click Merge Conversations. A “Conversations merged” toast confirms how many were folded in.

The merge runs server-side in one transaction: messages and internal comments from each secondary are re-parented onto the primary, tags are unioned, call history and recordings move across, a system comment is written on both sides, and each secondary is set to Done and pointed at the primary.

What happens to the conversations you folded in

Each non-primary conversation is set to Done, is stamped with the merge time, and loses any snooze it had. It is also locked: opening it shows the banner “This conversation has been merged and is locked”, with a Merged into ““ link, and the reply composer does not appear.

In the conversation list a folded-in conversation carries a Merged badge whose tooltip reads “This conversation was merged into another”. They stay readable from the Done tab if you ever need to audit the merge, but they don’t show up in Active.

If a customer or CC participant replies to an old email from a folded-in conversation, Atender resolves the merge pointer and threads the reply onto the primary. The participant check is widened across the whole merge family, so the customer whose conversation was merged away still counts as a participant. A reply from someone who was never a participant of any conversation in the family is refused and opens a separate conversation instead.

What carries over to the primary

• All messages from every folded-in conversation, interleaved with the primary’s own messages by timestamp.
• Internal comments from every folded-in conversation.
• Call records and call recordings, so a transcript in the primary keeps the audio that goes with it.
• Tags from every conversation are unioned onto the primary, except tags that have a recorded human removal on the primary conversation. The secondaries’ own tag rows are removed as part of the move, so a folded-in conversation shows no tags afterwards.
• If the primary already has an assignee, that assignment is kept and the others’ assignments are discarded.
• If the primary has no assignee, it adopts the agent from the newest folded-in conversation that has one, skipping any agent whose membership is no longer active. The assignment change appears in the timeline like a normal assignment update. One exception: if the AI is still handling the primary, no agent is adopted — a merge is not a handover.
• If the primary is Active or Snoozed and has no team, it adopts the team from the newest folded-in conversation that has one. A primary that is already Done or Archived adopts no team.

Two things do not move:

• Custom-field values. The merge does not copy or reconcile them; the primary keeps exactly the values it had, and the secondaries’ values stay on the secondaries.
• Callback markers. A callback’s lifecycle events stay on the conversation that owns them, so the primary’s timeline will not show a folded-in conversation’s callback events.

Verify it worked

• The primary conversation now contains messages from all folded-in conversations, in chronological order.
• A system comment in the primary records the merge and names what was folded in.
• Each folded-in conversation appears in the Done tab with a Merged badge, and opening it shows the locked banner linking back to the primary.
• The primary’s tag chips include tags that came from the folded-in conversations — apart from any tag a person had previously removed from the primary.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: The merge action doesn’t appear in the selection toolbar or the bulk action menu. Fix: It only appears once at least two conversations are selected. Tick another row. (In the Previous Conversations panel one tick is enough, because the conversation you have open is counted too.)

• Symptom: A conversation you want to merge isn’t in the merge pane. Fix: The pane only ever lists what you selected before opening it — there is no search field inside it. Close it, add the conversation to your selection, and reopen. If you were working in the Previous Conversations panel, that list only holds conversations belonging to the contact you are looking at; merge from the inbox list or Search if you need one from elsewhere.

• Symptom: The merge fails with a permission error. Fix: Your role does not hold the Merge conversations permission. Owners, team leads and agents have it by default; ask an owner to grant it to your role.

• Symptom: I picked the wrong primary. Fix: Merging is one-way. The folded-in conversations are still readable in Done — open the one you wished was primary, copy any context you need from there, and continue from the merged result. There is no built-in “unmerge.”

See also

• Use bulk actions on conversations
• Conversation statuses
• Merge contacts