Start a new conversation

Most conversations arrive inbound — a customer emails, texts, or chats in. But sometimes you need to reach out first: following up on an issue, opening a proactive outreach thread, or looping in someone who hasn’t contacted you yet. That’s what the New Conversation composer is for.

Before you start

You’ll need:

• A contact (existing or new) to address the conversation to
• A team to assign the conversation to — this drives which channel it sends from
• For email, optionally, one or more CC recipients

Steps

1. Open New Conversation from the Conversations view.
2. Choose the channel (email or voice) and enter or select the contact.
3. Assign a team. The From address for email resolves automatically from the channel configured on that team — you don’t pick a mailbox separately. See How the From address is chosen below.
4. Write a subject and your opening message.
5. If you need to loop other people in, click Cc and add recipients (email channel only) — see below.
6. Send. This creates the conversation and delivers the first message in one step.

Adding CC recipients

For email conversations, a Cc toggle sits near the composer fields. Click it to reveal a Cc input; click it again to hide the row. Once you’ve added recipients, the button shows a small count badge so you can tell at a glance that Cc is in use even when the row is collapsed.

A few things to know about Cc on a new conversation:

• Cc is only available on the email channel — it doesn’t apply to voice.
• Addresses are entered as chips — type an address and confirm it to add it to the list.
• You can’t Cc the same address you’re sending To. The To address is excluded from the Cc field automatically, and if it’s already sitting in Cc when you type it into To, it’s dropped from Cc at send time — the platform won’t double-address the same recipient.
• Duplicate addresses are deduplicated, and there’s an upper limit on how many Cc recipients a single conversation can carry.
• The Cc list you set here is saved on the new conversation and on the first outbound message, and is carried forward whenever anyone replies — no need to re-add the same people on every message.

How the From address is chosen

You don’t select a From mailbox directly in the New Conversation dialog. Instead, the From address is derived from the team you assign the conversation to — whichever email channel is configured for that team is what the customer sees as the sender. This keeps outbound conversations consistent with how the team is set up to communicate, and means you can’t accidentally send a proactive outreach from the wrong inbox by picking the wrong channel from a long list.

If you change the team before sending, the From address updates to match. Set the team you actually want to own this conversation first — the channel follows from that.

What happens after you send

The conversation is created immediately with your first message as the opening message, and it behaves like any other conversation from then on:

• It appears in the conversation list under the assigned team.
• Replies from the customer land back in the same thread.
• Cc recipients on your opening message continue to receive replies unless removed — the same Cc mechanics that apply when replying to a conversation apply here too.

Troubleshooting

• Cc toggle isn’t visible. Cc is only offered for the email channel. If you’re composing a voice conversation, there’s no Cc row to open.
• My Cc recipient disappeared. If you typed the same address you used as the To contact, it’s intentionally excluded from Cc — that recipient still gets the message, just as the primary To, not as a duplicate Cc.
• From address looks wrong. Double-check the team assigned to the conversation — the From mailbox is tied to that team’s channel, not chosen independently.