Getting Started with Conversations

Conversations is MonuDesk's built-in email inbox. Find it in the left sidebar, between Inventory and Order Summary.

What Conversations is

Conversations lets you connect your real Gmail or Microsoft Outlook account and read and reply to customers, cemeteries, and vendors without leaving MonuDesk. The big difference from a normal inbox: every thread sits next to the right contact and order, so you have the full picture while you write.

What you get on your plan

Conversations is not a staged rollout waiting to reach your shop. It is switched on for every account today, and your plan decides how much of it you can use.

• Pro (or an active Pro trial): the whole inbox. Connect up to three mailboxes per active office, open every thread, reply, compose, star, tag, archive, trash, and use the bulk action bar.

• Basic: a read-only preview. Conversations still sits in the sidebar and you can connect one mailbox, but you can only open the two most recent conversations. The rest of the list stays on screen and stops responding, and every action (reply, compose, star, mark read, archive, trash, tag) opens the This is a Pro feature prompt instead of doing the thing. The bulk action bar is not shown at all. At the bottom of the list you'll see Upgrade to Pro to see all conversations; that is the preview cap, not an error. Two more pieces are Pro features: the Message Client button on an order, which Basic does not show, and Settings → Conversations (templates and signature), which shows the real page blurred behind Available with MonuDesk Pro, with Start free trial (or Upgrade to Pro) and Learn more.

Conversations cannot be hidden by a role, so every team member sees it in the sidebar regardless of their permissions. If you are seeing the preview rather than the full inbox, that is your plan and not your role.

Getting connected

The first time you open Conversations without a mailbox connected, you're greeted by a welcome screen where you can get started. From there, connect your Gmail or Microsoft Outlook account to begin.

Once any mailbox is connected, the inbox always opens straight to your mail.

For the step-by-step connection walkthrough, what MonuDesk can and can't see in your mailbox, and how to disconnect, see Connecting Your Mailbox (Gmail & Outlook).

The three-pane layout

After at least one mailbox is connected, Conversations opens as a three-pane workspace:

• Left rail: the mailbox switcher at the top, a Search conversations… box with Refresh and Compose buttons, a filter strip (All, Unread, Customers, Cemetery, Vendors, Unlinked, Spam, Trash, Archived) with a tag filter, then the select-all checkbox and action bar, and the list of conversations. You do not have to keep clicking Refresh. While Conversations is open it checks for new mail about every half-minute on its own, more often while a mailbox is still syncing, and it checks again straight away when you come back to the tab or when your internet comes back after a drop. Refresh is there for when you want it now.

• Select-all checkbox and action bar: the checkbox above the list ticks every conversation currently showing, and turns into a dash when only some are ticked. Tick one or more rows and the bar shows 3 selected alongside buttons for Star, Mark as read, Archive and Move to trash, so you can clear a week of junk in one pass instead of row by row.

• Center / right pane: the selected thread: its header, the message history, and the composer where you reply. If nothing is selected yet, you'll see a Select a conversation prompt.

• Compose: the pencil button opens a window for starting a brand-new conversation with a contact.

The "All inboxes" view

The switcher pill at the top of the left rail lets you jump between a single mailbox and the combined All inboxes view, which merges every mailbox you can see into one list with a single unread count. Open its popover, headed Connected mailboxes, to manage a mailbox or connect another one.

How many mailboxes you can connect depends on your plan and how many offices you run. See Connecting Your Mailbox (Gmail & Outlook). When you're at the cap, the connect button is disabled and tells you the number: Plan limit of 3 mailboxes reached. Disconnect one to connect another.

Threads, contacts, and orders

Conversations groups mail by the person you're talking to, not by subject line. All email to and from the same address collapses into a single thread, so one thread maps to one contact, and that contact's whole history lives in one place.

Each thread can be linked to a contact, which automatically sorts it as Customer, Cemetery, or Vendor, and linked to one or more orders. Linking an order is what lets you drop in files already attached to that order without leaving the reply, including a generated purchase order, which goes out as a branded email your vendor confirms with one click. Threads without a contact stay Uncategorized and show up under the Unlinked filter until you connect one.

You can also arrive here from an order, and the order comes with you. See Opening a conversation from an order below.

Opening a conversation from an order

Open an order and click Message Client in the order header. In a narrower window it reads Message, or moves into the ⋯ menu. Conversations opens on that client's thread with the order already linked to it:

• If you already have a conversation with that client, MonuDesk opens that thread and links the order to it.

• If there is no thread with them yet, a new draft thread is started with the order already linked, ready for you to type.

Message Client starts a conversation once the order has a client with an email address and a mailbox is connected in Conversations. It is part of Pro, so Basic does not show it.

Above the composer a blue prompt offers the order's artwork: Attach the drawing from Order #N?, or Attach 3 drawings from Order #N? when there is more than one. Click Attach to add every listed drawing to the message, or Not now (or the X) to close the prompt. It offers the image files (JPG, PNG, WEBP and HEIC) filed as drawings on the order plus the newest sketch rendering per side, and it does not offer a drawing you have already attached.

Related articles:

• Your First Look at MonuDesk

• Connecting Your Mailbox (Gmail & Outlook)

• How to Manage Contacts

• How to Configure Email Communications