The Message Centre in PortalX keeps every conversation about an order in one place: with your colleagues, with partner organizations that work on the same orders (for example a carrier or reseller), with external people by email, and with QrX support.

The Message Centre is not switched on automatically, not even for administrators. An administrator gives access under Settings > Roles & Permissions, in the group Message Centre. Permissions include View Message centre, Create conversations, Reply to conversations, Edit own messages, Claim and Assign conversations, Resolve and reopen, Manage message groups, Share conversations with partners, Manage conversation participants, Share message history, Manage external contacts, Email external people in conversations, Manage message templates, Manage conversation statuses and types and Export messages. Users who receive new permissions need to sign in again.

Open it from Settings > Operations > Message centre. Without access you see "You do not have access to the message centre."

Set the response target and the resolution target in Support > Setup. A conversation that is not resolved within the resolution target shows Resolution overdue.

Set up a queue, search and filters you use often, then click Save as view. The view appears as an extra tab after the queue tabs. Tick Share with my organization to show the view to everyone in your organization who uses the Message Centre (this needs the Manage conversation statuses and types permission). Use Edit view to rename it or change the sharing, and Delete view to remove the tab. Deleting a view never changes conversations.

Tick several conversations in the inbox to act on all of them at once: assign, take, remove owner, resolve, reopen, Set status, Set type, Set priority, Add or remove tags, Merge conversations (pick the conversation the others are merged into) and Snooze. A waiting status is only applied to conversations that are already waiting.

PortalX remembers your last choice of For an order or Without order and your last sales channel in this browser, so the next new conversation starts the same way.

A conversation you start is assigned to you automatically, so it shows under Assigned to me. You can assign it to someone else at any time.

Colleagues join immediately. People from another organization get an invitation, unless their organization accepts invitations automatically: then they join at once. Either way, they do not see earlier messages unless history is shared. The review screen reminds you that people from another organization may join automatically. If you see "You cannot start a conversation on this order yet", the organization that owns the order must first give your organization access to it (Partner Access).

When another organization invites you to a conversation about an order, the invitation waits in the Invitations tab of the inbox, newest first. The table shows Subject, Order, Shop, From, Audience and Invited. Click Accept and confirm; the conversation opens right away. The chat icon in the top bar of PortalX also counts your open invitations and lists them.

Your organization can choose to accept invitations from other organizations automatically. Open Message Centre > Support > Invitations:

Good to know:

Order numbers: wherever the Message Centre shows a conversation, it shows the order number, never the internal transaction number.

Each transaction row has a message icon showing whether a conversation exists, unread messages or an open reminder. Click it to open the conversations for that order, or Open in Message Centre. The Unread messages button on the list shows only orders with unread messages.

When a fulfilment partner packs and ships the orders of one of your channels, you and the partner can always chat about an order of that channel. No extra permission is needed.

If you see "You cannot message the merchant about this order.", the order is not on a channel you fulfil. "The merchant has no one available for chat right now." means the merchant's support routing found nobody: try again later.

In a long conversation you see the first message and the latest messages. In between, a <n> older messages button with the avatars of the people who wrote them loads the older messages when you click it. Unread messages, and messages you jump to (from a reply quote, a search result or a link), are always shown.

When a colleague has the same conversation open, the header shows it, for example "Anna is viewing" or "Anna is replying". This helps you avoid answering the same customer twice. It only shows people who can see the conversation, and disappears a few seconds after they close it.

Click Snooze in a conversation (or use the bulk action) and pick Later today, Tomorrow, Next Monday or Pick date and time (at most 90 days ahead). The conversation leaves your queues and waits in the Snoozed tab until that time, or until someone else writes in it. You get a reminder when the snooze ends and the row shows Snooze ended. Snooze only affects you; your colleagues still see the conversation. Click Unsnooze to end it early.

Type / at the start of the message or after a space to open the template picker. While you type, matching templates appear as suggestions under the composer; press Tab to insert the first suggestion.

Press ? (or click the keyboard icon) to see all shortcuts. They work while you are not typing in a field:

With the right permission, add someone from External contacts with Add external person. They receive an invitation email (not when the sales channel sends emails in the plain style: then their first email is simply your first message) and every message that is not a note, and they can reply by email or on a secure reply page. They can unsubscribe at any time. How these emails look (branded or plain) and your personal signature are explained in "Set Up Your Support Email Address (Forwarding, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365)".

On the Templates tab click New template. Choose who can use it: Personal, Team or Organization (this cannot be changed later; copy the template to change it). Write the text in several languages (up to 4,000 characters each) and use variables that fill in from the order: customer name and email, order reference, tracking number, carrier, shop name and your name. The Contact variables (first name, name, email, company) fill in from the conversation's external contact, also in conversations without an order; the Customer variables are always the order's customer. When a conversation has no external contact or more than one, the Contact variables are marked to fill in yourself before sending. Use the toolbar above the message (or Ctrl/Cmd+B, I, E and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+X) for bold, italic, strikethrough and code, the same formatting as in chat, or switch on Rich formatting for headings, lists and quotes (see "Message Centre: Formatted Replies, Live Preview and Formatted Emails"). Team and organization templates need the Manage message templates permission. The first time Templates is opened, your organization automatically gets 7 starter templates to use or edit.

A template can also have a Conversation subject per language (optional, one line, up to 200 characters, no variables). Templates with a subject can start a new conversation: in New conversation, type / in the Subject field or click the template button next to it, and pick a template. The subject is filled in, and when the conversation opens, the template's message is already in your first reply draft with the order details filled in. Nothing is sent until you send it yourself. Remove the template chip under Subject if you only want the subject.

The Support tab turns the Message Centre into a helpdesk for your customers. Customer emails can arrive as conversations without an order (see "Set Up Your Support Email Address (Forwarding, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365)"), replies can go from your own domain (see "Send Replies from Your Own Domain Without Landing in Spam"), and you can notify many consumers at once, send messages as SMS, translate messages and collect satisfaction ratings (see "Message Centre for Consumer Support: Bulk Notify, SMS, Translation and Satisfaction Ratings").

Does a fulfilment partner do customer service for you? With the extra permission Customer support it can start conversations with your consumers that you share with it. See "Message Centre for Consumer Support" and "Fulfilment Partner Permissions (Extra Permissions per Partner)".

Contact QrX if you cannot give Message Centre access although you are an administrator, if a partner cannot see an order you shared, or if an attachment keeps failing the security check although it is a normal file.