Lesson 3 (a): Mastering core features

You can now find conversations and reply to them. This lesson is about the tools that turn ten minutes of typing into a thirty-second action — the features that good agents use every single conversation without thinking about it.

We'll focus on the in-conversation toolkit: private notes, canned responses, labels, macros, conversation actions, and participants. Lesson 3(b) will cover the data-and-context side: contacts, custom attributes, bulk actions, and advanced filtering.

What you'll learn

• How to talk to your team inside a conversation without the customer seeing it

• How to reply in two keystrokes using canned responses

• How to keep your queue organized with labels (and what to actually label)

• How to chain three or four routine steps into a single click using macros

• How to assign, route, snooze, and prioritize from the conversation actions panel

• How to pull teammates into a conversation as participants without handing it off

You'll need: A test conversation in your inbox (carry over the one from Lesson 2) and admin access to set up at least one canned response and one macro.

1. Private Notes — your team's sidebar

A private note is a message inside a conversation that only your team can see. The customer never sees it, never gets notified, and it never leaves Chatwoot.

Use it for:

• "Looping you in — this looks like a billing edge case."

• "FYI, I already refunded their last order. Don't double up."

• "Customer is a VIP, please prioritize."

How to send one

1. Open a conversation.

2. Switch the reply tab from Reply to Private Note (top of the message composer).

3. Type your note. The composer turns yellow so you don't mix them up with public replies.

4. Hit Send.

@mentions inside notes

Type @ and start typing a teammate/team's name. Selecting them does two things:

• They get a notification (in-app, push, and optionally email).

• The conversation shows up in their Mentions view.

Rule of thumb: if you'd otherwise Slack a teammate about the conversation, write a private note instead. The context stays attached to the conversation.

2. Canned Responses — your reply shortcuts

A canned response is a saved reply template you trigger with a short code. Instead of retyping "Thanks for reaching out! Could you share your account email so I can look this up?" thirty times a day, you save it once as /email-ask and trigger it with two characters.

Setting one up

1. Go to Settings → Canned Responses → Add Canned Response.

2. Fill in:

   • Short Code — what you'll type to trigger it (e.g. email-ask)

   • Content — the template body. Markdown works.

3. Save.

Using one in a conversation

In the reply box, type / followed by the short code (/email-ask). A picker pops up — hit Enter and the full template fills in. Edit if needed, then send.

What to make canned responses for (start with these five)

• A friendly greeting / opener

• Asking for an account email or order number

• "We're looking into this and will get back to you within X hours"

• A closing line you use to wrap conversations

• A link to your most-shared docs article (refund policy, pricing, install guide — whatever your top hit is)

Tip: Canned responses are templates, not robots. Personalize the first sentence — using the customer's name and one detail from their message — before you send.

3. Labels — the digital sticky notes

A label is a tag you attach to a conversation. Labels are account-wide and reusable. Used well, they're how you find patterns ("we got 12 billing-bug reports this week") and how you build saved folders ("show me all open vip conversations").

Adding a label to a conversation

• From the conversation actions panel on the right: click Add Label and pick or create one.

• Or use the keyboard: hit Cmd+K to find the shortcut for label-add.

How to think about labels

Labels work best when you keep the list short, opinionated, and consistent. Three categories cover most teams:

Anti-pattern: ten labels that mean almost the same thing (bug, bugs, bug-report, defect, issue). Pick one and delete the rest. Run a label cleanup once a quarter.

4. Macros — chained actions in one click

A macro is a saved sequence of actions. Where a canned response is just text, a macro can do several things at once: send a reply, add a label, assign a team, snooze the conversation — all in a single click.

A real example: the "refund issued" macro

When you process a refund, you probably do all of these:

1. Send a templated message confirming the refund

2. Add a refund-issued label

3. Assign to the Finance team for record-keeping

4. Resolve the conversation

A macro bundles those four steps into a single button.

Setting one up

1. Go to Settings → Macros → Add a new Macro.

2. Name it (e.g. Refund issued).

3. Add actions in order — the action picker has options like Send Message, Assign Team, Add Label, Resolve Conversation, Send Email Transcript.

4. Set visibility: Private (just you) or Public (whole team). Save.

Running a macro

Open any conversation, scroll the right sidebar to Macros, pick yours, and click Run. Done.

When to write a macro: any time you find yourself doing the same three or four actions back-to-back more than a few times a week. Five minutes setting up the macro saves you hours over a quarter.

5. Conversation Actions — the right sidebar in detail

The conversation actions panel (right side, top section) is where you change the state of a conversation. Quick tour:

Status vs assignee: changing assignee moves who's responsible; changing status moves where it sits in the workflow. They're independent — you can have a Resolved conversation with an assignee, or an Open conversation that's unassigned.

6. Conversation Participants — collaborate without handing off

Sometimes you need a teammate's eyes on a conversation, but you don't want to give it to them. That's what participants are for.

• Assignee = the one person responsible for replying.

• Participant = anyone else who's watching and can chime in.

How to add one

In the conversation actions panel, click Participants → Add and pick teammates. They'll get notifications for new activity on the conversation, and it'll show up in their Participating view.

When to use it

• A senior agent shadowing a junior agent's reply

• Pulling in an engineer for a technical thread without making them own customer comms

• Keeping a manager in the loop on an escalated case

Don't add the whole team as participants — that's notification spam. Two or three people max, with a reason.

Mini-exercise (5 minutes)

1. Create one canned response. Use shortcode hi and content "Hi {{contact.name}}, thanks for reaching out — how can I help?". (The {{contact.name}} placeholder auto-fills the customer's name.)

2. Create one macro called Wrap up that adds a resolved-by-me label and resolves the conversation.

3. Open your test conversation. Send a private note @teammate trying out mentions.

4. Trigger your /hi canned response.

5. Run the Wrap up macro.

If all five worked, you've used the entire core toolkit.

Common questions

Can the customer ever see private notes or macro internals?

No. Private notes and macro action steps (assign, label, etc.) are invisible to the customer. Only macro actions of type Send Message go to the customer — and those look like normal replies.

Can I edit a canned response after the fact?

Yes. Settings → Canned Responses, click any row, edit, save. Existing usages (already-sent messages) aren't changed retroactively.

What's the difference between assigning a team vs. an agent?

Assigning to an agent says "this is yours specifically." Assigning to a team says "anyone on this team can pick it up." Most teams use team assignment for routing and agent assignment for ownership.

Should I label every conversation?

You don't have to label every conversation, but a quick label on closing — even just one — pays off enormously when you look at reports later. Make it a habit on resolve.

Macros don't run automatically?

Correct — macros are manual. If you want something to run automatically based on a trigger (like "auto-label any conversation containing the word 'refund'"), that's an Automation Rule, which we'll cover in a later lesson.

What's next

In Lesson 3(b): Working with customer context, we'll switch focus from what you do to a conversation to what you know about the customer: the contact record, custom attributes, previous conversations, bulk actions across many conversations at once, and saved filters that turn a chaotic queue into a focused workspace.