Chatwoot Glossary
A reference of common terms, features, and concepts used throughout Chatwoot.
A
Access Token
Application APIs are designed to interact with a Chatwoot account from a user's perspective. So, to integrate apps and
authenticate to these APIs, you will require a user access_token, which can be obtained from your Profile Settings.
Account
A workspace in Chatwoot that contains your inboxes, agents, contacts, conversations, and settings. A single Chatwoot
installation can host multiple accounts.
Administrator (Admin)
Administrators are account users who have complete access to all the enabled features. They can also control all the
account settings, unlike agents.
Advanced Filters
A way to build complex, multi-condition filters on conversations or contacts (for example, status + label + assignee +
custom attribute). Filter groups can be saved as folders or segments for quick reuse.
Agent
An Agent is anyone from your team who can answer customer conversations. An agent has lesser account permissions as
compared to the administrator.
Agent Bot
A bot that can be connected to one or more inboxes to handle the initial part of a conversation (greetings,
qualification, FAQs) and hand off to a human agent when needed.
Agent Status
An agent can set themself as Online, Busy, or Offline through their Profile Settings.
AI Assistant
An AI-powered conversational agent (configured via Captain) that can answer customer questions using your Help Center
content and your defined guardrails, and hand off to a human agent when required.
API
The APIs (Application Programming Interface) in Chatwoot enable you to connect more external systems than the UI offers.
See the types of APIs in Chatwoot.
Applications
External apps that are natively integrated with Chatwoot. Setting these up lets you enhance your customer engagement
toolset. E.g. you can build a chatbot using the native integration with the Dialogflow app.
Archived articles
Articles you don't want to be deleted, but are no longer relevant.
Article
A document created in the Help Center portal under a topic category that holds essential information about an aspect of
a product. These articles can be shared in customer conversations.
Assignee
A person on your team who is assigned a conversation — usually assumes its responsibility and sends answers to it.
Assignment Policy
A rule that controls how new conversations are distributed to agents in an inbox or team (for example, round robin or
balanced load), so that work is shared automatically rather than picked up manually.
Audio Notifications
On the dashboard, Chatwoot alerts you of new events (like new messages and conversations) by playing an alert tone. You
can customize your preferences in Profile Settings.
Audit Logs
A record of significant administrative actions performed in an account (user changes, settings updates, role changes,
etc.), available to administrators for compliance and traceability.
Author (Article)
The author of a Help Center article, chosen from the Agents list. Their name and thumbnail appear on the published
article page.
Automation
A set of rules an Admin defines for the account to automate specific tasks. Examples include assigning agents or teams,
adding labels, snoozing conversations, etc. Actions are triggered based on events and conditions you define.
B
Bots
Bots automate parts of a conversation, such as greeting a customer when they first message. See also: Agent Bot, AI
Assistant, Captain.
Bulk Actions
The ability to perform an operation on multiple conversations or contacts at once — assigning an agent, applying a
label, resolving, snoozing, or deleting in one step instead of repeating the action per record.
Business Hours
You can set the working hours for any channel/inbox within Chatwoot. Whenever your agents associated with a particular
inbox are outside their working hours, Chatwoot will show a custom message to the customer.
C
Campaigns
Campaigns let you create outbound messages for your customers and web visitors. Two types:
- Ongoing: Outbound messages in website live chat based on conditions, e.g. if a user visited the Pricing page and
stayed for 3 minutes, send a message offering advice.
- One-off: SMS or email campaigns sent to a group of contacts.
Canned Responses
Saved reply templates that can be sent to a conversation quickly using a shortcode.
Captain
Chatwoot's AI suite. Captain powers AI Assistants for end customers and Copilot for agents, and is configured from a
dedicated console where you connect knowledge sources, set guardrails, and define handoff rules.
Categories (Help Center)
You can divide a Help Center portal into categories and write specific articles under each. Categories appear as
sections (in a grid layout) when your Help Center is live.
Channel/Inbox
A channel is a mode of communication your customer uses to talk to you. An inbox is an instance of a channel — for
example, an email inbox, a website live chat, a WhatsApp number, etc.
Companies
A grouping of contacts that belong to the same organization. Useful for B2B support so you can see all conversations and
contacts associated with a single customer company.
Contacts
The contacts on your account store information on the people who have ever messaged you, plus any list you upload
manually.
Contact Segments
A saved filter group for your contacts.
Content Templates
Pre-approved message templates used on channels like WhatsApp and SMS, where you must send a structured message (with
optional variables and media) to start or re-engage a conversation outside the messaging window.
Conversation Continuity
The ability for a customer to keep the same conversation thread when they reply over a different channel — for example,
replying by email to a website-chat transcript so the message lands in the same conversation.
Conversation Participants
Agents added to a conversation as collaborators alongside the assignee. Participants can follow the conversation, get
notifications, and contribute privately without taking over ownership.
Conversations
Your chats with various customers are referred to as conversations in Chatwoot.
Copilot
An AI-powered assistant for agents inside the conversation view. Copilot can suggest replies, summarize threads,
rephrase drafts, and pull answers from your knowledge base while the agent is composing.
CSAT
CSAT, short for Customer Satisfaction, is feedback your customers provide based on their satisfaction with your support
team. It is usually a rating system (with optional textual feedback). These ratings can be averaged out for certain
periods to find the "CSAT score" for your team. You can track CSAT scores under the CSAT Reports section on your
dashboard.
Custom Attributes
Track custom info/facts about conversations and/or contacts. Standard facts are name, email, location, etc. Custom
Attributes are things like subscription plan, signup date, most ordered item, etc.
Custom Role
A role with a configurable set of permissions, beyond the default Administrator and Agent roles. Used to fine-tune what
specific users can access — conversations, contacts, reports, knowledge base, etc.
D
Dashboard
The primary area of work displaying all the vital information and features to work with and interact on conversations.
Dashboard Apps
A dashboard app is an external application brought onto your dashboard for quick access to customer data. For example,
if you have a customer-orders tracking app, you can embed it on your dashboard with this feature.
Draft Article
An article that is a work-in-progress but not published.
Draft Reply
If you're composing a reply or a private note to a teammate and leave the screen or refresh the page, your text will be
right where you left it. Chatwoot saves the data and preserves your unsent messages as drafts.
E
Email Notifications
Chatwoot sends you an email whenever a particular activity occurs in your account, like a new conversation being created
or assigned to you. You can personalize your email notification preferences from Profile Settings.
F
First Response Time (FRT)
A metric (also used in reports) that calculates the total time taken to send the first reply to a customer's message by
a particular agent, team, or inbox.
Folder (conversation)
When you group your conversations with the help of filters, you can save them as custom folders. Saved folders appear on
the left sidebar of your dashboard for quick access.
Forward to Email
When you set up an Email channel, your incoming support emails to your primary inbox (such as Gmail) need to be
forwarded to Chatwoot. This is achieved with the Forward to Email setting under the Email channel settings.
H
Help Center
You can create and manage a complete customer-facing portal from your dashboard. Primarily, you can manage your
knowledge base and product articles from this portal and use these articles directly in your conversations. (This
glossary is itself an example of a Help Center article.)
I
IMAP
IMAP (Internet Messaging Access Protocol) allows you to read your email messages from your email inbox. Enable this
option from the Email channel settings.
Import (contacts)
You can manually add contacts to your contacts list on Chatwoot by uploading a CSV file. You can include standard as
well as custom contact details.
Incoming Messages
Any new message sent by a customer is an incoming message.
K
Knowledge Base
A set of product articles and documentation created to help your customers. You can manage your knowledge base with the
Help Center from your dashboard.
L
Labels
A digital sticker for your conversations, used to categorize them. Labels are created on the account level and can be
used across. Examples: bug-report, new-customer, spam, feature-request.
Live Chat
Live chat customer support is a way for customers to interact with the support team in real time, via a chat widget
integrated into a company's website or app.
M
Macro
A set of sequential saved actions — labelling a conversation, sending an email transcript, sending an attachment, etc. —
that you can define from your Chatwoot Settings. You can make a personal macro or one available for your team. Macros
are run from the chat sidebar.
Markdown
Chatwoot uses markdown language in its messages and Help Center articles.
Mentions
You can tag a fellow teammate on private notes to notify them about a matter you want to discuss. You can also view
(only) the conversations that mention you by using the Mentions view on the dashboard.
Metadata (Help Center articles)
You can write a meta title, description, and tags for your Help Center articles to be displayed in search engine
results. All metadata can be managed from the article's sidebar.
Metrics
Objective numbers/goals or KPIs you can track about your support team. Examples: CSAT score, First Response Time,
Response rate. You can track many metrics about your conversations, agents, and teams using the Reports section.
Mobile SDK
A set of tools and resources developers use to create mobile apps for iOS or Android. The SDK has libraries and
utilities to help you integrate Chatwoot with an app.
Mute
You can mute a conversation to stop receiving alerts for it.
N
Notifications
There are four types of notifications in Chatwoot — audio, email, push, and Slack. You can customize your preferences
from Profile Settings and set up the Slack integration.
O
Open
A conversation status implying that a conversation is ready to be picked up by an agent.
Outgoing Messages
Any message sent from the Chatwoot dashboard is an outgoing message.
P
Pending
A conversation status that indicates the conversation is not yet ready for an agent to pick up — typically used when an
AI assistant or bot is still handling the customer.
Personal Message Signature
A personal signature, if configured, is appended to all messages you send from your email inbox by default. Set up your
signature from Profile Settings.
Portal
A single Help Center instance is called a portal. You can create multiple portals from a single account — for example,
one for product documentation and another for internal processes.
Pre-chat Form
A form shown to website visitors before they start a live chat, used to collect details like name, email, or the reason
for contact. Configurable per inbox.
Private Notes
Private Notes are available within your conversation window. You can privately discuss customer queries with teammates
before replying.
Push Notifications
If enabled, Chatwoot will send push notifications whenever a specific event occurs (new message, new conversation,
etc.). Customize your preferences in Profile Settings.
R
Reports
A set of reports on Chatwoot, each providing an overview of certain analytics associated with your account.
Resolution Count
A metric (also used in reports) that calculates the total conversations resolved in a period by a particular agent,
team, or inbox.
Resolution Time
A metric (also used in reports) that calculates the total time taken to resolve a conversation by a particular agent,
team, or in a specific inbox.
Resolved
A conversation status applied when a conversation is ready to conclude.
S
SLA (Service Level Agreement)
A policy that defines target response and resolution times (FRT, NRT, RT) for conversations, optionally aligned with
business hours. Chatwoot tracks SLA breaches and surfaces them in reports and conversation views so teams can prioritize
at-risk conversations.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a setting that enables you to send messages from Chatwoot through your email
inbox. Enable this option from your Email channel settings.
Snoozed
A conversation status applied when you need to wait a certain period or need a reply from the customer to continue the
conversation.
T
Teams
A team is a group of specific agents on your account who handle a certain type of conversation. For example, an
Engineering team for tech queries, a Finance team for billing queries, and a Customer Success team for product queries.
U
Unassigned
A conversation state applied by default when a conversation hasn't been assigned to an agent yet — manually or
automatically.
Unattended
A dashboard view that lists all conversations that are not yet been responded to.
V
Voice Channel
An inbox type for handling phone calls (e.g. via Twilio Voice). Voice conversations are tracked alongside chat and
email, with call statuses such as incoming, outgoing, and missed.
W
Webhook
A configurable HTTP callback Chatwoot fires on specific events (new conversation, new message, status change, etc.) so
external systems can react in real time.
Widget
The embeddable live chat widget you place on a website to capture visitor conversations into a Website inbox.
Configurable for colors, position, pre-chat form, and visibility rules.
