Marking Read, Starring, and Archiving

Your inbox moves fast, and a little organization goes a long way. This article explains how to use read status, stars, and archiving to keep your Conversations inbox clear so the front desk always knows what needs attention.

Marking Conversations as Read or Unread

Dental Marketing Tool bolds any conversation with a message your team has not yet seen. Once someone opens the conversation and reads it, the bold goes away automatically. Sometimes, though, you want to manage that status by hand.

1. Open the Conversations tab from the main menu.
2. Hover over the conversation row. A small circle or checkbox appears on the left side.
3. Click the circle to select the conversation, then look for the Mark as Read or Mark as Unread option in the action bar that appears at the top of the list.
4. To act on several conversations at once, check each one and apply the action in bulk.

You can also see which conversations still have unread messages at a glance by using the Unread filter. See Filters, Tabs, and Managing Unread for a full walkthrough of the inbox filters.

Starring Important Conversations

Stars let you bookmark conversations you need to come back to without losing them in the scroll. A starred conversation is not archived or hidden. It stays right in the inbox and also shows up under the Starred filter so you can find it in one click.

1. Open any conversation.
2. Click the star icon near the patient's name at the top of the conversation thread. It turns solid to confirm the star is on.
3. To remove the star, click the icon again.

You can also star a conversation directly from the inbox list without opening it. Hover over the row and click the star icon that appears to the right of the patient name.

Good reasons to star a conversation

• A patient asked about a procedure and you are waiting to hear back from the doctor before replying.
• You need to follow up after a patient's appointment but not until the end of the day.
• A conversation has been assigned to a team member and you want to keep an eye on it.

Archiving Conversations

Archiving moves a finished conversation out of your main inbox view. The conversation is not deleted. It is saved under the Archived filter and the full message history is still there if you ever need to pull it up.

1. Open the conversation you want to close out.
2. Click the Archive button (the box-with-arrow icon) near the top right of the conversation.
3. The conversation disappears from your active inbox immediately.

To archive multiple conversations at once, check the boxes next to each one in the list view and choose Archive from the bulk action bar.

Unarchiving a conversation

1. Switch to the Archived filter in the left sidebar.
2. Find the conversation and open it.
3. Click Unarchive to move it back to the active inbox.

Keeping the Inbox Clean as a Team

These three actions work best when the whole front-desk team uses them consistently. A good habit: archive a conversation as soon as the matter is truly resolved, star anything that needs a follow-up, and mark things unread when a second set of eyes is needed. That way the inbox reflects real, open items rather than a backlog of old threads.

Next Steps

Now that your inbox is organized, you might want to set up quick replies to respond to common patient questions faster, or review how filters and tabs can help your team divide and prioritize incoming messages.