Inbox is where your team manages conversations with clients, donors, volunteers, and contacts. It keeps messages, assignments, notes, attachments, calls, and tasks connected to the conversation record.
New to the Inbox? Start with Getting Started in the Inbox for a step-by-step first day. Want alerts when a message arrives or a conversation is assigned to you? Set up your notifications.
Package note: Inbox texting is available on the Plus and Premium subscription packages only. Some organizations still on Core can see Inbox because they kept access from before package-based licensing; that is a legacy, read-only exception, not a permanent part of the Core plan, and CoolFocus can remove it later. Contact CoolFocus support if you're unsure whether your organization has this exception.
Setup and usage fees: Turning on texting includes a one-time phone number setup fee. That fee covers registering your number with the National Registry so your organization meets carrier compliance standards. After setup, all inbound and outbound text messages count as a usage charge on your invoice, in addition to your base subscription. See What Counts as a Text Message & What are the Text Usage Fees? and Your CoolFocus Invoice.
Moved from the older texting screen? Inbox is a new, separate conversation thread. Staff replies that were sent from the older (legacy) texting screen do not appear in the Inbox thread for that person. Send any new messages from Inbox from now on, since that is the only screen that stays in sync with your team. A future update is planned to bring the older messages into the same Inbox thread, but until then the two screens do not share history.
What you can do in Inbox
View open and closed conversations.
Search and filter conversations, including by tag name.
Open a conversation to review its message history.
Assign a conversation to yourself or another teammate.
Send replies when the connected channel is configured.
Add notes, tasks, calls, and attachments for follow-up.
Select multiple conversations to tag or close them in bulk.
Secured messages vs. regular text messages
Inbox supports two different ways of communicating with a contact, and it's important to know which one to use:
Regular text messages (SMS/email) are sent over standard, unencrypted channels. They're appropriate for general updates, reminders, and scheduling logistics, but they are not appropriate for sensitive information such as protected health information (PHI), financial details, or other private records. Treat anything sent as a regular text message or email as something that could be visible to others (e.g. shared inboxes, lock screens, or forwarded threads).
Secured messages are delivered through the encrypted Inbox & Client Portal channel rather than plain SMS or email. The contact receives a notification and securely logs in to view and reply to the message, keeping the actual content out of standard text/email channels. Use secured messages whenever a conversation includes PHI, images, videos, documents, or any other information your organization treats as confidential.
When replying to a conversation, check which channel the message is using before including sensitive details. If you're unsure whether information should be shared securely, default to a secured message.
If you paste a plain web address (starting with http:// or https://) into a secured message, it is automatically turned into a clickable link, both in the staff Inbox thread and for the contact after they log in to the Client Portal. You don't need to add any special formatting, just paste the full URL and send.
Secured messages can also include image and video attachments. When a contact opens the message in the Client Portal, image attachments appear as inline thumbnails they can open at full size, and video attachments appear as a playable video with standard controls, so the contact doesn't have to download the file just to view it.
Administrators can customize the wording of the text invite that a contact receives for a secured message. See Customizing the Secure Message Invite.
When starting a brand-new conversation, the composer opens with the type your administrator set as the organization default, unless the link you clicked specified a type. See Inbox Settings to review or change that default.
Client, Donor, and Volunteer domains
Inbox conversations can be separated by Inbox Domain (Client, Donor, or Volunteer) so care texting, donor texting, and volunteer texting stay in their own mailboxes. Staff only see the domains their permissions allow. See Inbox Domains: Client, Donor, and Volunteer.
Common mailbox views
Your Inbox: conversations assigned to you
Unassigned: conversations that still need an owner
Unresolved Texters: texts from phone numbers CoolFocus has not identified as a known person yet. See Unresolved Texters
Confirmed Appointments: conversations where a client texted back a recognized confirmation reply to an appointment reminder or booking confirmation. Use this view to see who confirmed without opening each appointment one at a time. See Appointment Reminders — Settings & Sending for how confirmation replies are recognized.
All: conversations your permissions allow you to view regardless of staff assignment
Closed: resolved conversations kept for history (but can be reopened with the Reopen button, or if a client responds again to the closed text message)
A message you send stays in that contact's conversation thread alongside their replies, it does not also collect in a separate "Sent" mailbox. To review what your team has sent, open the conversation for that person; there is currently no single view that lists sent messages across every contact at once.
Loading large mailboxes
To keep Inbox responsive, each mailbox view loads conversations a page at a time (100 at a time) instead of all at once. This matters most for Closed, which can accumulate thousands of conversations over time.
When more conversations are available than are currently shown, a Load more conversations button appears at the bottom of the list.
Select it to load the next page. It loads additional conversations without losing your place in the ones already shown.
Search, filters, and sorting still apply across the whole mailbox, only the number of rows fetched at once is limited.
Loading long conversation histories
Opening a conversation loads its most recent messages first, not the entire history at once, so a client or donor thread with years of texts still opens quickly.
The conversation opens showing the most recent messages.
If the conversation has older messages beyond what is shown, a Load older messages button appears at the top of the thread.
Select it to load the next batch of older messages. Your place in the thread is not lost.
Inbox remembers where you left off
Inbox now saves your view as you work, so it opens back up the way you left it instead of always defaulting to Your Inbox.
The mailbox you were in (Your Inbox, Unassigned, Unresolved, All, or Spam), including a teammate or tag filter you had selected
Whether you were looking at open or closed conversations
The sort field and direction you chose for the conversation list
This is saved per user, not per browser, so it carries over the next time you sign in, even from a different device. If nothing has been saved yet, or a saved teammate or tag filter no longer applies, Inbox falls back to the Your Inbox mailbox with open conversations sorted by last activity.
Pinning teammates in the sidebar
Below the mailbox views, the sidebar can show a Teammates list so that you can jump straight to a coworker's assigned conversations. This list only shows teammates you have chosen to pin. It no longer lists every teammate automatically.
Scroll over the Teammates section and select the plus (+) button to open the picker.
Search for a coworker by name and select it to pin or unpin that person from the sidebar.
Drag a pinned teammate's handle to reorder the list, or use the keyboard to reorder without a mouse.
Selecting a pinned teammate's name filters the current mailbox to conversations assigned to that person.
Your pinned teammates and their order are saved to your account, so the same list will appear the next time you open Inbox. Use the collapse arrow next to Teammates to hide or show the section.
Tags
Tags are short labels you can attach to a conversation, which are useful for tracking things like conversations that received no response, perhaps it's a shared phone, or any other pattern your team wants to follow up on or report on later. Select one or more conversations and use the bulk actions menu to add a tag, then search by that tag name any time to find them again. See Managing Conversations for details.
Note: Inbox Tags simply help you organize your message threads; they do not translate to the client's record. A conversation tag is only attached to the conversation in Inbox, not to the client record.
In this section
Getting Started in the Inbox, your first day, step by step.
Inbox Overview training video
Managing Conversations, the routine from first message to resolution, including tags and bulk actions.
Unresolved Texters, texts from unidentified phone numbers and how to link them to a person.
Notes, Tags & Tasks in Inbox Conversations, internal notes, tags, and how tasks reopen a closed conversation.
Conversation Types and Linked Records, how conversations connect to people and work.
Customizing the Secure Message Invite, editing the SMS a contact gets to log in and read a secured message.
Inbox Settings, set the default message type the composer opens with (administrators).
Sending Text Messages, writing good outbound texts.
Understanding Text Message Delivery Warnings, what the yellow warning cards mean and what to do.
Inbox Domains: Client, Donor, and Volunteer, separating client, donor, and volunteer texting.
Merging & Cleaning Up Conversations, combining duplicates and keeping history readable.
Inbox Best Practices, habits that keep the team running smoothly.
Choosing What You're Notified About, get alerted about new and unassigned messages by in-app, text, or email.
Purchasing Your Text Number, the one-time setup that makes messaging work (administrators).
What Counts as a Text Message & What are the Text Usage Fees?, which texts add a usage fee on your invoice.
Your CoolFocus Invoice, package rate plus texting setup and usage.
Privacy reminder
Inbox content may include sensitive personal, medical, contact, or financial information. Follow your organization's privacy policy before sharing or exporting conversation details, and use secured messages rather than regular text messages whenever that information needs to be sent directly to a contact.