December 2023

What’s New in Podium: Updated Inbox and Mark as Unread 

Working in a shared inbox with your team&#8217;s conversations and customer phone calls can be challenging. The last thing you want is for chaos to get in the way of providing a great customer experience. With that in mind, we&#8217;ve made some updates to Podium to make it easier for you to find the conversations that matter and to indicate when there&#8217;s something you need to come back to, so you don’t forget.
<h2>Updated Inbox Badging</h2>
Previously, the <a href="https://www.podium.com/product/inbox/">Podium Inbox</a> showed red and blue bubbles to indicate which views or folders needed your attention. We heard your feedback loud and clear: this approach wasn&#8217;t working well. Many of you felt overwhelmed or wondered if the inbox was broken.
Based on your feedback, we&#8217;ve made the following changes:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Red Bubbles: In each inbox view or folder, we&#8217;ll now show red bubbles only when the view or folder contains unread messages from conversations assigned to you or not yet assigned to a team member. The red bubble will display the number of conversations meeting this criteria. This number will decrease or disappear completely once you&#8217;ve seen those unread messages.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Bold Formatting: If an inbox view or folder contains conversations with unread messages assigned to someone else on your team, it will be displayed in bold, without any red bubbles.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Normal Formatting: If an inbox view or folder contains conversations with no unread messages, it will appear normal without any red bubbles or bold formatting.</li>
</ul>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-32410" src="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-116x300.png" alt="Updated Inbox Badging in podium" width="250" height="649" srcset="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-116x300.png 116w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-394x1024.png 394w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-193x500.png 193w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-154x400.png 154w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-62x160.png 62w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-135x350.png 135w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-39x100.png 39w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM-132x343.png 132w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.30.07-PM.png 452w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" />
<h2>Marking Conversations Unread</h2>
We understand that sometimes you read a message from a customer but can&#8217;t respond immediately. Now that we&#8217;ve made it easier for you to keep track of unread messages, we&#8217;ve also added the ability to mark a conversation as unread. You can now do this from the menu in the top right corner of a conversation. This action will update the conversation with a blue dot, drawing your attention back to it in the corresponding view or folder when you&#8217;re ready to respond.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-32411 size-large" src="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-916x1024.png" alt="Marking Conversations Unread in podium inbox" width="640" height="715" srcset="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-916x1024.png 916w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-268x300.png 268w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-768x858.png 768w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-447x500.png 447w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-358x400.png 358w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-143x160.png 143w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-313x350.png 313w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-89x100.png 89w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM-307x343.png 307w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-01-at-3.31.05-PM.png 1234w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
Marking conversations as unread has been available in our mobile app for a few months and quickly became one of the most used features on mobile. If you haven&#8217;t downloaded the <a href="https://www.podium.com/product/mobile-app/">Podium mobile app</a> yet, head over to the Google Play Store or iOS App Store ASAP!