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!

Discover new Inbox features in Podium that help you easily find conversations and indicate when there's something you need to come back to