Assigning and collaborating on conversations helps teams manage leads, resolve issues, and stay aligned — all within the SleekFlow Inbox.

This article explains how to set conversation ownership, add collaborators, and use mentions to coordinate efficiently across your sales and customer support teams.

Key terms explained

Here are the key roles and labels you’ll see when working with conversations in Inbox:

Benefits and use cases

Pain points solved:

• Clarifies ownership: Prevents duplicated follow-ups or missed replies by assigning each conversation to a clear owner.
• Enables team visibility without confusion: Encourages teams collaboration without overlapping responsibilities or losing control over the conversation.
• Keeps stakeholders informed: Allows team leads or managers to stay involved without taking over ownership.
• Allows flexible access: Mentions grant temporary access to others for quick input, without needing to add them permanently.

Common use cases:

• Assigning leads: Sales agents assign prospects to themselves or teammates for follow-up.
• Team lead supervision: Managers are added as collaborators to oversight conversation progress without taking over.
• Cross-functional teamwork: Team from different functions to collaborate on complex cases by joining the same conversation.
• Requesting help with a mention: Agents tag colleagues in internal notes for quick advice or assistance.

Assigning a conversation

Assigning ownership helps your team stay organized and ensures that every conversation has a clear point of contact.

When you assign a conversation, you’re designating who is responsible for managing the customer reply — and determining where the conversation appears in the Inbox. The assignee becomes the contact owner, and the conversation will be shown in their “Assigned to me” view.

You can follow the steps below to assign a conversation to a user:

1. Go to Inbox by clicking on the icon on the left navigation bar
2. Select the conversation what you want to assign
3. In the conversation control bar, locate the “Conversation control bar” and look for the “Assignee” field
   
4. Click the dropdown to choose one of the following assignment options:
   1. Assign to me: Assigns the conversation directly to yourself. It will appear in your “Assigned to me” inbox.
      
       
   2. Assign via team: Use this option to assign a conversation through a specific team. You can: 
      1. Assign to team inbox: Makes the conversation visible to all members of the selected team. No one is assigned yet — the first person who replies will automatically become the contact owner. All members in the team will be notified about the assignment and incoming message until a contact owner is assigned. 
      2. Auto assign by queue: Assigns the conversation to a team member using round-robin logic. Ownership is assigned immediately, even before anyone replies. The designated contact owner will be notified about the assignement and incoming message. 
      3. Assign to a team member: Assigns the conversation directly to a specific person within the team. It appears in their personal “Assigned to me” inbox, and still remains visible in the team inbox for transparency. The designated contact owner will be notified about the assignement and incoming message.
         
          
   3. Assign to a user: Assign the conversation to any user in your workspace. The conversation appears only in their “Assigned to me” inbox and is not visible in the team inbox unless they belong to that team.
      
5. Once you have selected the assignee, the conversation will then be assigned accordingly

Collaborating with team members within a conversation

SleekFlow lets multiple team members work together on the same conversation without losing clarity on ownership. There are two main ways to collaborate directly in the Inbox: 

• Adding collaborators
• Using @mentions in internal notes

Adding collaborators to conversations

Add collaborators when multiple teammates need full access to view and reply within a conversation.

You can follow the steps here to add collaborators:

1. In Inbox, select the conversation that you want to assign
2. In the “Conversation control bar”, locate the “Collaborator” section
   
    
3. You can select a members to a conversation as collaborators
   
4. Once you have selected the team members, click “Add collaborator” to add them to the conversation

By adding team members to conversations as collaborators, they can:

• View the full conversation history
• Send message and reply to the customer
• Leave internal notes and @mention someone in the note

The contact owner remains unchanged — collaborators share access but not ownership.

Mentioning teammates in internal notes

Use @mentions when you need quick input from a teammate without permanently adding them.

You can follow the steps to mention a team member in Internal notes:

1. Switch to the “Internal Note” tab in the message box
   
    
2. Type @ followed by the teammate’s name (e.g. @Leo Tang). You can only tag 1 teammate at a time. 
   
    
3. Click “Add note” once the note is completed, and the note will appear as a message bubble within the conversation
   
    
4. The mentioned user will:
   1. Receive a notification
   2. Gain temporary access to view and reply for 24 hours

This is ideal for requesting quick support, cross-functional input, or second opinions — without cluttering the collaborator list and keeping the conversation within SleekFlow.