Note: Message for Salesforce is a premium offering for Salesforce customers. If you'd like to add Message for Salesforce to your Message account, reach out to your account team. If you're interested in an administrative overview of the package, check out the Configuring and Setting Up Message for Salesforce article

Modern Campus Message for Salesforce brings the features and functionality you love from the Message web app into the Salesforce Lightning interface. With Message for Salesforce you can see your inbox, respond to incoming messages and view your conversation history associated with any record in Salesforce.

Your Message Inbox

To get started, go to the Lightning App Launcher and click on SV Messaging. This will bring you to the Message for Salesforce app and your Message Inbox. Here you can view all your incoming messages and respond to messages directly. 

The Inbox shows 3 main areas of information. The Filter panel allows you to narrow down the conversations you want to view. The middle pane lists all the conversations that match your filters. Finally, the right pane will show any selected conversation and give you options to respond.

Filter the Inbox

In the filter panel, you will find several options to narrow down the conversations you want to view.

Keyword search
By entering a word or words into the keyword search box, the list of conversations will be filtered down to only those that contain those words within a message. So, if you're looking to find any conversation referencing "FAFSA," you can type "FAFSA" in the search box and immediately narrow the list down.

Message Type
Message type filters will allow you to restrict the conversation list based on whether Message's automation has already handled the response for you. 

• All - any conversation, regardless of whether automation has responded
• Action Needed - only conversations where there's been no automated response
• No Action Needed - only conversations where the automation has responded on your behalf

Flag Type
You can flag a conversation if you want to draw further attention to it - maybe because you need to follow-up or you'll need a colleague to weigh in before you respond. The Flag Type filter will allow you to narrow down to conversations that have been flagged or those that have not.

Program
Programs are one of the ways your organization can organize your account. They're often a department, but they can also be used to organize outreach in a bunch of different ways. How many programs your account has - and whether you have access to them - is determined by your administrators. 

If you have access to more than one program, you'll be able to filter to a specific program or programs here by simply checking or unchecking the box next to each.

Restrict By
Your administrator may allow you to message with people who aren't yet in Salesforce. If this feature is turned on, you'll have an option to restrict your conversation view by whether the contact is in Salesforce or not.

Conversation List

The middle column is the list of conversations you've been having. In this view, each conversation will show the sender's name, the most recent message they've sent and the date and time that message was received. Conversations in bold are unread - you (or your team) haven't read the whole conversation. Clicking on an item in this list will load the conversation into the right pane.

View More Conversations
To view more conversations, scroll down the list. As you scroll down, more conversations will automatically appear.

Taking Action
Beyond just showing your list of conversations, you can also take action on any of them from this pane. To see the actions, select one or more items by checking the box to the left of the contact's name. To bulk select, click the dropdown next to the checkbox above all the conversations. This dropdown will allow you to quickly select conversations based on whether they're read/unread or flagged/unflagged.

Once you've selected an item, an action menu will appear. Pick the action you want to take and click "Go" to change all selected conversations at once. Your options are:

• Mark as Read
• Mark as Unread
• Mark as "Action Needed"
• Mark as "No Action Needed"
• Flag
• Unflag

Engaging in Conversation

Once you've selected a conversation, the right pane will allow you to view the conversation history and reply.

At the top of the conversation is the contact's name and the program associated with this conversation. Clicking on the contact's name will take you directly to their record in Salesforce. If there's no record in Salesforce, the contact name will not be clickable.

To the right of the contact name are a couple of action buttons. Similar to the bulk action in the conversation list, here you can mark this conversation as read/unread, flagged/unflagged or move it between action needed and no action needed.

Like text messages on your phone, the conversation history is arranged chronologically with the latest message at the bottom. The conversation will automatically load with the most recent unread message in view, so you don't have to scroll through long conversations just to get to where you need to be. Texts sent from Modern Campus Message will appear as blue bubbles on the right side, with the date/time the message was sent and the name of the person that sent the message just underneath. When the message was sent automatically, the name of the program or bot that sent it will appear instead.

Texts from your contact will be on the left side in a gray bubble and similarly adorned with name and the date/time it was received.

To the top of the conversation you'll find a tab with the program name this conversation belongs to. If this contact is communicating with multiple programs - and if you have access to those other programs - other programs will be listed as well. Clicking on those other programs will load the conversation history with that program.

Underneath the conversation you can compose a response to your contact. You can craft a message, including inserting merge fields if you want to pull data from their Salesforce record. If turned on by your administrator, you can also add emojis from our emoji library or send an image.

Once you have the message composed the way you want, you can either choose to send it now or schedule it for the future. To send it, simply check your preferences and then click Send. Simple as that.

Conversation History on Salesforce Records

Your administrator can also add the conversation history directly onto your Salesforce records. Once enabled, you'll be able to engage in conversation directly from a contact's record. You'll find it identical to "Engaging in Conversation" above, just this time embedded with the record instead of in the Inbox.