Messaging & Chat

The Chat inbox for guest messages from Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia — threads, replies, attachments, No reply needed, and closing a conversation.

Chat is the speech-bubble icon in the top bar (it is the one quick action that stays visible on a phone). It opens /chat: a three-pane inbox with the conversation list on the left, the open thread in the middle and a guest panel on the right. Every conversation here is an OTA message thread relayed by Channex, the channel manager Innvera uses — a guest writes on Booking.com, Airbnb or Expedia, the message appears in Chat within seconds, and your reply goes back through the same channel so the guest sees it in the app they started in.

Chat is not email and not a walk-in messenger. There is no way to start a conversation from Innvera; threads exist only once a guest (or the OTA) has written first. Reading needs the messaging: read permission; replying, closing and marking threads need messaging: write. The seeded Front Desk and Administrator roles have both.

Key terms

Thread — one conversation with one guest about one booking, mirrored from Channex. It carries the guest's name, the channel it came from, the linked reservation when Innvera can match it, and two flags: closed and no reply needed.

Provider — the OTA the thread belongs to: Booking.com, Airbnb or Expedia. Innvera colours each thread by provider: a navy stripe and navy guest bubbles for Booking.com, coral for Airbnb, gold for Expedia. Your own replies are always white with an indigo border.

Sender — every message is from the GUEST, the PROPERTY (you) or the SYSTEM (an automated OTA message such as Airbnb's inquiry details). Guest and system messages sit on the left; property messages sit on the right.

The conversation list

The left pane starts with a Search guests… box and three pill filters:

Filter	Shows
All	Every thread, open or closed
Open	Threads that have not been closed
Needs	Open threads that have not been marked no reply needed — your to-do list

Search matches the guest name only. Threads are ordered newest activity first and each row shows the guest's initials, the name, when the last message arrived (12m, 3h or a date), a one-line preview prefixed with You: when the last message was yours, the channel badge and a small Closed label where relevant. The list refreshes itself every 30 seconds, so new conversations appear without reloading.

When the Needs filter is empty the pane says Nothing waiting on a reply. — that is the state to aim for.

Guest name and stay come from the reservation

Chat names a thread after the guest on the linked reservation. If the booking has not been imported yet (a message can beat its booking by a few seconds) the thread falls back to the title Channex gives it, and the right-hand panel shows No reservation linked. The link is made when the thread is first created; it is not re-checked afterwards.

Reading a thread

Click a row to open it. The header repeats the guest's name, channel badge and Closed label; the body groups messages by day (Today, Yesterday, then Tue, Mar 4) and shows a timestamp on the first message of each run from the same sender. Images sent by the guest render inline; other files (PDFs and the like) appear as a paperclip chip you can click to open. Messages with no text and no attachment show [no body].

The open thread polls every 10 seconds, so a guest's answer appears while you are looking at it, and the view scrolls to the newest message automatically.

The Guest details panel on the right (the i button on a phone) shows the guest's email and phone from the reservation, a Stay block with check-in, check-out and the number of nights, an Attachments list of every file in the conversation with an Open button, and the thread's status badges — Closed, No reply needed.

Older messages

A thread loads its most recent 50 messages. Longer conversations exist in full on the server, but there is no Load older control in the thread view yet; it is coming soon. Very long threads should be read in the OTA extranet for now.

Replying

Type in the composer

The box at the bottom reads Reply to <guest>…. It grows to six lines. Press Enter to send and Shift + Enter for a new line. The smiley button opens an emoji picker that inserts at the end of your text.

Send

Click the send arrow (or press Enter). The message goes to Channex, which relays it to the OTA; only once Channex has accepted it does it appear in the thread as your bubble. If the relay fails you see the error as a toast and your text stays in the box.

Attach a file, if needed

The paperclip button accepts images and PDFs up to 8 MB and sends the file on its own as a message — it does not attach to the text you are typing. A file over the limit is refused with Attachment is too large — the limit is 8 MB. The file is uploaded to Channex first and then referenced from the message, so it may take a moment longer than text.

A reply needs text or a file; an empty send is rejected with A message body or an attachment is required.

No reply needed

Some guest messages need no answer — a "thanks, see you Friday". Booking.com scores properties on response rate, and unanswered messages count against you unless you tell Booking.com they did not need a reply. The Mark no reply needed button (crossed speech bubble in the thread header) does exactly that:

A confirmation asks Mark as no reply needed? — This conversation will drop out of the Needs list. You can still reply later.
Click Mark no reply needed. Innvera tells Booking.com through Channex and the thread gains a No reply needed badge. The toast reads Marked as no reply needed.

Booking.com only

Channex supports this action for Booking.com threads only. On an Airbnb or Expedia thread the request is refused with Cannot mark no-reply-needed: only supported for Booking.com threads. The flag is one-way: there is no un-mark, but a marked thread stays open and you can still reply to it.

Closing a conversation

The Close conversation button (the circled cross in the header, or the button at the foot of the guest panel) ends the thread on the OTA side:

The dialog warns Close this conversation? — Guests won't receive further replies.
Click Close conversation. Channex closes the thread, the composer is replaced by This conversation is closed, and the toast reads Thread closed.

A closed thread cannot be reopened from Innvera and cannot receive replies — the server refuses with Cannot send message to a closed thread. It stays visible under All. Close only when the stay is over or the exchange is genuinely finished; if in doubt, mark no reply needed instead.

Notifications

Every inbound guest message raises a New message notification (You have a new message from a guest.) in the bell, and an Airbnb inquiry raises New inquiry; both open Chat when clicked. Turn on push in your Profile if you want these on a phone. See Notifications.

Common mistakes

Waiting for a message you sent to "deliver". Your bubble only appears after Channex accepts it. If it never appears and a toast reports an error, the OTA has not received it — try again rather than assuming it went.
Marking an Airbnb thread as no reply needed. It fails; the flag is a Booking.com concept. Just leave the thread or close it.
Closing instead of finishing. Closing is permanent from Innvera's side. Use it for ended stays, not for "I have answered".
Sending a file and expecting your text to go with it. The attachment is its own message; send the text separately.
Looking for a guest by booking number. Search matches guest names only. Open the reservation from Reservations if you only have the reference.

Channel Manager — the Channex connection that carries these threads
Notifications — New message and New inquiry alerts
Users & Permissions — the messaging permission
Reviews — guest reviews from the same channels

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