What this helps you do
Conversations are your one-to-one messages with an individual, both replies you receive and messages you start. Replies arrive on two rails, Blasts and email, and land in the same inbox. Your team sees who is replying to whom right now, can assign a thread to a colleague, and keeps private staff notes on each person. Everything with one person stays together in a single thread you can find again by searching their name, email or a word from the message.
When to use it
Use it when a resident replies to ask whether the advisory covers their street, why the truck missed their house, when the pool reopens, or how to speak at the hearing.
How to do it
- Open Conversations.
- Read replies as they arrive, or click New conversation to message anyone connected.
- Reply in the thread; the Hub answers on the rail the person uses, Blasts or email.
- Assign a thread to a teammate when someone else should take it.
- Open the person's page for their history, RSVPs, household, and staff notes that are never shown to the person.
- Search by name, email, or message text to find any thread.
Example
After the detour notice, a resident replies asking about access to their driveway. The thread appears in Conversations, the communications office assigns it to public works, and the superintendent answers in the same thread. If it needs a crew, it becomes a work order in the system the town already uses, and the thread simply records what the resident was told.
Good to know
- This is not a 311 or service-request system and there is no 311 or work-order connector. A reply is a question a person answers; anything that needs dispatching still goes into whatever your municipality uses for that.
- A Leader only sees replies from the audiences they are granted.
- Replies can be turned off per message, for example on a purely informational notice, and a reply to such a message is marked so you know the context.
- STOP and START are handled automatically on both rails, and the resident's page shows their opt-out state.
- Receiving is free for residents; a reply they send uses their own Blasts credits, never the municipality's.