Inbox & Messaging

Last updated September 25, 2026

The Inbox is your central hub for all client communications. It shows emails, portal messages, and trip-related conversations in a single threaded view so you never lose context.

Opening the Inbox

Click Inbox in the sidebar. The Inbox has three columns:

  • Folders on the left: Inbox, Email, Portal & proposals and Unread, then Resolved, Sent and Outbox. Your Send mode sits at the bottom of this column.
  • Conversations in the middle, newest first, grouped under Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 days and Earlier.
  • The open conversation on the right.

The header across the top shows how many conversations are unread, which mailbox is connected and when it last synced, and the Compose button.

A few notices can appear above the Inbox:

  • Delivery issues. One amber line appears when our emails to you are bouncing, or when some of your clients aren't receiving your mail. Click Details to see which clients, and open each one to fix the address. It clears itself once delivery recovers.

  • "You're only sending." Your Gmail is connected for sending, but nothing is bringing client replies in, so they stay in Gmail. Click Turn on to finish the Gmail card's second step (see Connecting Your Email), or dismiss the notice if you read replies in Gmail on purpose.

  • "Bringing in your last 30 days…" The import that runs when you connect a mailbox. It counts up as mail arrives and reads Done — 30 days imported when it finishes.

Message Types

FolderWhat it shows
InboxEvery open conversation: email, portal messages and proposal questions
EmailEmail conversations only
Portal & proposalsMessages clients sent through their portal, and questions on proposals
UnreadAnything you haven't opened yet

Clients only, above the list, hides mail that isn't linked to a client, such as newsletters and supplier mail from a synced mailbox. When it is hiding unread mail, a line under it says how many and offers Show all mail.

Your email is private to you

Mail from your connected Gmail, Outlook or IMAP mailbox is yours alone. Nobody else in the agency can open it: not another advisor, not an admin, not the owner. The same goes for an email conversation you start from JourneyFuse, and for the client's reply to it.

This holds everywhere your mail could appear:

  • Inbox: the Inbox is personal for everyone, owners and admins included. It lists the conversations assigned to you, plus (for owners and admins) mail that nobody has picked up yet, marked Unassigned. There is no Agency view in the Inbox.
  • Client and trip records: the Communications tab shows each advisor only their own email with that client. A colleague who works with the same client sees their own email, not yours. When one email reaches both of you (the client wrote to you both, or one of you copied the other), each of you gets your own copy.
  • Dashboard and notifications: new-mail alerts for your conversations go only to you. Someone who receives copies of your alerts as your delegate does not get copies of these.
  • Assigning: an email conversation can't be reassigned to someone else. It stays with the advisor whose mailbox it came from.

These stay shared as agency records, not private to one advisor. Each one still appears only in the Inbox of the advisor it is assigned to:

  • Portal messages and proposal questions.
  • Mail sent to the agency's shared inbound address.
  • Emails JourneyFuse sends for you, such as proposals, invoices and automations. They still show on the client and trip for anyone who can see that record.

Your Sent mail

Inbox → Sent lists the email you have sent, and only yours, whatever your role. It includes:

  • everything you sent from JourneyFuse (compose, proposals, invoices, automations), and
  • email you wrote directly in Gmail or Outlook, once your mailbox has synced it. These are labelled Sent from Gmail, Sent from Outlook or Sent from your mailbox. Use Open conversation to jump to the thread.

An email sent from JourneyFuse through your connected mailbox also appears in that mailbox's Sent folder. It is listed only once.

Questions on a proposal

A client's proposal question appears in Inbox as a Proposal conversation. You can reply there, or open the proposal's Conversation section. Both views show the same discussion. Use Open proposal in the Inbox conversation to review the options before answering.

The assigned advisor also gets an email alert. JourneyFuse filters its own notification emails from connected-mailbox sync, so the alert does not create a second Inbox conversation. Your reply is saved on the proposal and an email is attempted to the client; check any delivery notice rather than assuming it arrived.

Proposal conversations appear in Inbox, Unread, and Portal & proposals. Separate prospects on a group proposal stay in separate conversations. New questions reopen a resolved conversation. Existing older proposal discussions remain in the proposal unless they receive a new message.

Reading Conversations

Each row in the list shows:

  • The sender's initials and name: the client, or the address the mail came from
  • The time of the latest message: a clock time for today and yesterday, the weekday and date for the last week, the date before that
  • Subject and preview: the first line of the latest message
  • The trip, when the conversation is filed under one, with its start date
  • Portal or Proposal when it didn't come by email, and Unassigned when nobody has picked it up

Unread conversations are bold, with a dot next to the time and a colored edge down the left.

Click a conversation to open it. It opens on the newest message. Earlier emails fold to one line each (sender, first words, date); click one to read it in full. Every message shows who sent it, their address, and the full date and time.

Right under the subject, a strip shows who this is and which trip: the client and their email, the trip with its dates, travelers and any open tasks, and View client / View trip.

Composing Messages

To start a new conversation, click Compose in the Inbox header.

To reply, click Reply to… under the conversation (or press R). The reply box opens with the cursor ready; Send always stays visible below what you write. Press ⌘ Enter (Ctrl Enter on Windows) to send, or Esc to close an empty reply. A reply you haven't sent stays with its own conversation: opening a different one starts a fresh reply.

Keyboard shortcuts

When you're not typing in a box, these keys work in the Inbox:

KeyWhat it does
J / KOpen the next / previous conversation
RReply to the open conversation
EResolve the open conversation
EscClose the open conversation

They are listed at the bottom of the folder column too.

Tip: For trip-specific emails (booking confirmations, payment reminders, travel documents), use the Messages tab on a trip instead of the Inbox. Those messages stay linked to the trip context.

Linking Messages to Clients

JourneyFuse links a conversation to a client automatically when the sender's address is saved on that client. It checks the client's main email and any other addresses on their profile (the Personal / Work / Other email list on the client's Contact tab). If two clients share an address, the one with a trip in progress wins.

When it can't tell who wrote, link the conversation yourself from the strip under the subject:

  1. Click Link to client…, or Change if the conversation is already on the wrong client.
  2. Search for any client by name or email address.
  3. Pick the client, then click Link.

If the sender's address isn't on that client yet, Also save this address to the client is ticked. Leave it ticked and the address is added to the client's profile, so their next email links on its own. Their main email stays as it was.

The Conversation on a Trip

Every trip has a Conversation pane inside its Messages tab, alongside Emails and Automation. Conversation holds the whole back-and-forth with that client — what you sent and what they wrote back — in one thread, so you never have to go dig through your mailbox to find out where things stand.

You can reply straight from the trip. The reply goes out through your connected mailbox, exactly as it would from the Inbox, and lands in the client's inbox as a normal email.

How a conversation gets onto a trip

Where it comes fromWhat happens
You email the client from the tripThe thread is filed under that trip automatically, and their reply joins it
A client emails you out of the blueFiled automatically when that client has only one active trip
The client has several trips runningLeft unfiled, because we would only be guessing which trip they mean
Client portal messagesFiled under the trip they were sent from

When a conversation is not filed anywhere, you can put it on the right trip yourself in either place:

  • From the trip: Messages tab → Add a conversation → pick the thread
  • From the Inbox: open the thread → File under this trip in the bar at the bottom

Removing a conversation from a trip (the … menu on the thread) only unfiles it. The messages stay in your Inbox.

Older conversations that finished before the trip record existed are left alone on purpose, so a trip does not fill up with history from a vacation two years ago.

Keeping Non-Client Mail Out

A connected mailbox is your whole mailbox, so mail that has nothing to do with clients — your host agency, your bank, a coaching program — can end up in the Inbox alongside real client conversations.

There are two ways to stop it, and they solve different problems.

Block a specific sender

This is the one to reach for most of the time. Open the conversation, click the ⋯ menu at the top right, and choose Not client related — never sync this sender. You then pick how wide to go:

ChoiceWhat it blocks
Just this addressThat one mailbox
Everyone at this domainThe whole company, including any subdomain

New mail from them is never pulled in again, and existing conversations with them are removed from your Inbox straight away.

You can also manage the list directly in Settings → Email → Never sync these senders, where you can add a domain by hand, add a note so you remember why, and remove anything you have blocked.

Conversations linked to a client, lead or trip are always kept, even when a blocked sender is on them. It is common for your host agency and your traveler to both be on one reservation thread — that is real client history, so it stays.

Nothing is ever deleted from your real mailbox. Blocking a sender only controls what JourneyFuse pulls in.

Unblocking does not restore what was removed. Taking a sender off the list makes future mail sync again, but the conversations already removed do not come back. If you need them, use Import last 30 days in Settings → Email to re-fetch anything still inside the 30-day window.

Change what syncs overall

Each advisor chooses this for their own mailbox under Settings → Email → Your inbox:

ModeWhat comes in
Smart (default)Everything except newsletters and bulk mail
Contacts OnlyOnly mail to or from someone already saved as a client or lead
OffNothing. You can still send from JourneyFuse

Contacts Only is strict: it also blocks the first email from a brand-new prospect who is not saved yet, so you can miss new enquiries. For most agencies the better setup is to stay on Smart and block the handful of senders you never want to see.

Until an advisor picks a mode, their mailbox follows the agency default. Owners and admins set that default in the Inbox Sync: agency default card on the same page. Changing it moves everyone who is still on Agency default. It never changes a mode an advisor chose for themselves. The blocked-senders list is shared by the whole agency.

Searching Messages

Use the search bar at the top of the conversation list to find messages by keyword. The search looks through message subjects and body text.

Tips

  • Check the Portal tab regularly — portal messages don't generate email notifications by default, so they're easy to miss.
  • Unread messages are shown with a bold subject line. Mark conversations as read after you've responded.
  • Link incoming emails from unknown senders to their client record so their full communication history stays in one place.
  • If your Inbox is filling with mail from your host agency or a supplier newsletter, block the sender from the conversation itself rather than switching to Contacts Only — you keep new enquiries that way.