Reply to a Facebook or Instagram message

Open the Social inbox, find a direct message from Facebook, Instagram or another connected social account, reply with text or a file, and link the sender to a customer.

In the sidebar, open Communications, then Social. The page address is /communications/social. The page title reads Social Inbox.

Before you start

• A social account has to be connected. If the page reads No social accounts connected, press Connect social account (or View social account settings if your role cannot connect one) and ask an admin to finish the setup.
• Your role needs permission to read and send messages. Without the send permission, the reply box, Upload media and Send are greyed out. Sending a video needs its own permission.

Steps

1. Find the conversation in the list on the left; the newest one opens on its own. To narrow the list, type a name, handle or words from the last message in Search social conversations and press Search. Refresh reloads the list, which also refreshes by itself.
2. Press the conversation. Its messages open on the right.
3. On a Facebook or Instagram conversation, check Send policy. Leave Standard response window when the customer wrote in the last 24 hours. Choose Human agent only when a person is following up after that, inside Meta's extended support window. Other networks do not show this choice.
4. Type your reply in Write a reply.
5. To send a file instead, press Upload media and pick one file. Wait until its name is followed by "ready to send". On Facebook and Instagram, send text and a file as two separate messages.
6. Press Send. Nova shows Nova is sending this message in the background. and then Social message sent.

What you see

• Each row shows the sender's name or handle, the network's badge, the last message, when it arrived, and your unread count.
• Create account and Link account appear when the sender is not linked to a customer yet and your role can create accounts and contacts. Both open Create or link an account, where you create a new account or pick an existing one, then check Here’s what will be saved, then press Create account or Save details. Nova shows Account details saved.
• Refresh thread reloads the open conversation.
• A link to a conversation keeps that conversation selected while the inbox loads. If it is no longer in the loaded list, the first available conversation opens instead.
• Opening a conversation does not clear its unread count. Mark Read and Mark Unread change it for you. Tick Sync read to provider first if the customer should see it as read on the network; the box is greyed out unless your organization has turned that on.
• Each message shows its delivery status and time.
• After an upload, Replace media swaps the file and Remove drops it. NovaScan checks every file before it can be sent.

If something looks different

• The list reads No social conversations found.: nothing matches your search, or no messages have arrived yet.
• Send stays greyed out: the message is empty, NovaScan is still checking the file, the file could not be prepared (press Remove and try another), a video needs a permission your role does not have, or an earlier message is still sending (This message is sending in the background. You can leave this page safely.).
• Nova shows Send text and media as separate Meta messages in this inbox.: send the text first, then the file, or the other way round.
• Nova says standard response mode has expired: the customer's last message is more than 24 hours old. Switch to Human agent only for a real person-to-person follow-up.
• A yellow box reads Provider result needs confirmation: Nova could not tell whether the last message reached the network, so sending is locked here. An admin with the right permission checks the network and presses Confirm completed or Confirm not completed. Do not resend it another way meanwhile, or the customer may get it twice.

Open the Social inbox