The live inbox
Live Chats in the dashboard shows conversations with your chatbot as they happen — not a report you read tomorrow, but the actual exchange, updating live.
What you see
A list of active sessions down the side, showing how many visitors are in conversation right now. Click any one to open it.
The full transcript of the selected conversation, rendered the same way the visitor sees it — Markdown formatting, bot replies, visitor questions, in order.
The page they are on. Each session shows the URL the visitor is chatting from, as a link. Knowing that someone is asking about delivery while sitting on your checkout page tells you a great deal.
A typing indicator when the visitor is composing a message.
New messages appear as they are sent. There is no refresh button because there is nothing to refresh.
Why this is the most useful screen in the product
Everything else in SiteMesh is you guessing what your customers will ask. This is you finding out.
Read a week of conversations and you will learn:
- The questions you never anticipated. Almost always some of these.
- The words people actually use. They ask about "postage", your site says "shipping". Now you know to include both.
- Where the bot declined to answer. Every one of these is a gap you can close with a pasted text source.
- Where someone got frustrated and left. Worth a look at what happened just before.
Turning it into improvements
A monthly routine that works:
- Read the last month of conversations
- Write down every question the bot could not answer
- Answer those questions in a single pasted-text source
- Retrain
Two or three rounds of that and most chatbots stop disappointing people.
Stepping in
You are not limited to watching. Any conversation can be taken over — the bot goes quiet and you reply directly as a named human agent.
Handoff requests
If a visitor explicitly asks for a person and handoff is enabled, the conversation is flagged here and an email is sent to your notification address.
Past conversations
The inbox focuses on what is happening now. Your chatbot's full conversation history — including everything that has finished — is available separately in the dashboard, along with the thumbs up and thumbs down ratings visitors gave individual answers.
Privacy
You are reading real conversations with real people, who may type personal details into a chat box without thinking twice.
Treat transcripts with the same care as support emails: limit who on your team has access, do not copy them into places they do not belong, and make sure your privacy policy tells visitors that chats are recorded and may be read by staff.