First-time Thread Workspace Setup Guide

Time to Complete: 1 hr

Ready to launch your team's service collaboration journey? Getting Thread setup is easy! This guide will walk you through the first-time setup process starting from Sign Up.

1. Create your Thread Workspace

1. Click here to create your Thread workspace.
2. Enter your email and click submit.

   

3. Enter the one-time passcode sent to your email & click submit.
4. If it's your first time signing in, you will be directed to a welcome screen to set up your Company's Workspace.

   

   1. What's your name? Enter your First and Last Name
   2. Workspace name Enter your Company Name
   3. Upload your logo Upload your Company's logo. If you don't have your logo handy, it's OK, you can leave the default for now. You will be able to change the logo later.
   4. When you're all done, click Continue!

2. Connect your ticketing system & Invite your Team

It's time to connect your ticketing system into Thread. Thread integrates with some of the most popular ticketing systems and enables you to seamlessly bring your tickets, companies and contacts into Thread with deep bi-directional integrations.

1. Select the ticketing system you prefer to integrate with to proceed with the setup.

   

2. Depending on which ticketing system you have chosen to integrate Thread with, you will be presented with different setup options. Follow the guides linked below to continue setting up the ticketing integration.
   Remember to return to this guide when you are done setting up the integration!
   How to connect Thread with ConnectWise Manage
   How to connect Thread with Autotask

3. Design your Customer-facing Chat App Experience

Now that your ticketing system is integrated, it's time to customize the chat support experience for your customers. This is where you add your branding to make your customer's chat experience your own.

1. Set your Primary Color. Use one of our pre-defined colors, or choose a color from the color wheel by clicking the +
2. Give your bot an avatar. Use a pre-built avatar or upload your own by clicking the +
3. Lastly, give your bot a name! We recommend something fun that your customers will recognize.
4. Click Continue when done with this step!
5. Next, we need to setup default settings for incoming chats. You may see slightly different options depending on what PSA you use.
   You'll be able to change these settings later. If your team wants to route chats for different customers to different service boards/queues, you'll also be able to override these settings later in Thread Client settings.

3.a. Messenger Settings for ConnectWise PSA

1. Service Board - Set the default service board you want chats to route in to.
2. Email Source - Set the source you use in ConnectWise to categorize email tickets
3. Phone Source - Set the source you use in ConnectWise to categorize phone tickets

3.b. Messenger Settings for Autotask

1. Service Board - Set the default service board you want chats to route in to.
2. Default Status - Set the default satus for incoming chats
3. Ticket Types - Set the Default ticket type for incoming chats
4. Chat Source - Set the default source you use in Autotask to categorize chats
5. Email Source - Set the source you use in ConnectWise to categorize email tickets
6. Phone Source - Set the source you use in ConnectWise to categorize phone tickets

4. Set up Inbox to receive chats

It's time to set up Inbox! Inbox is where your Service Team works to respond to customers in real-time! It is the app you use, as the service provider, to collaborate with your teammates and customers. Inbox was designed to give your team service superpowers so that you can focus on providing a great customer experience!

Inbox isn't limited to managing customer chats, it can also be used by your entire organization to manage all the service tickets coming from your ticketing system.

1. When logging into Inbox, you'll be presented with a setup screen to create your first channel - What's your team working on right now? We want to create a channel for incoming chats.
   What are channels?
   Channels are where your team collaborates on service threads inside Inbox.

   

2. Icon - you can change the default icon for any channel to any emoji. Click on the chat bubble emoji if you want to change it, or leave it as is.
3. Name - you can change the name of the channel so that you know what kind of service threads will be routed there.
4. Click Next Step when you're ready.
5. Who do you work with on Live Chat? In the Please select team members box, select the members of your service team that will be responding to incoming chats.
   Adding your team members to the channel will allow them to get notified and respond to incoming chats in real-time. We recommend adding anyone on your service team that normally responds to incoming service requests (email or phone)

   

6. Click Add team members to proceed to the next step.
7. Which threads do you want to show in Live Chat? For this step, you are creating a flow to route tickets into your Live Chat channel in Inbox where ticket source = your default chat source.
   For this step, you shouldn't need to change anything, click Create flow. This will allow you to receive incoming chats inside of Inbox. Starting here is recommended, we'll get into more complex channels and flows later.

   

   Flows power your Inbox channels and tell Thread what threads (tickets) to route into the channel. A flow will trigger the moment a ticket is created or updated that matches your flow filter criteria. You can set complex rules here to populate channels in Inbox (with 30+ filter options).
   
   Flows aren't just for powering Inbox channels, they can also be used to:
   1. Route threads to Teams or Slack (for notifications and service thread management)
   2. Auto Prioritize incoming threads using Service Copilot AI
   3. Send automated replies to customers
   4. Add internal notes to threads
   5. Plus much more!
   
   Read more about building channels and flows in Thread here.
8. 🎉Congrats!! You've created your first Inbox channel! Now you can start collaborating with your service team in real-time.
   1. For rich notifications and auto start, download Inbox for Desktop here: Downloads (getthread.com)
   2. You can also bookmark Inbox at https://inbox.getthread.com

      

5. Start learning Inbox with your first chat!

Now that we've set the stage to receive Live Chats inside of Inbox, we are ready to learn how to use Inbox with our first chat!

1. It's time to introduce you to Thread Admin Panel. To get there, either follow this link, or navigate to admin panel from Inbox by clicking your workspace name -> Admin Panel

   

2. From Admin Panel, navigate to Messenger Settings. On the right-hand side of the screen is a full version of Thread Messenger tied to your organization. Here is where we will create our first test chat!

   

   The Messenger Settings screen isn't just for testing out chat, you can also:
   1. Fine tune your service board and other Messenger Settings such as customizing your flavor of chat support and the chat prompts.
   2. Modify your design
   3. Set the hours of operation for chat.
3. In the messenger window on the right...
   1. Enter in the email address you'd like to test with.
   2. Enter in the OTP code you receive from thread in that email.

      

      Thread Messenger for desktop and web authenticates each user session for security purposes via an OTP code sent to that email (Teams, Slack and Cloud Radial versions of Messenger leverage single sign-on).
      
      The email you use for this step should be:
      1. An email you have access to
      2. Associated with a contact in your PSA.
4. Click New Chat to start a new thread (it may also say New Request if you've changed your settings to Non-Live Chat).

   

5. The bot will ask how it can help, enter in a problem summary, example: "I can't print from my new laptop". It will create a new thread. Try asking for help, you'll notice it creates a corresponding ticket in your PSA and syncs the entire conversation in real-time!

   

6. Next, navigate back to Inbox here. You'll see a new thread was created in your channel. Try responding to the thread!

   

⏩Next: Complete Prerequisites for Thread Onboarding