Settings is where you set up your account, connect Instagram and Facebook, add your team, and decide how the inbox behaves. This guide covers every tab in the order it appears. Most of it you set once and only come back to when your team or your process changes.

If you only want the settings that matter on day one, start with the Settings Quick Start.

In this guide

Click Settings in the left menu. The tabs run down the left side of the page.

Under the tabs, the Inbox Agent Seats card shows how many of your plan's Inbox Agent seats are in use.

Most settings save as soon as you change them. Windows that open on top of the page have their own save button.

Your own details and preferences.

Your First Name, Last Name, and Email. This is the name and email on your Ellipsend login.

Your own time zone. Open the dropdown, search for your city or region, and select it. Each person on your team sets their own.

Your local time zone is separate from the company time zone on the General tab. The Time Zones setting under Inbox Settings decides which of the two the inbox uses.

Turn on Dark mode to switch Ellipsend to a dark theme. It only changes how the app looks for you.

Click Reset Password and we'll email you a link to set a new one.

Email Notifications controls which emails Ellipsend sends you.

Keep Page Disconnected on. If the connection drops, this email is how you find out right away.

Under Inbox, the Message sounds switch turns the new-message sound on or off. This only changes it for you.

Details for the whole account.

The name of your business in Ellipsend.

One time zone for the whole company. It gives your team a shared clock, wherever each person is.

It's used in two places. In Reports, choosing Use Company Timezone means everyone on your team sees the same numbers. In the inbox, the Time Zones setting under Inbox Settings can show timestamps in the company time zone for everyone.

Where you connect the social accounts Ellipsend works with.

The Meta card shows your Facebook Page and your Instagram account, each with a status of Connected or Not connected. If you haven't connected yet, this is where you log in with Facebook. The full walkthrough is in How to Connect Instagram & Facebook to Ellipsend.

Click the Facebook or Instagram row to choose which Page or account this Ellipsend account uses. The icon at the end of each row is Disconnect page, which disconnects that one Page or account.

There are three buttons at the top of the card. They can show as icons, so hover one to see its name.

If everything shows Connected and messages still aren't arriving or sending, the cause is usually two settings on your Facebook Page. See How to Give Ellipsend Control of Your Conversations.

The TikTok card connects TikTok and TikTok Ads.

TikTok messaging isn't supported yet. Connecting TikTok lets you track how your TikTok content performs in the Content and Social tabs of Reports.

Integrations connect Ellipsend to your other tools, mostly so bookings and purchases log themselves. Click Integrations and pick a tile. Which tiles you see depends on your plan.

If your plan doesn't include Zapier and the API, you'll see Need more integrations? in their place, with an Upgrade Now! button.

A tile that needs a connection shows its status, like Not connected.

Click the API tile to open the API page. Back to Integrations takes you back to the tiles. The page has three parts.

Setup steps for each tool are in How Tracking Works and How to Track Conversions from GoHighLevel in Ellipsend with Activities.

Who has a login to your account, and what each person can see.

Every person on the account is listed with their Name, Email, and Role. The icons at the end of each row copy the person's ID, Edit them, or Delete them.

Someone you invited who hasn't finished setting up shows as Pending Setup. Their row has two icons. Copy Account Creation Link copies their signup link so you can send it to them yourself, and Revoke Invite cancels the invitation.

Don't skip step 3 for anyone who works conversations. A login only lets someone read the inbox.

If you don't see Add as Inbox Agent, check the Inbox Agent Seats card under the Settings menu. Your seats are likely all in use. The Inbox Agents section below covers what each plan includes and how to add more.

To create the login yourself, click Show All Fields and fill in Password, Repeat Password, First Name, and Last Name. The button changes to Create User. Click it, then share the login details with them.

A role controls which parts of Ellipsend someone can see.

Most teams give setters the Regular role and a setter manager the Manager role. Anyone else on the team can be an Admin or a Manager.

Owners, Admins, and Managers can see all of Reports. Team members with the Regular or Inbox Only role can't see Reports unless you turn it on for them.

When you choose Regular or Inbox Only in the Add User or Edit User window, an Agent performance reports toggle appears. Turn it on and Reports shows up in that person's left menu, limited to the Agents tab. It's how you let a setter see agent performance without making them a Manager.

A role doesn't let someone send messages. A team member with any role can open the inbox and read conversations, but to reply to contacts and have contacts assigned to them, they also have to be an Inbox Agent. Add them when you invite them, or later from Settings → Inbox → Inbox Agents.

Click Edit on a row to change someone's email, role, or name. The same window has Reset Password, which sends them a reset email.

Before you delete someone, reassign their contacts so no conversation is left without an owner. Then click Delete and confirm. Deleting a team member takes the Owner or Admin role.

An activity is a record of something that happened with a contact, like a call getting booked or a purchase. Activities are what Reports count. You define them in Settings → Campaigns → Activities.

Activities are organized into groups. To add a group, click the + next to Activities, type a name, and confirm.

Inside a group, type a name into Add an Activity Type and press Enter. The Update an Activity Type window opens so you can set it up.

Each activity type has its own row. Drag a row to reorder it. The icons on the row copy its ID, duplicate it, edit it, or delete it. Deleting an activity type also removes it from any pipeline stage it was mapped to, and it can't be undone.

In the Update an Activity Type window, click Add a New Field to collect a detail whenever the activity is logged, like a date, a dropdown choice, or a note. Turn on Input is Required for anything your team shouldn't skip.

The fields that matter for Reports are Money fields. Each Money field is one of two types.

On a $4,500 offer with $1,000 paid up front, Received is $1,000 and Expected is $4,500. These two fields feed every revenue number in Reports.

Important Note: The other field types don't change your reports. They're just helpful to add data for future reference in the Inbox.

An activity type that's connected to a booking tool (i.e. Calendly) shows that tool's logo beside its name. When a booking comes in, the activity is logged for you. A linked activity type can't be deleted until you unlink it.

How many activity types you can have depends on your plan. Plans and Limits has the numbers.

A pipeline is the set of stages a contact moves through on the way to a sale. A contact sits in one stage at a time. You build pipelines in Settings → Campaigns → Pipelines.

To add a pipeline, click the + next to Pipelines, type a name, and confirm.

To add a stage, type a name into Add a Stage inside the pipeline, pick its status, and confirm. Drag a stage to change the order. The icons on each stage copy its ID, edit it, or delete it. The icons beside the pipeline's name rename it, duplicate it, or delete it. Deleting can't be undone.

Every stage is Active, Won, or Lost. Reports uses Won and Lost to count your deals won and deals lost. Set your purchase stage to Won and your abandoned or disqualified stage to Lost. Everything else stays Active.

For your reports to be accurate, your activities need to be mapped to pipeline stages.

Once an activity is mapped, moving a contact into that stage in the inbox logs the activity, so nobody has to remember a second step. It works in the other direction too. When an activity comes in through an integration or the API, the contact moves into the stage connected to that activity.

An activity can only be mapped to one stage in a pipeline. If it's already taken, it shows Assigned to with the name of that stage.

How many pipelines and stages you can have depends on your plan. Plans and Limits has the numbers.

Every account starts with a default campaign, so most accounts only set up stages and activities here. Building more campaigns is for Premium and Enterprise, and is covered in Build a Campaign. More on how stages and activities show up in your numbers is in the Reports guide.

Settings → Inbox → Inbox Settings controls how the inbox behaves for your whole team.

This is off by default. While it's off, team members who aren't Admins or Managers only see the contacts assigned to them and the contacts that aren't assigned to anyone. Admins and Managers always see every contact.

Turn it on and everyone can see each other's assigned contacts. Most teams turn it on. Leave it off if you want each person working only their own contacts.

When this is on, a message that anyone on your team reads is marked as read for everyone. Most teams leave it off, so each person keeps their own unread list. Turn it on if your team works the unread conversations together as one shared list.

When this is on, the contact sees that you're typing while someone on your team writes a reply in Ellipsend. People are used to seeing it in their DMs, so it makes the conversation feel like it's with a person.

When this is on, opening a contact in the inbox marks their latest message as seen. The contact sees that on their side, the same way they would if you'd read it in the Instagram or Facebook app.

This is on by default. When someone on your team messages a contact, automations stop triggering for that contact for 1 day. That keeps an automated reply from landing in the middle of a real conversation.

Use the Pause Automations for dropdown to change the length. The options are 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 8 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 7 days, and Forever. We recommend 1 day or 7 days. Turn the setting off if you never want a reply from your team to pause automations.

You can also pause automations for one contact at a time from the contact panel in the inbox.

Chooses which time zone the inbox uses for timestamps.

An Inbox Agent is a team member who can reply to contacts and have contacts assigned to them. You manage them in Settings → Inbox → Inbox Agents. The page itself is titled Assignment, because it's also where you decide how contacts get assigned.

The Inbox Agents table lists each agent and the share of new contacts they receive on Instagram and Facebook. Click Edit to change it.

To add someone, type their name under Add team member, select them, click Add, then click Save Changes. They can reply from the inbox right away. Only people who have accepted their invite show up in the list.

To remove someone, click the trash icon beside their name. Ellipsend asks what to do with their contacts. Pick another agent, or pick Unassigned, then click Save Changes. They keep their login and their role, and go back to read-only in the inbox.

There's more in What Is an Inbox Agent?

Your plan sets how many Inbox Agents you can have. Plans and Limits lists the seats on each plan.

The Inbox Agent Seats card under the Settings menu shows how many seats you've used, like 3/3.

If you don't see a way to add an Inbox Agent, every seat on your plan is in use. You can free one up by removing an agent who no longer needs to reply. If your team has outgrown your seats, click Purchase Inbox Agent Seats on that card to add more, or move up to the next plan.

This assigns a contact to the agent who messages them. Turn it on when you set up your account, whether or not you also use auto-assignment. There are two options, and only one can be on at a time.

When you first connected your account, Ellipsend pulled in your existing conversations. Every one of those contacts starts out unassigned. With one of these options on, each contact is assigned as your team works through them. With both off, they stay unassigned.

That matters for your numbers too. The Agents tab in Reports only counts contacts that are assigned to an agent, so an unassigned contact's revenue and bookings don't show up for anyone there.

Auto-assignment handles new contacts. It hands every new contact to one of your Inbox Agents automatically, in rotation, based on the percentage you give each agent. With two agents at 50% each, new contacts alternate between them. It runs when a contact is created, however they came in, including a contact created by an outbound message.

Turn on Enable Auto-Assignment. The Edit Auto-Assignment window opens so you can set the split.

The percentages have to add up to 100% for each platform. Until they do, Save Changes stays dimmed. If you close the window without a split that adds up, auto-assignment turns itself back off.

An agent at 0% is still a full Inbox Agent. They can reply to any conversation and have contacts assigned to them by hand. They won't receive new contacts automatically.

Click How does this work? on the page to see the order contacts will be handed out in, and who is next.

Most teams run both. Auto-assignment gives every new contact an owner from the first message, and Auto-Assign on Agent Message picks up everything else, including the conversations that were pulled in when you connected.

Auto-assignment isn't a fit when your agents cover different hours. If one person works the inbox from 9 to 5 and another from 5 to 9, new contacts would keep going to whoever is offline. In that case, leave Enable Auto-Assignment off and keep Only If Unassigned on. Whoever messages a contact first gets it.

A relationship describes how a contact is connected to your business, separate from where they are in a pipeline. Client, Competitor, Do Not Contact, and Employee are common ones.

Click the + next to Relationships to add one. Use the icons on each row to edit or delete it. In the inbox you can filter by relationship, and a Saved Response can set one for you after it sends.

A Spotlight is a saved view of the inbox, built from a set of filters. This tab is titled Shared Spotlights. It lists every Spotlight that's been shared with your team, with its Spotlight Name, who it was Shared By, and the date it was Created On.

You create and edit Spotlights in the inbox, not here. Deleting one from this tab removes it for everyone, and it can't be undone. How to build them is in Inbox & Messaging.

Labels are tags you put on contacts so you can find and filter them later. The table shows each label and the number of contacts that have it.

Click the + next to Labels, type a name, and click Save. Use the icons on each row to rename or delete a label. Before you delete one, Ellipsend shows how many contacts it's on.

A label can be added by hand in the inbox, by an automation, or by a Saved Response after it sends. When you type a brand-new label on a contact in the inbox, it saves, so you can pick it next time.

A Saved Response is a message you write once and reuse. In the inbox, type / and its shortcut to send it.

This tab is the full library. Down the left side are Pinned, All, Recently Used, your folders, and Unsorted. The table lists each response by folder with its Type, its Access (Only mine or Team), who it was Created by, and a folder dropdown. A lightning bolt beside a shortcut means that response runs actions after it sends. Search all saved responses matches the shortcut, the message text, and button text.

The button beside the message box can rewrite your draft in a different tone, like Friendly or Concise.

Folders keep a big team library readable. Click New folder under the list on the left, name it, and click Save. Each folder's heading in the table has Rename and a trash icon; deleting a folder moves its responses to Unsorted, not the bin. Drag the handle beside a folder name to change the order folders appear in.

To move a response, drag it by the handle on the left into another folder, or pick the folder from the dropdown on its row. Drag within a folder to change the order. The order is shared across the team, so the responses your setters reach for most can sit at the top. You can only move responses you're allowed to edit.

Tick the pin box beside a response to keep it under Pinned, which also sits at the top of the All view and the / menu in the inbox. Recently Used fills itself with the responses that were inserted most recently.

A Saved Response can do the follow-up work for you. Open After sending, click Add action, and choose what happens once the message goes out.

You can add up to 10 actions. They run from top to bottom after the message sends. If the stage has an activity with required fields, you'll still fill those in.

Allow Non-Admin Users to View All Contacts is off by default. While it's off, team members who aren't Admins or Managers only see contacts assigned to them and contacts that aren't assigned to anyone. Turn it on in Settings → Inbox → Inbox Settings.

They aren't an Inbox Agent yet. A role lets someone log in and read the inbox. Being an Inbox Agent lets them reply. Add them in Settings → Inbox → Inbox Agents.

Every Inbox Agent seat on your plan is in use. Plans and Limits lists the seats on each plan. Remove an agent to free up a seat, click Purchase Inbox Agent Seats on the Inbox Agent Seats card under the Settings menu, or move up to the next plan.

Someone on your team probably messaged that contact. Pause Automations After Agent Sends Message pauses automations for that contact for 1 day by default. Change the length or turn it off in Settings → Inbox → Inbox Settings.

Conversations Ellipsend pulled in when you first connected start out unassigned. Turn on Only If Unassigned or Even If Assigned under Auto-Assign on Agent Message in Settings → Inbox → Inbox Agents, and each one is assigned as your team messages them.

The percentages don't add up to 100%. In Per-Platform, Instagram and Facebook each need to add up to 100%.

The saved percentages didn't add up to 100%, or there were no Inbox Agents left to assign to. Open Edit on the Inbox Agents table, fix the split, and turn it back on.

Time Zones is set to User Time Zone, so each person sees times in their own time zone. Switch to Company Time Zone in Settings → Inbox → Inbox Settings if you want everyone on the same clock.

You've reached the limit for your plan. The limits are in the Activities and Pipelines sections above.

Go to Settings → Connections and click Refresh Facebook permissions. If that doesn't fix it, follow How to Give Ellipsend Control of Your Conversations.

Not by default. Owners, Admins, and Managers see all of Reports. For someone with the Regular or Inbox Only role, click Edit on their row in Settings → Team and turn on Agent performance reports. Reports then shows in their left menu, limited to the Agents tab.

Reassign their contacts first. Then delete them from Settings → Team.