The Help Desk brings together your shared inboxes, contact types, and boards into one workspace for managing communication with customers, owners, residents, and prospects.
Before using the Help Desk, you'll need to complete two setup steps:
- Define your Customer groups
- Connect your shared inboxes
Follow the steps below to configure customer groups, connect shared inboxes, and choose access and assignment settings.
Step 1: Open the Help Desk Settings
- Go to Settings in Aptly.
- Under Company Settings, click Help Desk.
You'll land on the Help Desk Settings page, which has two main sections:
- Customers — where you define your customer groups and contact types.
- Help Desk Inboxes — where you connect the shared inboxes (email and phone) that feed the Help Desk.
Step 2: Set Up Your Customer Groups
Customer groups let you organize communication by relationship type. Each group can include one or more contact types, which keeps messages organized in your Help Desk and in the Customers tab of your inbox.
Peak Properties, for example, uses four groups: Owners (Owner Prospect, Owner), Prospects (Prospect, Applicant), Residents (Past Resident, Resident, Future Resident), and Vendors (Vendor). Your account may have different groups depending on how you've set things up.
To edit an existing group: click the pencil icon next to it to rename it or update its contact types. The trash icon next to that removes a group entirely.
To add a new group:
- Click New Customer.
- Enter a unique name (the field will warn you if it's already in use — avoid reusing the name of an existing customer group).
- Select the contact types to include (for example, Applicant and Prospect).
- Click Save.
Once saved, the new group appears in your Customers table and can be used to filter and manage conversations by customer type.
Step 3: Add Shared Inboxes
Shared inboxes are the channels your team uses to send and receive messages in the Help Desk. You can connect both email and phone (Twilio) inboxes, and once they're connected they all show up together in one table, grouped into Email Inboxes and Phone, so you can see everything — name, type, who has access, and connection status — at a glance.
💡 Only shared inboxes can be used in the Help Desk. Personal inboxes aren't an option here.
Connect Twilio (for phone/SMS): Click the Twilio card above the inbox table to confirm your account is connected, then import a number or add a new one to use it as a Help Desk inbox.
Add an email inbox:
- Click Add Inbox.
- Choose Microsoft or Gmail.
- Follow the authorization prompts to connect the account.
- Once connected, you'll land in the inbox's setup screen to configure its details (see Step 4).
Step 4: Configure Inbox Settings
Click the pencil icon next to any inbox in the table to open its settings. This is where most of the day-to-day configuration happens.
Basic settings
- Inbox Name — give it a clear, descriptive name (e.g., "Leasing").
- Inbox Color — pick a color to help identify messages from that inbox at a glance.
Inbox Features
This is a set of checkboxes covering both AI behavior and a few other inbox-wide toggles:
- Enable AI Summarization, Enable AI Categorization, Enable AI Auto-drafts, Enable AI Sentiment — configure the AI features available for this inbox. If a control is unavailable, ask your administrator or Aptly Support to check that feature's availability, configuration, and permissions.
- For rule-based topic tagging, see Inbox Rules.
- Exclude from Auto Sharing — review this with your administrator when configuring automatic conversation sharing. For sensitive inboxes, also review inbox access and permissions on related records.
- Exclude from work order processing — for Propertyware users, prevents work orders from generating via this inbox.
A few more toggles below that:
- Leaderboard — include this inbox's activity in performance metrics on the Team Performance Dashboard.
- Inbox Signature — configure the signature for messages sent from this inbox. Select Edit to write it, and review the signature in the composer before sending.
- Send Emails From Inbox Name — turn this on and give it a name (e.g., "Peak Leasing") so outgoing emails show that name as the sender instead of an individual person.
Access
Shared inboxes are only visible to the users and teams you grant access to.
- Use the search field labeled Enter a user name, team, or email address… to find a user or team.
- Each person or team in the list has their own toggle — switch it off to remove their access without deleting them from the list.
Auto Assignment Rules
Automatically assign new conversations when they're first created:
Choose from these assignment modes:
- Manual
- Specific User
- Round Robin (All Users)
- Round Robin (By Team)
Inbox Actions
Along the bottom of the panel:
- Make Inbox Private — restricts access to a single user.
- Disconnect — stops sending and receiving messages from the inbox (only do this if advised by Aptly Support).
- Reconnect — reauthorizes the connection, helpful if you've changed your password or messages stop syncing.
- Save — saves whatever you've changed in this panel. Nothing here applies automatically, so don't navigate away before clicking it.
💡 If your emails stop coming in, try Reconnect first before anything else.
Tips
✅ Use clear naming conventions like "Leasing" or "Maintenance" so inboxes are easy to recognize in lists and dropdowns.
✅ Limit access to inboxes based on team roles to reduce clutter and confusion.
✅ Reconnect your inbox anytime messages stop syncing — it's often the quickest fix.
✅ Configure and test topic-tagging rules before applying them broadly. See Inbox Rules.
FAQs
Q: Can I connect a personal inbox to the Help Desk? A: No, only shared inboxes can be connected and used in the Help Desk.
Q: Do I need a Twilio account to use the Help Desk? A: Only if you plan to manage text messages or phone communication within the Help Desk.
Q: Why don't I see my inbox messages syncing? A: Try reconnecting the inbox first — most often, this resolves issues caused by a password or permission change.
Q: How do I check which AI features are available? Ask your administrator or Aptly Support to confirm the specific feature, your organization's configuration, and your permissions. Do not assume that access to one AI feature includes all others.
Next Steps
After connecting your inboxes, choose the navigation views your team needs in Customizing Your Help Desk Navigation. Then use Understanding the Conversation List to browse and triage conversations.
Related Articles
- Overview of Shared Inboxes (Help Desk) — understand the shared-inbox workspace.
- Customizing Your Help Desk Navigation — choose the folders and views shown in navigation.
- Inbox Assignment & Ownership — route conversations to the right owner.