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
This article walks you through both, with screenshots from each step.
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 — these are part of Aptly's paid AI tier, not something every account has access to. Categorization auto-labels messages with related topics; Auto-drafts suggests a response to incoming emails; Sentiment and Summarization surface tone and a quick summary.
- Enable Auto Categorization — uses your shared topics to tag emails by keyword (this one isn't AI-gated).
- Exclude from Auto Sharing — good for private or HR/admin inboxes that shouldn't appear on shared boards.
- 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 — add a shared signature used when no user-specific signature is available. Click Edit to write it.
- 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.
- Type a name, team, or email address in the search box to add someone.
- 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:
Option | Description |
Manual | Conversations stay unassigned until someone claims them. |
Specific User | Everything goes directly to one selected person. |
Round Robin (All Users) | Distributes new conversations evenly among everyone with access. |
Round Robin (By Team) | Balances assignments across a 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.
✅ Pair Auto Categorization with shared topics for the most efficient workflow.
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: Do I need Aptly's paid AI tier to use the Help Desk? A: No. The Help Desk itself — shared inboxes, customer groups, assignment rules — is available regardless. The AI-specific inbox features (Summarization, Categorization, Auto-drafts, Sentiment) require the paid AI tier.
Next Steps
Once your Help Desk is set up, you're ready to start using it! Continue to Using the Help Desk to learn how to view, manage, and respond to customer messages.