Shared inbox for text, email, and portal messages
Text, email, and portal. One inbox.
Where customers reach you. A text to your business number, a reply to an invoice, and a portal message all land in one list, filed on the right customer, for the whole office to answer.
One customer, three ways in.
Great Lakes Concrete & Paving in September. Each channel keeps its own conversation, and every one of them sits on the customer.
Sep 10, email
Karen answers the invoice from her own inbox
Priya sent the August invoice from PortaPro on the 1st. It left with a Reply-To that routes answers back to the Inbox, so Karen's reply threads under the invoice it answers, filed on Great Lakes. A copy lands in your Gmail or Outlook too, and replying from there works.Sep 11, text
Then she texts from the site
A text to your business number matches the customer by phone and opens as its own text conversation. You answer in the same composer and it goes back as a text. You never pick the channel.Sep 12, portal
And asks for more in the portal
Her portal message about a handwash station for Saturday's pour lands in the same Inbox, marked Portal. Your answer shows up in her portal.Any day after
Open the customer, see all of it
The customer's Inbox tab lists every call, email, text, portal message, and supply request, newest first. Whoever picks up the next call knows what was said.
What every conversation carries.
- Delivery status
- Sent texts and emails show Sent, Delivered, or Failed beside the time. Hover a failure and it says why: a number that can't take texts, a bad number, or a customer who texted STOP.
- One alert for all of it
- A text, an email reply, and a portal message ring the same bell and the same push notification, with the channel named. The composer says where the answer goes, Text the customer or Reply by email, so nobody answers a text with an email.
- Under the message it answers
- The day-before reminder, the invoice email, the pay link, and the overdue nudge all sit in the customer's conversation on the channel they went out on. When a customer answers the reminder with a new gate code, the reply lands right under it.
- A number you don't know
- A text or email from someone not on file shows up as Unknown sender, visible to the office, never dropped. Search for the customer, link it once, and their balance, jobs, and history appear beside it.
- Closed, not lost
- Close a conversation once it's handled. If the customer writes again on that channel, it reopens as unread. A customer who texts STOP can't be texted from PortaPro until they text START.
- Drafting help
- Write with AI turns one plain sentence into a draft, and the mic turns speech into text. Both fill the composer. Nothing sends until someone presses Send.
Requests get their own tab.
More units, a service visit, a pickup, a dumpster, supplies, or a problem with a unit. What a customer asks for from the portal arrives as a request with a status, not a message somebody has to remember.
- Sorted, not buried
- All, Equipment & service, Dumpsters, Supplies, and Bookings, each with how many are waiting. Urgent requests sit at the top, then the oldest. Dumpsters show for companies that rent roll-offs, and Bookings once online booking is on.
- Booked in one click
- Book delivery, Schedule service, Schedule pickup, or Schedule a visit opens the job with the customer, site, date, and notes already in. Save it and the customer is told the day.
- Closed by the job
- When the visit is completed, the request reads Done. If the job is cancelled, the request goes back to waiting instead of disappearing.
- Answered either way
- Handled on the phone? Mark done with a note. Can't do it as asked? Decline with a reason. The customer sees the answer in their portal.
- Hard to miss
- A bell, a push, and an email for each new one, a Customer requests card on the dashboard while anything waits, and a Requests button with a count on Inventory, Roll-Offs, Service Hub, and Consumables.
Email that didn't start in PortaPro.
Replies to anything PortaPro sends are captured with no setup. For everything else, your account has its own Inbox address.
- BCC it
- Emailing a customer from your own Gmail or Outlook? BCC your Inbox address and the thread lands on the customer.
- Forward one
- A customer emailed you directly about a quote. Forward it to your Inbox address and it files under that customer, as from them, not from you.
- Point a shared address at it
- Forward contact@ or dispatch@ and everything that arrives there becomes a conversation. Obvious bulk mail from people who aren't customers is dropped.
- Turn support@ into tickets
- Forward your support address to your intake address and each email becomes a numbered ticket on the customer, with a branded Ticket created reply you can edit or switch off.
Questions operators ask
Does PortaPro need access to our mailbox?
No. Email you send from PortaPro carries a Reply-To that routes the customer's answer back to the Inbox, and a copy still lands in your Gmail or Outlook. Connected mailboxes are send-only. PortaPro can send from them but cannot read them.
What do we need before customers can text us?
A business number and the carrier registration US carriers require for business texting (A2P 10DLC). Settings walks you through it, and the carrier's per-message costs and registration fees pass through. Portal and email conversations work while the carriers approve it.
Which plan is it in, and what about phone calls?
Conversations are part of the Growth plan, with two-way texting, email reply capture, and support tickets. The Requests tab is on every plan, because customers on every plan can send requests. Calls on your PortaPro business line show up in the customer's conversation as a card with the direction, the duration, and the recording, plus the outcome and note once someone logs the call.
A customer says they replied, and we don't see it.
Replies to anything sent from PortaPro are captured with no setup. Mail sent from your own Gmail or Outlook is only captured if it was BCC'd or forwarded to your Inbox address, so check that first. If they wrote to your business address out of the blue, check that the forwarding rule in your mailbox is switched on, not only verified. And customers never see texts or emails in their portal; it shows portal conversations only.
