Merge conversations

A customer emails about a refund, calls ten minutes later about the same refund, then sends a chat message asking for an update. Three conversations, one issue. Merging combines them into one thread so the context lives in a single place.

When to merge

• The customer wrote in more than once about the same issue, across different channels.
• Duplicate conversations were created by automation or routing quirks.
• You want to consolidate history before a handoff or before marking Done.

When NOT to merge

• The conversations are about different issues, even from the same customer. Keep them separate.
• You just want one of them to “go away” — Snooze, mark Done, or wait for the resolution timer instead.
• The conversations belong to different customers. Atender does not merge across CRM contacts.

Before you start

• All conversations you want to merge must belong to the same CRM contact.
• Already-merged conversations can’t be merged again.

Steps

1. Open the conversation you want to keep as the primary — the survivor that everything else folds into. Atender’s suggestion is usually the oldest one, but you decide.
2. Open the conversation menu (the three-dot button in the conversation header) and choose Merge.
3. The Merge dialog opens with a search field listing this contact’s other conversations.
4. Tick the conversations you want to fold into the primary. You can pick more than one.
5. Review the preview — confirm the primary is right and the conversations being folded in are the ones you intend.
6. Click Merge.

The merge runs server-side: messages from each secondary are stitched into the primary’s timeline in chronological order, tags are unioned, a system note is added, and each secondary’s status is set to Done with a merged into link pointing at the primary.

What happens to the conversations you folded in

Each non-primary conversation is set to Done and gets a merged into indicator pointing at the primary. They are still readable from the Done tab if you ever need to audit the merge, but they don’t show up in Active.

What carries over to the primary

• All messages from every folded-in conversation, interleaved with the primary’s own messages by timestamp.
• Tags from every conversation are unioned onto the primary.
• The primary’s custom-field values are kept; non-conflicting values from the others are layered in.
• The primary’s assignment is kept; the others’ assignments are discarded.

Verify it worked

• The primary conversation now contains messages from all folded-in conversations, in chronological order.
• A system comment in the primary records the merge.
• Each folded-in conversation appears in the Done tab with a merged into indicator.
• The primary’s tag chips include tags that came from the folded-in conversations.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: Merge option is missing from the menu. Fix: You don’t have a role that can merge conversations, or the conversation is already merged into another. Check role permissions and the conversation header for a “merged into” badge.

• Symptom: A conversation you want to merge isn’t listed in the dialog. Fix: It belongs to a different CRM contact. If the two contacts are actually the same person, merge the contacts first, then merge the conversations.

• Symptom: I picked the wrong primary. Fix: Merging is one-way. The folded-in conversations are still readable in Done — open the one you wished was primary, copy any context you need from there, and continue from the merged result. There is no built-in “unmerge.”