Use bulk actions on conversations

Bulk actions let you apply a change across many conversations in one step. Use them for cleanup (resolving a stale backlog), retagging (after introducing a new topic tag), reassigning (when a teammate takes time off), or sending an outbound notice to a known-affected segment.

How to select conversations

1. Hover a conversation row in the list — a checkbox appears.
2. Click the checkbox.
3. Repeat for additional rows, or tick the select-all checkbox in the toolbar above the list to select every conversation currently loaded.
4. The bulk action bar appears at the top of the list, showing N selected and the available actions.

Selection scope — read this before acting on a big filter:

• Loaded rows only. Selection covers the pages the list has actually fetched, not everything behind your filter. The list pages as you scroll, so the select-all checkbox selects what is loaded at that moment and nothing more.
• There is no “select all matching this filter” option. If you need to act on more than you have loaded, scroll to load more rows first, or narrow the filter until the whole set is loaded.
• No shift-click range selection. Rows are ticked one at a time. Shift+X toggles the row you are focused on from the keyboard.
• Selection clears when a bulk action succeeds.

What you can do in bulk

The bulk action bar holds up to eight buttons. They are icon-only — the labels below are the tooltips, and the letter in brackets is the keyboard shortcut for the same action:

• Mark as done — D — Set every selected conversation to Done. The same control reopens the selection to Active when every selected conversation is already Done. It is hidden on the Done tab. The underlying call also accepts Snoozed and Archived, which is how mass reply and archive reach them
• Assign — A — Assign every selection to an agent, a team, or both
• Add tags — T — Apply one or more existing tags across the selection
• Add to stack — @ — Open every selected conversation as a stacked tab in the tab bar
• Merge conversations — — — Appears only when two or more rows are selected. Opens the Merge pane, where you choose the primary conversation and confirm the candidates before committing with Merge Conversations
• Send mass reply — R — Compose one message and send it as a real reply on every selected conversation, optionally changing status at the same time
• Add to monitor — — — Add the selection to one of your monitor views
• Unassign ALL tickets from this agent — — — See the caution below. Appears only when exactly one agent filter is active

Bulk archive exists as well but has no button on this bar. It runs over the whole selection from the conversation action bar and the command palette, and confirms first.

Caution: Unassign ALL tickets from this agent is an agent-wide control, not a selection-scoped bulk action. It uses the active agent filter rather than the selected or visible rows, and it includes Done conversations that are resolved but not yet archived. Review the confirmation dialog carefully — the unassign does not run until you confirm it there.

That’s the full surface today. Merge starts from the inbox selection toolbar, but it is not a one-click bulk merge: selection helps prefill the Merge pane, and you still need to verify the primary and candidates before committing. There is no bulk reopen as a separate operation, and no bulk delete from the normal conversation list. For the full merge flow, see Merge conversations.

Every button on this bar is visible to every agent, but the permission is checked on the server. If your role lacks the matching permission the action fails rather than being hidden, so an agent without conversations.assign sees Assign and gets an error from it. Mass reply with a status change needs the reply and the close/reopen permission.

Filter, then bulk

The reliable pattern is: filter the list to exactly the conversations you want to act on, then bulk-act. The filter is your auditable record of what got changed.

For bulk snooze, Atender checks the whole selection against the snooze policy before applying the change. If the policy refuses the request, no conversations in the selection are snoozed; the action does not half-apply to only part of the list.

• Close out stale active threads — Active + last update older than 30 days — Change status → Done
• Retag historical refund conversations — Done + tag=”returns” — Add tag “refund”
• Reassign a vacationing agent’s queue — Active + assigned to that agent — Assign to a teammate
• Snooze low-priority backlog past month-end — Active + tag=”not-urgent” — Change status → Snoozed
• Notify customers about a resolved incident — Active + tag=”payment-issue-2026-05” — Mass reply (with status → Done)

Mass reply

Mass reply sends one composed message as a real reply on every selected conversation, on each conversation’s own channel. It also offers an optional status change in the same step (for example, send and mark Done).

It is high-blast-radius — every recipient gets a real, billed, customer-visible message — and is reserved for incidents and clearly-identifiable affected segments, never outreach. The dedicated article walks through the dialog, channel-by-channel behaviour, what gets logged, and how to recover from mistakes.

→ Send a mass reply

What you can’t bulk

A few things deliberately don’t have bulk equivalents:

• One-click bulk merge. Merge can start from selected conversations in the inbox toolbar, but it still opens a merge pane because agents must choose or confirm one primary conversation and verify the candidates belong together. After reviewing the pane, commit the merge with the pinned Merge Conversations button — see Merge conversations.
• Bulk reopen as its own button. There isn’t one, because Mark as done doubles as it: when every conversation in the selection is already Done, the same control (and D) moves the selection back to Active. Done conversations also reopen on their own when the customer replies.
• Bulk delete from the normal conversation list. Regular inbox conversations still use Archive rather than Delete. The exception is conversations that are already in Spam: from the Spam page, you can permanently delete spam conversations, including in bulk, after confirming the shared delete dialog.
• Selecting everything behind a filter. There is no “all matching” selection. Bulk actions only ever reach the rows the list has loaded.
• Undo. No bulk action can be undone. Mass reply, merge and archive each say so in their confirmation dialog; the rest apply immediately.

Pattern: end-of-quarter cleanup

A common admin task:

1. Filter Active conversations to those last updated more than 90 days ago.
2. Spot-check a handful to confirm they are stale, not genuinely waiting.
3. Add a tag like stale-cleanup-2026-q1 so you can find them later.
4. Change status → Done.

The conversation resolution timer takes them from Done to Archived a day or two later. Your inbox shrinks, and the conversations that genuinely need attention bubble up.

See also

• What is the conversation list?
• Mark Done or reopen
• Assign conversations
• Merge conversations