Wati now offers the ability to mark customer messages as unread in the Team Inbox. This feature is especially useful for admins and team leads who review chats without intending to respond. It ensures unread messages remain clearly visible to the agents responsible for handling them, helping support teams stay on top of new customer inquiries without missing anything important.

In a shared team inbox, when any team member opens a chat, it is automatically marked as read for everyone. This is by design to avoid multiple agents responding to the same chat. However, managers often open chats to review team performance and may unintentionally clear unread indicators. This can lead to operators missing new customer messages that still require a response.

The Mark as Unread feature solves this by allowing admins and operators to manually re-mark specific messages as unread - ensuring clear handoffs and visibility within the team.

Here’s what you’ll see and how the feature behaves in different scenarios:

Log in to your Wati account and navigate to the Team Inbox.

The Mark as Unread option will only appear if all of the following conditions are met:

Move your cursor over any incoming message from the customer. This option won’t appear on messages sent by your team or system messages.

You’ll see the option to Mark as Unread. Once selected, the chat will show up as unread in the chat list for the assigned agent - making it easier to track messages that still need attention.

By using the "Mark as Unread" feature, your support team can better manage visibility into customer messages - ensuring that important queries don’t get lost just because someone opened a chat to take a look.

→ It’s a feature in Wati’s Team Inbox that allows admins and operators to manually mark incoming customer messages as unread. This helps keep messages visible to agents when someone opens a chat just to review it without replying.

→ Only users with the Admin or Operator role can use this feature. It’s not available to Bots, AI Support Agents, or any roles outside of Admin and Operator.

→ Yes, it is available on all subscription plans, including PAYG, Growth, Pro, and Business.

→ Only incoming customer messages can be marked as unread. Messages sent from Wati (like agent replies or system messages) cannot be marked as unread.

→ Yes. The chat must:

→ No. Once a reply is sent, Wati automatically marks the chat as read, and you can no longer mark any messages in that chat as unread.

→ Make sure you're hovering over an incoming message from a customer that hasn’t been responded to yet. Also, check that the chat is assigned to a human operator, not a bot or AI Support Agent.

→ No. The feature only works for incoming customer messages. Messages sent by your team or system-generated messages cannot be marked as unread.

→ Open a chat in the Team Inbox, hover over any unread incoming message, and click Mark as Unread. The chat will reappear as unread in the chat list for the assigned agent.

→ Use this option when you open a chat to review it but aren’t ready to respond. Marking the message as unread helps keep it visible as pending, so the responsible agent knows it still needs attention.

→ The unread badge disappears from the chat list. A red line appears in the chat to indicate where unread messages start. This red line goes away if you navigate away, scroll, or reply.

→ Yes. When you select a message and click Mark as Unread, that message and all messages below it will be marked as unread. For example, marking the second of five unread messages will mark four messages as unread.

→ Yes. After using Mark as Unread, the unread badge will remain visible in the chat list even if you navigate away. When you return to the chat, the process resets and behaves as if opening it for the first time.