Overview
The Messenger is a chat widget embedded in the customer portal that gives your customers a direct line of communication with your lab. It appears as a floating button in the bottom-right corner of the portal. When a customer clicks it, they can view their existing conversations, start new ones, and exchange messages with your team in real-time.
The Messenger is the customer-facing counterpart to the Inbox. Everything a customer sends through the Messenger creates or updates a conversation in your lab's Inbox, and every reply your team sends from the Inbox is delivered back to the Messenger (as well as via email).
Accessing the Messenger
Customers see a floating button in the bottom-right corner of the portal. Clicking it opens the Messenger window, which has two tabs at the bottom:
Chats — shows the customer's existing conversations. They can filter by open, closed, or all, and search by conversation title. Each conversation in the list shows the title, a preview of the last message, linked cases, and a timestamp. Conversations with unread messages from the lab appear in bold with a blue dot indicator. The floating button also shows a red badge with the unread count.
New — a form for starting a new conversation. The customer can enter a subject, write a message, attach files, and optionally link cases to the conversation. When they click Send, a new conversation is created in your lab's Inbox.
Starting a Conversation
From the New tab, the customer fills out:
Subject (optional) — a brief description of what the conversation is about. If left blank, it defaults to "New message from portal."
Link cases (optional) — the customer can search for and link one or more of their cases to the conversation. This helps your lab team immediately understand which cases the message relates to. Clicking a linked case opens a popover with case details like patient name, status, due date, and a link to the full case page.
Message — the body of the message, written in a rich text editor that supports formatting. The customer can also attach files using the paperclip button.
When the customer sends the message, the conversation appears immediately in their Chats list and in your lab's Inbox.
Viewing a Conversation
Clicking on a conversation in the Chats list opens the full message thread. The customer sees:
A header with the conversation title and status (a "Closed" badge if applicable)
Linked cases displayed as clickable pills below the header
The full message thread, showing both the customer's messages and the lab's replies
A message composer at the bottom for sending follow-up messages
The message thread uses the same layout as the lab-side conversation view, with messages from the customer on one side and messages from the lab on the other.
Real-Time Updates
The Messenger connects to real-time updates so customers don't need to refresh the page:
When your lab team sends a reply, it appears instantly in the Messenger if the customer has the conversation open
The conversation list updates automatically when new messages arrive in any of the customer's conversations
The unread count badge on the floating button updates in real-time
How It Connects to the Inbox
Every message sent through the Messenger creates a conversation with the source type set to "portal_initiated." This means:
The conversation appears in your lab's Inbox alongside email conversations and logged conversations
When a lab user replies from the Inbox, the reply is delivered to the Messenger in real-time and also sent as an email to the customer. The email includes the full conversation history so the customer has context whether they read the reply in the Messenger or in their email inbox.
The customer is automatically linked to the conversation through their portal account — no manual customer resolution is needed.
What Customers Can See
The Messenger shows customers only conversations that are relevant to them. A customer sees conversations where:
They are a contact on the conversation
The conversation is linked to one of their customer accounts
The conversation is linked to one of their billing accounts
This means if your lab starts a conversation about a customer's case from the Inbox (using the Start or Log flow), that conversation will also appear in the customer's Messenger, as long as the customer or their billing account is linked to it.
Customers cannot see internal comments — only messages. They also cannot see inbox assignments, user assignments, or any other internal triage information.