Unified inbox

The Unified Inbox brings the comments on your posts - and mentions of your brand - into one place, so you can keep up with them and reply without logging in and out of each platform.

Who can reply

Reading the inbox is open to your team. Replying to a comment and archiving is an Editor capability (including admins who also edit). Direct Messages are the exception - see Direct Messages. Everyone can open Inbox settings, but only admins can change it - see Inbox settings.

Where it lives

In External, the Unified Inbox card shows your pending comments and a View All button into the full inbox. You can also reach it from the Social Media panel on your HIVE Pulse dashboard, which lists what needs attention across your platforms - both comments and mentions - and links straight to the matching view.

Comments and Mentions

The inbox covers three kinds of activity. It opens on Comments; switch between them with the Comments / Mentions / Direct Messages control in the inbox sidebar.

• Comments - activity on your own posts: the comments people leave on what you’ve published. You read and reply to these inside HIVE. Comments are fetched from each platform, covering a recent window (see Archiving).
• Mentions - when someone @-tags your brand on their own content. Mentions are read-only in HIVE: you see them and open the platform to respond. (Mentions live on someone else’s post, so replying happens there.)
• Direct Messages - private messages sent to your Facebook Page or Instagram account. You read and reply to these inside HIVE, within the window Meta allows (see Direct Messages).

Where to find Mentions

The Unified Inbox card on the External home shows comments. To see Mentions, open the inbox (View All) and switch the sidebar to Mentions - or follow a mention from the Social Media panel on your HIVE Pulse dashboard.

Direct Messages

Private messages people send to your Facebook Page or your Instagram account arrive in the inbox alongside comments and mentions. Open the inbox and choose Direct Messages in the sidebar.

A conversation opens in place, showing the whole thread. Any photos, videos, files or stickers the person sent are shown; you reply with text, and can add an emoji. A conversation still waiting on you carries a Needs reply badge.

Meta gives you 24 hours to reply

Meta allows a reply for 24 hours after the person last wrote to you. HIVE counts that time down at the top of the conversation - Reply within 23h 47m - so you can see how long is left.

Once it runs out the reply box is replaced by “Facebook’s 24-hour reply window has closed for this conversation.” (or Instagram’s), and it stays closed until they message you again. There is no way to extend it, and a message you send after it closes will not go out.

What you can and can’t do

• Reply length is capped at 1,000 characters. Emoji and accented letters take up more room than a plain letter, so a reply full of those runs out sooner. The composer shows how much room you have left.
• Attachments are receive-only. You can see what someone sends you; HIVE can’t send files or images back.
• Names are often missing on Facebook. Meta doesn’t give HIVE access to the profile name of someone who messages a Page, so the sender usually reads Facebook User. Instagram usually supplies a name or handle.
• There’s no archive and no read receipts. A conversation you choose not to answer keeps its Needs reply badge, and the person isn’t told when you’ve opened it. The Inbox / Archived control doesn’t apply to direct messages.

If someone asks you to stop

Record an opt-out request, at the bottom of the conversation, stops HIVE sending anything further on it. Their messages still arrive, so you can see what they say.

An opt-out can't be undone

Nobody on your team can reverse it, and neither can HIVE - clearing someone’s opt-out on their behalf is exactly what an opt-out exists to prevent. Only record one when the person has actually asked.

Who can reply to a direct message

Unlike comments, direct messages carry no role restriction - anyone on your team who can open the inbox can also reply and record an opt-out.

Supported platforms

The inbox works with the platforms you can connect today:

Platform	Comments (read + reply)	Mentions	Direct Messages
Facebook	Yes	-	Yes
Instagram	Yes	Yes	Yes
YouTube	Yes	-	-
LinkedIn	Yes	Yes	-

Mentions are available for Instagram and LinkedIn. Direct Messages are available for Facebook and Instagram, which are the only platforms whose messaging HIVE can reach. Every ”-” is deliberate, not an omission.

TikTok

TikTok comments and mentions aren’t supported: TikTok’s integration doesn’t expose them, so TikTok comments stay in the TikTok app.

Using the inbox

1. Pick a feed. The inbox opens on Comments; switch to Mentions with the Feed control in the sidebar.

2. Choose Inbox or Archived. The Inbox holds what still needs attention; Archived holds what you’ve cleared.

3. Filter by platform. Narrow to a single platform, or see all.

The counts beside each platform show how many items need attention. Items are sorted newest first.

How items are marked

You don’t mark items read by hand - HIVE works out what needs attention for you:

• An item sits in your Inbox until it’s handled, then moves to Archived.
• If someone else replies to a comment after it was archived, whether a reply archived it or you did, it comes back to the Inbox with a needs-response highlight, so a continuing conversation doesn’t get lost. A reply that would archive the comment under your Inbox settings doesn’t bring it back.
• In a comment thread, each message is attributed, so you can see who said what. A reply from one of your connected accounts names the account it went out as: Replied by {teammate} as {account} when a teammate sent it from HIVE, or Replied on {platform} as {account} when it was written on the platform itself. If HIVE can’t tell which of your accounts wrote it, the line reads Replied by {teammate} or Replied via {platform}, without the account. Anyone else’s reply shows under their own name. Once an account is disconnected, a reply it wrote on the platform shows like anyone else’s, while a reply a teammate sent from HIVE keeps its Replied by line.

Replying

Replying happens on Comments (Mentions are read-only - open the platform for those).

1. Open a comment and choose Reply.

2. Pick which connected account sends the reply, under Replying as. It defaults to the account that owns the post.

3. Type your reply and send. On success you’ll see “Reply sent”; if it doesn’t go through, “Reply failed” shows the reason.

A reply posts as the account you chose. If you don’t have an account connected for that platform, HIVE blocks the reply with “No {platform} account connected. Connect one to reply.” If the account you chose has just been disconnected, by a teammate for example, the reply isn’t sent and Reply failed says “The account you chose to reply as is not connected to your workspace any more. Choose another account and try again.” What you wrote stays in the box, so pick another account and send it again.

Sending a reply archives the comment under your company’s Inbox settings - by default, a reply from any of your connected accounts on that platform does. It’s been handled, so it moves out of the Inbox. A reply that doesn’t archive the comment still goes out and shows in the thread, but the comment stays in the Inbox. If the conversation continues, it’ll come back (see above).

Inbox settings

Every reply goes out and shows in the thread. Inbox settings decides which replies also archive the comment. That matters when your company has more than one connected account on the same platform, for example two YouTube channels or several Facebook Pages. Open it with the Inbox settings button at the top of the inbox, beside Refresh, while Comments is selected.

Under Archive a comment when it gets a reply from there are two choices:

• Any of your connected accounts - the default. A reply from any of your connected accounts on that platform archives the comment, whether a teammate sent it from HIVE or it was written on the platform itself. A reply written on the platform counts only while its account is still connected; one sent from HIVE still counts after its account is disconnected.
• Only the account that received the comment - only a reply from the account the comment was left on archives it. A reply from one of your other accounts still shows in the thread, named as that account, but the comment stays in the Inbox, or comes back to it, with a needs-response highlight. This suits accounts that belong to separate brands or clients.

One choice applies to the whole company: everyone’s inbox, the Unified Inbox card on External, the Comments awaiting reply count on HIVE Pulse and each post’s conversation, for the comments already in the inbox as well as new ones. It covers comments only, not Mentions or Direct Messages.

Everyone on your team can open Inbox settings to see the current choice. Only admins can change it, by picking the other option and choosing Save changes; anyone else sees “This is your company’s inbox setting. An admin can change it.” Every change is recorded in the Audit log.

Open a post and its conversation

From the Comments feed you can open the post a comment was left on and handle the whole conversation in one place.

• Open the post. Select a comment to open the post it was left on, with its conversation beside it. Some comments have no post to open. When HIVE has no record of the post the row shows Not in HIVE, and View still opens the comment on the platform. This is common on LinkedIn.
• See the conversation. A published post opens with its comments beside it. The heading counts the comments awaiting reply, HIVE’s tally of the threads that still need an answer, which is deliberately not the platform’s total, so a post can show a different number here than on the platform, and both are correct.
• Handled holds the threads that are archived, the same ones the inbox lists under Archived: those a reply archived under your Inbox settings, including a reply written on the platform itself, and those someone archived by hand. It’s collapsed by default. Open it to read them or reply again.

Replying from the post

• Each top-level thread has one Reply. If your reply archives the thread under your Inbox settings, the thread moves to Handled on the same screen, which opens so you can see it. Otherwise it stays among the comments awaiting reply.
• A reply always attaches to the top comment. Every platform supports a single level of replies, so there is no reply-to-a-reply. On YouTube and Instagram HIVE adds an @mention to the person you’re answering; on Facebook and LinkedIn it shows a Replying to note instead. HIVE doesn’t @mention your own connected accounts when you answer one of their replies, but on Instagram, answering a top-level comment that another of your accounts wrote still mentions that account.
• Some posts show a note instead of comments. TikTok publishes a comment count but not the comments, so HIVE points you to the post in TikTok to read them. A post you haven’t published yet has no conversation at all.

Archiving and retention

• Comments from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are read live from the platform and cover roughly the last 30 days. Older comments drop out of the live view, but they’re never deleted - they stay on the platform, and HIVE doesn’t keep a copy of comments you haven’t acted on.
• LinkedIn comments are the exception: HIVE checks for new ones about once an hour and keeps them, showing the 50 most recent comment threads on each Page, so a new one usually appears within about an hour.
• Mentions work differently: HIVE stores each one it finds, so mentions stay in the inbox until you archive them - there’s no 30-day cut-off.
• Archive clears an item from the Inbox into the Archived view. It isn’t deletion - Restore moves it back. An archived comment stays there until someone else replies to it after you archived it; it then comes back to the Inbox with a needs-response highlight, and archiving it again hides it until the next such reply. A reply that would archive the comment under your Inbox settings doesn’t bring it back. A new comment on the same post always arrives as a new item. An archived mention stays archived until you restore it.
• Replying archives the comment for you automatically, under your company’s Inbox settings.

It's a shared inbox

The inbox is shared across your team. When someone archives an item, or sends a reply that archives it, it’s cleared for everyone - so two people don’t answer the same comment.