Getting Started With Engage
Engage displays message content both from your social network pages or accounts and your Listen topics, and lets you perform actions on those messages. For example, you can see the number of likes and comments for a Facebook post, or assign a message to another person on your account so they can take action on it, to mention just a few. Messages will come in from the resources you have added as social properties in Workflow & Automation or listen topics within Listen.
Important Note: This documentation describes the Engage User Interface in its new form. For equivalent documentation describing the Engage User Interface in its classic form, refer to Getting Started with Engage - Classic.
In this article:
About the Engage Interface
· About Message Tile Information
· Sorting Message Tiles
· Using Filters
About Social Network Specifics
· Options Menu Icon
· Facebook Pages of which you are an Admin
· Twitter Streams
· LinkedIn Pages
· Instagram Accounts
· Weibo Pages
Click a link above to get directly to that section, or scroll down and start reading.
About the Engage Interface
The first time you navigate to Engage, you'll see your message Inbox, which works a lot like an email inbox. The messages coming in from all your channels will appear as message tiles in a single column on the left side of the screen. The messages will be displayed in order of newest to oldest. Since the message stream can customized to your liking, when you next navigate to Engage, there might be multiple columns sorted in a different order. The view that you see subsequently will depend on how you configured the message stream.
About Message Tile Information
Looking at your message stream, you'll see basic information about your messages in tiles at a glance.
Unread messages appear with a blue dot indicator to the left of the message timestamp. A message is considered unread when it is new, or if content has been appended to the message since you last read it. For example, if a user added a comment to a Facebook post.
Read messages appear without a blue dot indicator to the left of the message timestamp. Read messages display this way to let you know visually which messages have already been looked at by a member of your team. This way, you can easily make sure work isn't being duplicated.
In each inbox message tile, you'll also see:
- Channel Type. This appears at the top right side of the message tile, as an icon
- Author Name. The name of the author.
- Channel Name. The name of the channel.
- Message Timestamp. The time at which the message was received.
- Message Preview. A short preview of the message.
- Media Thumbnail. A thumbnail preview of an image or video, when they are included in the message.
- Likes and Comments. Like and comment counts for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram; retweet count for Twitter.
- Metrics Icon. This appears at the bottom left side of a tile, and is colored blue when there has been activity, and gray when there hasn't been any activity. Clicking on the Metric Icon displays the metrics for the message.
NOTE: Your owned messages will remain in your inbox indefinitely. However, if you don't take action on your non-owned messages, like messages coming in from Listen, they will be deleted from your inbox after a week. This is to help make your inbox more manageable.
Sorting Message Tiles
You can view your messages tiles in each column of your Inbox from newest to oldest, or oldest to newest.
To sort the order of your an Engage column:
- Navigate to Engage, then your Inbox message stream.
- At the top right corner of the column you want to sort, select the drop-down menu.
- Select a sorting option.
The column is resorted.
Using Filters
You can filter your inbox so you only see certain messages you want by selecting the Options Menu at the top right side of the column, then select Column Settings.
Searching Your Messages
You can access search by clicking the Options Menu at the top of every column. The search box at the top of the message column lets you search all of the messages in the column.
You can search for a full or partial term, but only a term that has five characters or more will return partial matches. Anything less will be searched as an exact term.
Note: For searches performed in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, only a single character is required to return matches.
To search for messages in a column:
- Click the Options Menu at the top right side of the column.
- Select Column Search.
The search dialog appears at the top of the column.
- Enter your search criteria into the Search for Something text box.
Note: You can also use search operands. For additional information about search operands, see About Search Operands.
- Click the magnifying glass or press Enter.
Messages matching your search terms will appear in the column, with the term highlighted.
- Below the Search for Something text box, further refine your search by clicking All, Username, or Message options.
- (Optional) To clear the search, click the X in the Search for Something text box.
About Search Operands
Here are some search operands you can use in the Search for Something text box to find the messages that you want.
| Operand | Description |
|---|---|
| - | Including a - before a search term will exclude it from your search. |
| * | Using a * with a search term makes it a wildcard search. Here’s an example: Car* would return messages with “cars” and “carrots”. *at* would return “Athens” and “fat”. |
| "" | Including your search in double quotes finds that exact term only. For example: “kit” would return all mentions of “kit” but not “kittens”. |
| OR | Using OR with multiple search terms will return messages with either of those terms. So, for example, if you search Cats OR dogs, you will get messages that contain cats or dogs. |
| AND | Using AND with multiple search terms will return messages containing both search terms only. So searching cats AND dogs will show you only messages that mention both cats and dogs. |
Viewing Messages
To view a message, click anywhere in the message tile to open it. You'll see a detailed view of the message, including any replies and comments. By default, comments are displayed in ranked order from Facebook, and replies to comments are displayed in chronological order. Administrators can customize the order in which Facebook comments are displayed. For more information about how to customize the order of the comments, see the Comment Sort Order (Engage Only) topic.
While in the detailed view of the message, use the arrows at the top right corner to navigate to the next or previous message in the thread.
NOTE: If you want a message to appear unread, select Mark as Unread from the message options drop-down menu.
About New Messages
When a new comment or reply is made to a message that has already been read, an indicator circle appears to alert you that there is a new message in a thread that you have already read. When you open that message, only the unread message appears with an indicator circle.
When new messages are received while you are in the platform, you are notified at the top of the message streams that there are new messages. Click the notification to view new messages in the list.
Assigning Messages
If you are concerned that multiple users might try to work on the same message at the same time, then message assignment will solve this problem.
On each message, you'll see the a lock icon. Before you start working on the message, click the lock icon. A message will be displayed in the Activity stream indicating that you have assigned the message to yourself, so no one else can work on it.
Tip: You don't have to open the message to assign it to yourself. You can also click the lock icon in the message stream. The lock icon appears if you have message locking enabled. If you don’t have message locking enabled, you’ll see an assignment icon.
If a message needs to be reassigned, an administrator can open the message, and reassign it in the Assigned to area.
Note: The message assignment feature has to be enabled on your account by an administrator. If you want to use this feature, and do not see it on your account, have your administrator check the appropriate box in the Accounts section of Workflow & Automation. For more information, see the Account Tab help article.
About Social Network Specifics
The different social networks that you see as channels in Engage have specific options and actions you can perform on them. To access the actions and options for a channel, click on the Options Menu icon at the top right side of the column.
Options Menu Icon
When you are viewing a specific Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram channels, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram as a channel types, you'll see the following options in the Options Menu:
- Bulk Actions
- Column Search
- Column Settings
- Delete Column
- Export Messages
- Resize Column
Facebook Pages of which you are an Admin
If you are the admin of a Facebook Page, all messages that appear on the Page's timeline will display in this stream, including status updates or admin posts, non-admin posts from outside users, and comments made on any of those posts. You can see the number of likes and comments for a post directly in the stream as well as when you click into the message. You also see private messages made from outside users to the page.
Twitter Channels
You see all tweets published to your account, as well as the number of retweets for your tweets, plus all the tweets published by others that are mentioning you, and also any direct messages sent to you. You can sort your Twitter messages by tweets, mentions, and direct messages.
If the tweet you are viewing is part of a conversation you have been having on Twitter, you can see the entire history of that conversation right inside the message. Just click the text labeled "Show History", and the conversation will expand to show all the tweets in the conversation.
LinkedIn Channels
You will see all updates published to your company or showcase page, as well the number of likes and comments on those updates. You can read and reply to comments on your updates, but you cannot delete comments due to an API limitation.
NOTE: Engage only collects likes and comments on the last 50 updates you have made to your company or showcase page.
Instagram Accounts
You will see all photos published to your account, as well as the number of likes and comments on those photos. You can read and reply to comments on your photos, and you can delete comments.
Weibo Pages
You will see all posts made to your account, as well as the number of likes and reposts related to the posts. You can read and reply to comments on your posts, delete comments, and repost with or without comments.