How to Assign Messages in Hootsuite

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Video Transcript | Intro

Businesses with social teams that manage high volumes of inbound messages often run the risk of important messages being lost or not replied to in a timely manner. Message Assignments make it easy to assign ownership and collaborate with your team and share the workload of your organization’s social media management.

Manual message assignments are like flagging an email. They allow you to manage your own daily tasks, or provide you with the confidence in knowing a message has been assigned to another team or team member for response - eliminating any risk of duplicate responses. For example, when a Social Engagement Coordinator receives a message that would be best responded to by the Help Desk Team, they can assign the message to the Help Desk Team and add a short note with additional details about the interaction. Assigned messages are then collected within the Assignments Manager.

Assignments Manager

For Team Leads, the Assignments Manager is the ideal location to view and manage assigned messages and check in on your team’s progress to ensure messages are responded to in a timely manner. Social Engagement Specialists can use the Assignments Manager as a central hub, where they can view messages assigned to them, alongside the history and context of each assignment, and reply to messages seamlessly.

Before beginning to assign messages, ensure you are a part of your organization’s team, and that the relevant social media networks have been added. To manually assign a message to a colleague or to yourself, first click the drop down arrow and select Assign To. Next, select the name of the person or team you wish to assign the message to, and add an optional note to provide additional context for the assignee.

Assigned messages are labelled in steam and can be acted on there – but the most convenient place to access them is in the Assignments Manager. The Assignments Manager is a workflow tool to help your team collaborate on inbound social messages. It consists of 4 sections; the Preset Filter Menu, the Section Header, the Assignments List, and the Assignments Detail View.

Filtering and Viewing Assignments

The Preset Filter Menu allows you to quickly filter all assigned messages using preset filters such as “assigned to me” as well as custom filters you’ve saved. Filters can be refined by Assignment Action, Team or Team Member, Social Network, and Message Type.

The Section Header allows you to refine which assigned messages you view by adjusting the filtering options. If you create a filter you’d like to access regularly, you can click to ‘save a new filter’, or click ‘save’ if you’re making adjustments to a pre-existing filter.

The Assignment List enables you to quickly review assigned messages and check on each message’s status to determine which require action. The list can be sorted by oldest to newest or vice versa. Use the drop down menu at the top of the list to further refine your filter  by team or team member. For example, a Team Lead can quickly check on the progress of all their team members’ assignments by setting the top filter for their entire team, and using the sub filter to select specific team members.

The Assignment Detail View provides you with the details of your selected assigned message, including its current status, details of the parent post which provide context for the assigned message, notes left by your team members, and workflow history. Here, you can easily respond to the message publicly or via Direct Message using any of your connected social profiles. The Message Assignment Banner at the top of the detail view indicates the message’s current status, and allows you to reassign the message to another team member if necessary. 

Once you’ve replied to a message, your response will automatically appear in the Detail View, and the state of the message will update to “Replied” in list view as well as the assignment banner. If you have been assigned to a message that requires no further action, it can be marked as resolved, and a note with additional information may be added if necessary.