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Use templates, quick replies, and internal notes

BayEngine doesn't have message templates, quick replies, or internal notes in Conversations yet. Every text and email you send from the Inbox is typed by hand, and there is no way to put a staff-only note into a message thread. This page says where prewritten text does exist today and where internal notes belong in the meantime.

Sending messages in the first place is covered in Send text and email messages.

No template or quick reply library​

The Inbox composer is plain free text. There is no saved-message library, no placeholder menu for things like the customer's name or the portal link, and no quick-reply buttons. A "your vehicle is ready" text is typed in full every time you send it. If your shop has standard wordings it likes, keep them somewhere you can copy from for now.

The practical shortcut is the AI assistant: ask it to draft or send a reply and it writes the message, with every send held for your approval before anything reaches the customer. See Getting support and reviewing updates.

Because there is no template library, there is also nothing to manage: no template permissions, no shared library between shops. Sending from a Conversation needs Communications create permission, the same as any other message; see Assign Shop Roles, shop access, and User Permissions.

Where prewritten text exists today​

A few places already write message text, but none of them is a reply template:

  • Sending an estimate or inspection prefills document-specific wording that you can edit for that Send. BayEngine adds the Portal Link automatically, and does not save the edited copy as a reusable template. Invoice wording remains fixed. See Send Estimates, Inspections, and Invoices.
  • The web chat widget has a shop-written greeting, shown when the chat bubble opens on your website. It's set under Configurations > Customer Experience > Website chat and is the one piece of canned customer-facing text you author yourself.
  • Automations fill placeholders such as {{customer_first_name}}, {{repair_order_number}}, and {{shop_name}} into the Tasks and staff notifications they create. Those render for staff, not customers; Automations don't send customer messages at all.

The template concept the product does have is the Canned Service, a reusable template for repair work rather than messages. See Create and use Canned Services.

Internal notes in Conversations​

A Conversation shows customer communication only: texts, emails, call summaries, voicemails, and web chat. There is no note-type message, so you can't leave a comment between two texts that the customer never sees, and there are no staff @mentions. The details panel on the right side of the Inbox reserves an Internal Notes section for exactly this; today it says notes aren't available yet.

Until then, put the note on the record it's about:

  • Notes about the visit go on the Repair Order's Services, whose internal notes never reach the customer. There is no document-level notes box on a Repair Order; see Add notes and maintain the Repair Order.
  • A standalone Estimate has its own internal notes field on the estimate screen.
  • Customer records and vehicles each carry an internal notes field of their own, edited from the customer page; see Create and manage personal and business customers.

One thing you don't need a note for: nothing in a Conversation is customer-visible except the messages themselves. Customers see the texts and emails you send them in their own phone or mail app; they have no view into the Inbox, so there is no risk of a customer reading your side of the screen through the portal. What the customer does see is covered in Use the Customer Portal for approvals, status, documents, and payment.