Every other conversation in your Inbox starts because a customer reached out. Compose is the one exception: you reaching out first.
What it does
Compose opens a small modal where you pick (or type) a customer, write a subject, and click Create conversation. It creates a new email conversation and takes you straight to it so you can write the actual message.
Where to find it
The Compose button sits at the top of the Inbox sidebar, next to More views.
Setup (step by step)
Click Compose.
Choose Existing customer and search by name or email, or New email and type an email address (name is optional).
Type a Subject.
Click Create conversation. You land on the new conversation, where the normal composer handles the body, formatting, and any attachments.
How it works
Compose only creates email conversations. The Type dropdown in the modal shows Chat as a visible but disabled option, with a note explaining why: chat conversations always start when a customer opens your storefront's widget, so there's nothing to compose on that channel from the admin side.
Picking an existing customer reuses their real profile, so anything Arbyn or you already know about them (past orders, past conversations) is attached from the first message. Typing a brand-new email instead creates a fresh customer profile if one doesn't already exist for that address in your store, or reuses the matching one if it does. Either way, you never end up with two separate profiles for the same email.
The conversation is created already assigned to you. Arbyn does not draft or send anything on a Compose-started conversation on its own. The conversation begins in the same "a human is handling this" state a manual takeover puts it in, so you're free to write the first message exactly as you intend. If you'd like Arbyn to take it from there once you've sent your message, hand it back the same way you would any other human-handled conversation (see the right-hand panel article for Return to Agent).
A ticket number is assigned immediately, using the next number in your shop's sequence, the same as any inbound conversation would get.
Good to know
Only email conversations can be composed from the admin. Instagram and Facebook conversations, like chat, only begin when the customer messages you first.
Create conversation stays disabled until both fields are valid: a real-looking email address and a non-empty subject.
After Create, nothing is sent yet. The conversation exists and is visible in your Inbox, but the actual email only goes out once you write the body on the next screen and send it.
FAQ
Can I start a chat conversation with a customer from the admin? No. Chat conversations are always customer-initiated from your storefront's widget; Compose is email-only.
Will Arbyn auto-reply to a conversation I started with Compose? Not unless you hand it back. A Compose-started conversation begins as human-handled, the same state a manual takeover puts a conversation into, so nothing sends automatically until you explicitly return it to the agent.
What happens if I type an email address that already exists in my customer list? Arbyn matches it to the existing profile rather than creating a duplicate, and if you also typed a name and the existing profile didn't have one, that name gets saved to the profile.
Does composing a conversation use up one of my plan's monthly conversations? The same conversation-counting rules apply as any other conversation on your plan. See the Plans & Billing collection for how the cap and the first-50-free calibration allowance work.