Lesson 01 · Setup

Set up your account and workspace.

Before you handle a single conversation, get the basics in place. This lesson covers your personal settings, then a tour of the organisation and workspace settings that power everything else.

Official respond.io walkthroughPlay the video

What you will learn

Set up your personal account: profile, password, two-factor and notifications
How organisation settings, users and roles work
What lives in workspace settings: channels, integrations, snippets and AI Assist

Watch time

~9 min

You reach everything below from the Settings module. respond.io splits settings into three levels: your personal settings, your company's organisation settings, and each team's workspace settings. Here is what each one does.

1 Personal

Your settings

Affects only you

Profile and language

Password and two-factor

Notifications

2 Organisation

Your company

Affects everyone

Users and roles

Billing and credits

Security

3 Workspace

Each team

Affects one team

Channels and inbox

Snippets and tags

AI Assist and prompts

The three levels of settings, from narrowest to widest scope. Most team members only need to touch level 1 on day one.

01Personal settings

These settings affect only you, not your teammates. In personal settings you can:

Update your name and display language. If you change the language, turn off any auto-translation in your browser so the platform shows the correct language.
Upload a profile picture and change your password.
Enable two-factor authentication for extra security.
Switch to dark mode.
Set notification preferences so you are alerted about new chats or mentions.

If you only do one thing

For most team members, the personal settings above are the part that matters on day one. Sort your profile, turn on two-factor, and set your notifications. The rest of this lesson is mainly for whoever administers the workspace, often handled together with your Zelix team.

02Organisation settings

These control how your whole company uses respond.io: the organisation name, users, and security. To add a new user, go to Admin Settings and click Add User. Enter their email, choose a role, and an invitation is sent automatically. The roles are:

Admin	Full access to all settings and billing.
Billing Admin	Manages subscriptions and payments.
User Admin	Manages users and assigns them to workspaces, with no billing access.
Member	Works inside the workspace only, with no admin rights.

Best practice

Keep at least two Organisation Admins, so there is no delay if one person is away. Under billing you can check invoices, top up credits, and manage your plan.

03Workspace settings

Workspace settings control how your team communicates, manages chats and works together. Start with General Info, where you can:

Name your workspace so teammates know which one they are in.
Set a user inactivity timeout to mark someone offline when idle, which helps route new chats to available teammates.
Choose your time zone so message times match your local time.
Enable weekly summary emails, useful for managers reviewing performance.

User roles and teams

Under User Roles you decide how teammates work:

Owner	Full control over the workspace.
Manager	Supervises agents, tracks performance, and manages settings.
Agent	Handles customer conversations.

You can also limit visibility, for example letting agents see only their assigned contacts. Use Teams to group users by department, such as Sales or Support, which makes routing and reporting easier.

Channels and integrations

In Channels, connect WhatsApp, TikTok, Messenger, Email or Web Chat so every customer chat lands in one Inbox. Under Integrations, connect tools like Salesforce, HubSpot or Google Sheets to sync customer data and cut manual work. You can also link your Meta Business Account to track ad performance or set up CAPI.

Other key settings

Growth Widgets: add chat buttons to your website to capture new leads.
Contact Fields: store customer details such as account IDs.
Lifecycle Stages: track where each customer is, for example from New Lead to Customer.
Closing Notes: summarise a conversation before closing so teammates keep context.
Snippets: reusable replies that save time and keep responses consistent.
Tags: labels you create to organise contacts or conversations, like VIP or refund request.

AI Assist and AI Prompts

With AI Assist, the AI helps you write accurate replies using your Knowledge Sources. Go to Manage Knowledge Sources to upload files or paste links. Turn on "Reply outside knowledge sources" if you want AI Assist to fall back on general AI when there is no match, or keep it off for answers only from your uploaded content. You can also let AI Assist use Snippets as mini knowledge sources, and set a Persona to match your brand tone.

AI Prompts let you adjust tone, summarise messages, or translate replies directly in the Inbox. Snippets, AI Assist and AI Prompts all live inside the Inbox itself.

AI Assist vs AI Agents

They are different features. AI Assist helps a human write replies. AI Agents handle live customer chats on their own, using the prompts and actions you set.

Calls and data

Enable Call Recording to review quality, or connect call channels like WhatsApp or VoIP under the Calls tab.
Upload Files for use in messages or workflows.
Import Contacts with a CSV file. Make sure the columns match your Contact Fields.
Export Data such as conversations or messages for analysis outside respond.io.

That is your first-time setup. For anything specific to your business, your Zelix team can configure it with you or do it for you.

Your progress is saved on this device.