Bulk operations on conversations

Written by Joseph Russo, Principal Architect, Networks and Tech, AskVault · Reviewed by Allison Chan

Last updated: October 18, 2026 · 3 min read

TL;DR

Bulk operations let you act on up to 200 conversations at once: resolve, add a tag, assign or unassign, snooze, set priority, set status, or mark reviewed. There's no bulk undo: actions apply immediately, so double-check your selection before confirming. Available on Growth and above.

What bulk operations exist

Actions you can apply to a multi-selected set of conversations, from the floating Bulk actions bar that appears once you check one or more conversation rows:

1. Resolve. Mark all selected as resolved.
2. Assign. Claim them yourself, hand them to a teammate, or send them back to "unclaimed".
3. Snooze / Unsnooze. Set the same snooze duration across all selected, or clear an existing snooze.
4. Set priority. Normal, High, or Urgent.
5. Set status. Move selected conversations to any status your workspace has configured as a valid target.
6. Mark reviewed. Clear or set the Skeptic Mode "needs review" flag across the selection.
7. Add tag. Attach a tag to every selected conversation.

Removing a tag from many conversations at once isn't available yet. The bulk actions bar has no remove-tag button, and there's no public API for it, so remove a tag one conversation at a time.

Up to 200 conversations per request. Selecting more than 200 and submitting returns an error. There's no automatic batching, so work through larger cleanups 200 at a time.

How to multi-select

Check the box on each conversation row you want to include. The Bulk actions bar appears at the bottom of the screen as soon as one or more rows are checked, showing the selected count and the available actions. Uncheck a row, or click the X on the bar, to clear the selection.

Bulk resolve

The most common bulk action. Use it after a campaign or product launch where many conversations share a resolution:

1. Filter to the conversations (e.g., tag = launch-2026-q2).
2. Check the box on each one.
3. Click "Resolve" in the Bulk actions bar.

Selected conversations are marked resolved immediately. Bulk actions don't fire per-conversation webhooks today. Rolling out (not yet switched on): conversation.resolved will fire once for each conversation a bulk Resolve (or bulk Set status → Resolved) actually resolves, so your CRM hears about every resolution.

Bulk tag application

Useful for retroactively categorizing:

1. Check the box on each conversation you want to tag.
2. Click "Tag" in the Bulk actions bar.
3. Pick an existing tag.

Tags are layered on top of existing tags. Pre-existing tags aren't removed. There's no bulk remove-tag action yet, so remove a tag one conversation at a time.

Bulk snooze

For conversations awaiting external action (waiting on engineering, customer asked for time to respond):

1. Check the box on each conversation.
2. Click "Snooze" in the Bulk actions bar.
3. Pick the wake time (1 hour, 1 day, or 7 days), or Unsnooze to clear an existing snooze.

Each conversation reopens at the wake time and shows up in the active inbox again.

Bulk assign

Useful for shift handoffs or rebalancing workload:

1. Check the box on each conversation (e.g., everything currently owned by the agent going off-shift).
2. Click "Assign" in the Bulk actions bar.
3. Pick yourself, a teammate, or "Unassign" to send them back to the unclaimed pool.

Assigning requires the live-chat entitlement, same as claiming a single conversation.

What your customer sees

Rolling out (not yet switched on): bulk actions will tell the customer the same things the single-conversation buttons do. Assigning a conversation to someone new shows the customer that agent joining the chat. Resolving, setting a live chat back to Active, or unassigning tells the customer the agent has left and hands the chat back to your AI assistant. A conversation where no agent was involved gets no message. Until this is switched on, bulk actions change the conversation in the inbox only.

Reverting a bulk action

There's no bulk undo. If you bulk-resolved, bulk-assigned, or bulk-tagged the wrong set of conversations, reselect them and run the opposite action (reopen via Set status, reassign, remove the tag one conversation at a time), or fix individual conversations one at a time from the conversation view. Double-check your filter and the selected count before confirming a bulk action, especially Resolve and Set status.

API for bulk operations

Bulk actions run from the Help Desk inbox only. There is no public API for them today: an API key can't resolve, assign, tag or snooze conversations in bulk. Each bulk action handles up to 200 conversations, and one conversation that fails (already resolved, tag not found) doesn't stop the rest of the selection from applying.

Audit logging

Every bulk action writes a single audit-log row covering the whole batch, not one row per conversation:

• Author (the user who ran it).
• Action type (e.g. conversation.bulk.resolve).
• Counts: how many succeeded, how many failed, and how many IDs were in the request.
• Action-specific detail (e.g. the tag applied, the new status, the assignee).
• Timestamp.

Retained 365 days, the same window for every plan, then purged. It doesn't store the individual conversation IDs or a before/after snapshot of each one.

Limits

• Max conversations per bulk action. 200 in one request. This is a hard cap, not an auto-batched chunk size; selecting more and submitting returns an error.
• Bulk delete. Not supported at all, via the UI or the API. Deleting a conversation outright is destructive and irreversible at scale, so there's no bulk (or single-conversation) delete endpoint.

Common pitfalls

Selected the wrong filter, bulk-resolved conversations you didn't mean to. There's no bulk undo. Reselect the affected conversations and bulk Set status back to your open/active status, or reopen them individually.

Bulk tag overwrites existing tags. It doesn't. Bulk tag is additive. There's no bulk remove-tag action yet, so remove a tag one conversation at a time.

Reassigned to wrong agent. There's no undo; reassign again with the correct target (or Unassign).

Expecting a webhook per conversation from a bulk resolve. Today bulk actions don't fire per-conversation webhooks. Once the rollout above is switched on, conversation.resolved fires once for each conversation the bulk action resolved, and never for one that was already resolved.

FAQ

Can I undo a bulk action?

No. Bulk actions apply immediately and there's no bulk-undo window. To revert one, reselect the affected conversations and run the opposite action, or fix conversations individually.

Can I bulk-delete conversations?

No, not via the UI or the API. Bulk delete is deliberately unsupported because it would be destructive and irreversible at scale.

What's the largest bulk operation supported?

200 per request. That's a hard cap, not a starting chunk size. Selecting more and submitting returns an error, so work through very large cleanups across multiple 200-conversation requests.

Are bulk operations transactional?

Per-item, not all-or-nothing. If one conversation in the batch can't take the action (already resolved, not found, tag doesn't exist), that item is skipped and reported in failed; the rest of the batch still applies.

Can I schedule bulk actions for later?

Not today. Bulk actions run immediately. Scheduled bulk operations on the roadmap.

Related guides

• Conversation lifecycle
• Tags on conversations
• Saved inbox views
• Snoozing conversations

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