Conversation Fields

A Conversation field holds a running thread of messages on a process. Your team and the people you work with, such as customers who reach you through a public form, add messages to the same thread. Every message keeps who wrote it, when they wrote it, and any files attached to it.

For example, on a support ticket a customer writes “The invoice shows our old address” and attaches a photo of it. Your support agent replies underneath. The customer answers by replying to the email they were sent. The whole exchange stays on the ticket, in order.

Once a message is posted, nobody can edit or delete it, so the thread is a true record of what was said. If something has to come out, such as a password a customer pasted by mistake, someone who can edit the template can redact that message.

Add a Conversation field

Open the template: Administration > Processes > Template Diagrams > the card of the process you want to edit.
Click the Process field icon in the menu in the top right, then New Process Field.
Name the field, for example “Messages”, and choose Conversation as the field type.
Click the Save icon at the top of the panel.

Then show the field where people should read and write it: on the tasks your team works, and on the public form your customers use. See Controlling Process Fields and Starting Processes via Public Form.

Post a message

The field shows the thread oldest first, with the newest message at the bottom. Below the thread is a box to write in.

A message can be up to 10,000 characters. A countdown appears when fewer than 1,000 are left.
To attach files, click the paperclip (Attach files). The files belong to this message. To take one off before posting, click the delete icon on it.
Text appears exactly as it was typed. HTML and other formatting are shown as written, not applied.

How the message gets posted depends on where you are writing it:

Signed in, on a process that already exists - Click Post to add the message straight away. Saving the form or completing the task also posts whatever is in the box, so a reply isn’t lost if you forget to click Post.
Everywhere else, such as a public form, a public task, or the form that starts a new process - The message is posted when the form is submitted. On a public form that starts a process, what the person types becomes the first message.

Saving a form with an empty box adds nothing, so a conversation never fills up with blank messages.

See who wrote each message

Every message shows a label naming its author, and the date and time it was posted. A badge says how the message arrived:

No badge - Someone on your team wrote it while signed in.
via public form - Someone posted it through a public form or a public task link.
via email - Someone replied to an email the process sent (see Let customers reply).
automation - An automated action or an AI added it.

Messages from public forms and from email also have a shaded background, so your team can pick out customer messages at a glance.

The badge comes from how the message arrived, never from anything the author typed. A customer can’t make a message look as if it came from your team.

Unless you set your own labels, a message from your team shows the person’s full name, a message from an automated action shows the action’s name, a message from a public form or link shows “Guest”, and an email reply shows the address it came from.

Change the labels

Edit the field: click the Process field icon, then the 3 dot button to the right of the field, then Edit.
Open Conversation Author Labels.
Fill in either label, or both:
- Team Member Label - used for messages from your team and from automations.
- Customer Label - used for messages from public forms and links, and for email replies.
Click the Save icon at the top of the panel.

Both labels accept field tokens. Insert them with the Import Field Tokens icon next to each box. For example, if your public form asks for the customer’s name, set Customer Label to [[Field: Customer Name (Text)]], and the customer’s messages show “Dana Smith” instead of “Guest”. To show your company instead of each agent’s name, set Team Member Label to Acme Support.

A label is one line of plain text, up to 200 characters. If a label comes out empty, for example because the customer left their name blank, the default is used instead.

Each message keeps the label it was posted with. Changing a label later changes only the messages that come after.

Redact a message

Nobody can edit or delete a message once it is posted, including administrators. Redacting is the one exception: it removes a message’s text and files for everyone, and leaves a notice in its place. Redacting a message requires permission to edit the process template.

Open the process and find the message.
Click Redact under it.
You are asked “Remove this entry’s text and files for everyone? This cannot be undone.” Click Redact to confirm.

The message’s text is replaced with a notice such as [Redacted by Jordan Lee on 2026-10-07] [1 file removed], and its files are removed from it. The message keeps its place in the thread, its author and its time, so everyone can still see that something was posted there.

The redaction is recorded in the audit trail. The removed text isn’t kept anywhere, so it can’t be recovered.

Let customers reply

Customers can reply in two ways:

By email - They reply to an email the process sent them. The reply is posted in the conversation as a new message tagged via email, with the email’s attachments.
On a public form - They open a link to a public form that shows the Conversation field. When an automated action emails a public form link from a running process, that form updates the same process instead of starting a new one. The customer sees the whole conversation on their own process, and adds to it.

To email the customer each time your team replies:

Create an automated action with the Email action type and the trigger When a Field is Updated, on the Conversation field.
Add an Evaluate Formula condition so the email goes out only when your team posts: =EQUALS([[Field: Messages (Newest Entry Author Kind)]];person)
Send the email to the customer’s email address field, and include [[Field: Messages (Newest Entry)]] in the body.
Set Email ‘Reply To’ Options to The Current Process (a Conversation Field), so the customer can simply reply to the email.
To let them reply on a form as well, create a public form that shows the Conversation field and include its link token in the body. The token list shows it with the form’s name, such as Public Form: Support Reply (Link).

If the process has more than one Conversation field, such as “Customer Messages” and “Vendor Messages”, use the Email action’s Replies Go Into setting to pick the one replies are posted in. Left blank, replies go into the first Conversation field. Each email’s replies go where that email’s own setting said, so an email set to The Current Process (Messages) still has its replies saved as process messages. See Email Action Type.

An email reply usually carries the earlier emails quoted below it. Those are already in the conversation, so the message keeps only what the customer wrote above them. Whenever part of an email is left out like this, the whole email is attached to the message as an Email Body file, so nothing is lost.

Use messages in emails and automations

These field tokens are offered for a Conversation field named “Messages”:

Field: Messages (Newest Entry) - The text of the newest message. If the newest message has only files, their file names.
Field: Messages (Newest Entry Author) - The label on the newest message.
Field: Messages (Newest Entry Author Kind) - How the newest message arrived: person for your team, public_user for a public form or link, email for an email reply, or automation.
Field: Messages (Whole Conversation) - Every message, oldest first, as plain text. Each message starts with a line giving its time in UTC, its author, and how it arrived, and ends with the names of its files.
Field: Messages (Newest Entry ID)* - A number that changes with every new message.

Messages are inserted as plain text. Whatever someone types into a message can’t change how your email or document looks.

Every new message counts as an update to the field, so an action with the trigger When a Field is Updated runs once for each message. Use the author kind in an Evaluate Formula condition to decide who should hear about it:

Tell the assignee when a customer writes, on a form or by email: =ANYTRUE(=EQUALS([[Field: Messages (Newest Entry Author Kind)]];public_user);=EQUALS([[Field: Messages (Newest Entry Author Kind)]];email))
Email the customer when your team replies: =EQUALS([[Field: Messages (Newest Entry Author Kind)]];person)

See Automated Actions for triggers and conditions.

Post a message from an automation

An automated action can add a message too, such as “We got your message and will reply within a day.” Use the Field: Replace Value or Field: Append Value action on the Conversation field, with the message as the value. Either one posts the value as a new message, tagged automation and labeled by the Team Member Label (the action’s name by default). The messages already there stay as they are. Field: Remove Value leaves a Conversation field alone, because a posted message can’t be changed. See ProcessPlan Action Type.

If an action that runs When a Field is Updated on the Conversation field also posts into it, give it a condition, such as the author kind, so it doesn’t answer its own message.

Good to know

Lists and process tables show the newest message in the field’s column.
The AI reads the whole conversation when you ask it about a process in chat. For a very long conversation, it reads the most recent part and is told that earlier messages were left out.
Required - A required Conversation field needs a first message before the form can be saved or submitted. After that, people can save without adding another message.
Hide formulas - Hiding the field hides the whole conversation.
Read Only - On a Conversation field, Read Only closes the box once the first message is posted. Read only on public forms does the same for public forms and links only. Leave both off for a back-and-forth conversation.
Process names - The default process name leaves Conversation fields out, so a message never ends up in the name shown in lists and links.