Your sales and support teams will often find themselves repeating actions you do from the Inbox, like assigning conversations/tickets after triage, tagging a certain way, or sending a response and snoozing. Macros let you optimize these actions into a single click, and still give you the flexibility to tweak them for a personal experience.
How to create a macro
From the Inbox
Use ⌘/Ctrl K or the action icon in the composer and search for Create new macro.
Search Manage macros here for a shortcut to the macros Settings page.
Add macro title
First, give your macro a title. This is the number one way your team will search for, share and use macros, so make it something clear and concise:
The macro title is not visible to customers. It's currently not possible to add a 'subject line' to a macro (i.e. for use in email conversations/tickets) but you can submit this as a feature request if you'd find it helpful!
Add macro content
Then enter the content to include when you use this macro. This could be used when replying to a customer, or included in an internal note for a teammate.
Content can include articles, emoji, GIFs, images, or attachments:
Including content is entirely optional. Macros can apply actions without a reply or note.
Macros populate user and company attributes only in conversations with a single participant. In group conversations, these attributes do not populate. This behavior is by design.
Add macro actions
Now it’s time to choose the actions your macro should apply to the conversation, click + Add actions. Macro actions allow you to take automatic follow-ups such as assigning or re-assigning conversations and tickets.
Note: This step is also optional, macros can just be content.
Actions that can be added to a macro are:
Assign conversation/ticket to team inbox
Assign conversation/ticket to teammate
Add tag to conversation — Apply one or more tags to the first conversation part.
Snooze conversation/ticket — After performing any other actions (can’t be used with the close action).
Close conversation/ticket — After performing any other actions (can’t be used with the snooze action).
Re-open conversation — Reliably reopens closed or snoozed conversations. If the conversation is already open, this action is safely skipped.
Change conversation priority
Set ticket custom state — Transition a linked ticket to any custom state directly from a macro. Select the target state when building the macro, and it's applied automatically when the macro runs.
Data connector — using API to fetch data or perform actions in external systems via API
In this example, we send a response, tag the conversation, mark it as priority and assign it to the sales team:
For more example macros, and some best practice tips check out this article.
Now select if this macro can be used for starting conversations, replying, or adding notes.
It's not possible to create a macro which replies to a customer AND adds an internal note for teammates. You'd need to create two separate macros: one with the customer-facing reply; and one with the internal note.
Choose availability
Finally, choose if the macro should be available for everyone in your workspace, or for certain teams, or only for yourself.
Important: Making macros available to specific teams is only available on the Expert plan for Advanced tier customers.
Note:
If you select 'specific teams', team members can use the macro in any conversation- even those that are not assigned to that specific team.
We recommend limiting the number of macros available for each team in your workspace so it’s easier to find and use them.
Even if limited to specific teams, anyone with permission to edit macros will still be able to see and edit this macro in your workspace settings.
Then save the macro and you’re done!
Keep your macro private
You can create macros for your own personal use. These won’t be visible to anyone else in your workspace settings or the inbox.
When composing your macro, just select Myself only under Available for.
If the 'Can use personal macros' permission is disabled, you cannot create or set personal macros to 'myself.' You will not see or manage previously created personal macros, though they may still be usable unless deleted.
For Admins: Only the teammate who created a personal macro can delete it. If you need to remove personal macros, request teammates to delete their existing personal macros prior to revoking these permissions.
From Settings
Creating a macro from the settings page follows the same steps as above, but here you can also search, filter and edit your existing macros.
Go to Settings > Inbox > Macros, and click + New macro.
Or, to edit an existing macro, just select it from the list on the left, and you can start editing directly.
Search and filter your macros
Go to Settings > Inbox > Macros. By default you’ll see all your workspace’s macros in the list on the left. This can be filtered by the different teams.
Or, you can search macros based on their title.
The search will not find content in the body of your macros.
You can even combine search and a filter. This example shows all macros from the Support Engineering team, that contain the word “Bug”:
Searches are not case sensitive, but they do use an exact string match, so if you’re using multiple words they must be found in the same order in the macro. 👌
Organize macros into folders
Teammates can create folders to group macros and keep the Settings page organized. Go to Settings > Inbox > Macros and click New folder. Give your folder a name, then save it.
Macros can only be added to a folder when the folder is first created. Once a folder exists, it's not possible to move macros into it or between folders.
Note: A macro can only belong to one folder at a time.
Filter and sort the folder overview
From the folder overview, you can filter by folder name to quickly locate a specific folder, and sort the list to change the order folders are displayed in.
Edit a folder and add macros from its contents view
Click into any folder to open its contents view. From here you can edit the folder name or remove macros without leaving the contents view.
Note: It's not currently possible to move macros between folders after creation. If you'd like to see this improved, you can submit a feature request.
See how often a macro is used
From Settings > Inbox > Macros, you can see how many times a macro has been used in the last 30 days by clicking on an existing macro.
This makes it easy to see which macros are being used most often, and can offer insight into how your team are handling conversations/tickets.
Export macros usage
Easily audit your macros based on how often they're used and monitor if teammates are using them correctly with a CSV export.
Simply go to Settings > Inbox > Macros and click Export on the top right. A dropdown opens with two options:
Presets — Choose from Today, Yesterday, Past week, Month to date, Past 4 weeks, Past 12 weeks, Year to date, or Past 6 months. Selecting any preset immediately triggers the CSV export.
Custom — Opens a calendar date picker where you select a From and To date. After selecting the From date, dates beyond 6 months forward are automatically greyed out to prevent invalid ranges. Click Apply to trigger the export.
The dropdown closes after the export is triggered, and a CSV is emailed to you with your chosen date range.
Notes:
The following permissions are required to export macro data: Can manage shared macros, Can access reports, and Can export CSV.
The permission Can export Lead, User, Company Data is not required to export macros. Any previous requirement for this permission was due to a temporary bug that has since been fixed.
The CSV contains one row per macro, with the following fields:
Name - Title of the macro.
Visibility - Who can see this macro in the Inbox.
Created at - When the macro was first created.
Owner - Which teammate created the macro.
Updated at - When the macro was last updated.
Type - Where this macro is used (for starting conversations, replying or notes).
Date - Daily usage count for the macro on this date, for each day in the selected date range.
The CSV is emailed to the teammate who clicks the export button.
Generating the CSV can take several seconds (up to about 30 seconds for +10K macros).
Export macro content
You can export the full content of your workspace's macros — plain text, markdown, and HTML bodies — from Settings, and get the results as an emailed CSV.
Go to Settings > Inbox > Macros and click Export macro content. A dropdown opens with two scopes:
Shared macros: Everyone-visible and team-visible macros you can see in the Inbox.
Shared and personal macros: Every macro in the workspace, including other teammates' personal macros.
You'll receive an email with a download link when it's ready. Only one export can be in progress per teammate at a time.
What's in the CSV
One row per macro, with the following columns:
id — The macro's unique identifier.
name — Macro title.
body_plain_text — Macro body as plain text.
body_markdown — Macro body in markdown.
body_html — Macro body in HTML.
visibility — Everyone, specific teams, or personal.
created_at — When the macro was created.
updated_at — When the macro was last edited.
Notes:
Images and videos in a macro appear as [Image] and [Video] placeholders rather than links.
Every export is written to the teammate activity log with the chosen scope, so admins can see which scopes are being run and by whom.
The following permission is required to export macro content: Can manage shared macros
Can you pause a macro?
It's not possible to temporarily pause a macro. The only option is to deactivate it completely by deleting it — which means you'd need to recreate it when you want to use it again.
Tip: As a workaround, set the macro's availability to a specific team instead of deleting it. To "pause" it, create a placeholder team with no members and assign the macro to that team — it won't appear for anyone in the inbox, but it's preserved and easy to reassign later.
Troubleshooting Macro Issues
Error While Creating Macros
If you encounter errors when trying to create macros, ensure your 'Can use personal macros' permission is enabled. Contact an admin if the permission toggle is unavailable
Macro Loss After Role Change
If a teammate's role changes (e.g., from Full to Lite seats), their personal macros are permanently deleted. Restoring their original access will not reinstate these macros. Be proactive in managing permissions to prevent unintentional deletions. Additionally, if a teammate is removed from the workspace, their personal macros are permanently deleted and cannot be restored, even if their access is reinstated later. It is recommended to save important macros beforehand.
Steps:
In first tab go to https://app.intercom.com/ember/saved_replies.json?app_id=YOUR_APP_ID > Command+A to select all the JSON text > Command+C to Copy selected text.
In another tab to go https://www.jsonquerytool.com/ > Use Command+A again to select all the text in the Input section > Delete to clear the text > Command+V to paste in the JSON text from the previous step.
In the Query section, delete the example query > Paste in
$.saved_replies[*].blocks[0].textThe contents of each macro are automatically shown in the Output.
The query above doesn't include the name of each Macro so you could use the query $.saved_replies[*] instead which will include the name along with all the other attributes. This should make sifting through the data easier.
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