Social media must be social at its core. It is built on back-and-forth engagement between individual users and the accounts they follow. Sprinklr enables units to manage this activity efficiently through message inboxes that flow inbound account activity into engagement dashboards for easy review. Sprinklr users can monitor activity on inbound dashboards, engage with messages and move messages to resolution dashboards that serve as an archive. Users can also utilize audience management tools built into Sprinklr.
Learn more about these features in the sections below.
Universal Inboxes
Audience members engage with social media channels through direct messages, comments, replies, posts and tagging an account. Sprinklr captures this engagement activity with connected accounts and routes it to the appropriate users on engagement dashboards. This is all powered through a system of queues, rules and filters.
Each unit has a universal inbox queue into which their inbound content flows. Read more below to understand how inbound content from audiences reaches a unit dashboard.
All messages that enter Sprinklr through a connected account are routed to one of several inboxes based on the account group the account belongs to. Units’ account messages flow into a universal inbox for the specific unit (in the case of a Tier 1 unit) or the parent unit (in the case of a sub-unit, such as an academic department). Columns of messages are then filtered to show specific accounts and message types, depending on unit needs.
Only individuals with permissioned access to specific accounts can see messages from those accounts. Even if a message somehow ended up in the wrong inbox (which doesn’t happen), other users without access to that account would not be able to see the message. The system is secure.
University Communications and Marketing has implemented a rule across all accounts connected to Sprinklr to restrict the use of profanity on Facebook pages and X accounts. Any posts, comments or replies on a Facebook page or replies to an X post that contain a word listed on the master profanity list should automatically be hidden. For Facebook this means the author of the word, as well as their friends, will be able to see it, but it will not appear on the page for others to see. For X, the reply will be viewable if a user clicks to expand hidden replies.
Messages that are hidden will be removed from the unit’s universal inbox and placed in a separate “Hidden” queue column on the resolution or inbound dashboard. Messages containing vulgarities that are not eligible for automatic hiding (e.g., Instagram comments) will also be removed from the inbox and will be placed in a “Profanity for Review” queue column.
This has been implemented across all campus accounts connected to the system to protect the institutional and unit brands. If a user comes across a message that they believe should have been hidden and it wasn’t, please report this to University Communications and Marketing at Comms.WebSupport@msu.edu. Please include a screenshot and note the account/page and the date and time of the post so staff can investigate. Users can then manually hide the comment/post using the macro designed for this purpose. To have this auto-hide protection turned off for unit accounts, please contact University Communications and Marketing to discuss the unit’s use case.
In 2021, Facebook rolled out a cross-app communication feature that allows users to chat with customers and other contacts across both Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messages.
If a brand has the cross-app communication feature turned on, those messages may not appear in Sprinklr. If a user notices Facebook or Instagram messages showing up natively, but not in Sprinklr, the unit may have cross-app messaging turned on. Turn this feature off.
How can a user disable the cross-app communications feature?
If the user has already updated Messenger to the latest version of the app, this feature can be turned off by going to Instagram settings > privacy > messages, which opens the Message Controls section. Then take the following steps in the Facebook mobile app:
- Go to “Message Controls.”
- Scroll down to “Other People.”
- Click “People on Facebook.”
- Check the button for “Don’t Receive Requests.”
Engagement Workflows
Sprinklr allows units to manage multiple accounts and all the incoming messages that come with them. Depending on the size of the audience, how engaged followers are, the number of accounts the unit has, the size and structure of the unit’s team, and the type of university business the unit is responsible for, users will likely need a workflow to manage the inbound messages the unit receives. This is important because it can help ensure that all messages that require a response or further action are handled and that nothing falls through the cracks.
The following sections provide some information on how to establish the unit’s workflow, as well as a few examples of different formats. Users will need to determine which format is best for the unit or make up a unit-specific workflow if there is something else that suits the unit needs.
Note: The initial engagement workflow for a unit is created by University Communications and Marketing, in consultation with the unit, during the onboarding process. This is typically a “Customer-Service Oriented” workflow, as described in the “Example Workflows” section, below.
To create a workflow, University Communications and Marketing recommends the following sequence:
- Map out the workflow outside of Sprinklr. The unit will want to determine how messages will move through the unit’s process of reading, taking action and closing, if the unit has such a process in place.
- Create any queues that will be necessary to hold messages in the workflow.
- Create any macros that will move messages from one queue to another.
- Create dashboards. Make sure that all queues are visible in some place within the combination of unit dashboards.
Quick tip: Adding a number to the start of the name of a dashboard will control the order of appearance in sidebar menus and will serve as a gentle reminder of the order of the workflow. For example, Inbound could be named “1. Inbound” to force it to appear first.
Channel-Specific
If a user prefers to look at all messages solely on a channel-by-channel basis (and never as “inbound” conversation as a whole), they can do this by creating a dashboard for each channel/account and columns within the dashboard for message type.
This is the simplest workflow to create but may not be the most efficient method to use, as it takes additional clicks to navigate through the channels rather than viewing all inbound messages on one screen.
Customer-Service Oriented
A user may choose to have a workflow in which messages are processed, moving from an inbox to an assignment queue for action before moving to a “done” queue or archived. This workflow may work well for units with a customer-service focus or for those who prefer to have a clear record of what items have been viewed. This is particularly useful if the unit has multiple Sprinklr users managing accounts.
This is the default workflow when a unit joins MSU’s Sprinklr system.
Sample dashboards, columns, queues and macros for this type of workflow include:
- Inbound Dashboard — Includes “Assigned to Me” queue, plus Universal Inbox (all messages for unit’s accounts) and channel-specific columns (which may be further separated by message type, e.g., Facebook DMs in one column and Facebook comments in a separate column.)
- Resolution Dashboard — Includes queues for “No Response Required,” “Closed - Responded To,” “Escalated,” “In Progress” and “Responded To.” Messages are moved between the various queues using macros.
- Outbound Dashboard — Includes columns for scheduled posts, sent posts, draft posts and posts that failed to publish. Columns can be broken down by channel.
Example: All-in-One
Units may find that the total volume of messages, and the way that a user interacts with these messages, makes having a workflow involving moving messages around rather prohibitive. In this case, the unit may choose to set up dashboards using the Inbound and Outbound dashboards (outlined above) as a guide but omit the macro workflow and the resolution dashboard.
This approach is not recommended for units with multiple Sprinklr users managing the same social media accounts.
Quick tip: If the unit has multiple individuals managing accounts within Sprinklr, establishing a system for the staff to know where monitoring/message processing left off will be key. If units do not use a workflow to clearly note which messages have been reviewed, it can be challenging to avoid repeating work. Users can avoid this by designating responsibility by column or by day and refer to message time stamps to determine how far back to check content.
Use case: All-in-One
- A unit uses an all-in-one workflow and assigns an individual primary responsibility for monitoring inbound messages.
- When this person is on vacation, their backup only needs to check messages as far back as the start of the determined vacation period.
Use case: Customer Service-Oriented
- A unit has two (or more) Sprinklr users managing social content in the system.
- User A checks the inbound engagement dashboard in the morning, engages with messages as appropriate and moves them to the resolution dashboard.
- User B checks the inbound engagement dashboard later the same day and sees there are additional messages that have entered the system. They follow the same process to review, engage and move the messages to the resolution dashboard.
- Any message that hasn’t been moved to the resolution dashboard at a given time is fair game for processing by a unit Sprinklr user.
Engagement Dashboards
When units are onboarded to Sprinklr at Michigan State University, they are typically provided with a customer-service oriented workflow (see Engagement Workflows, above, for more information). This workflow typically consists of three engagement dashboards, although there may be additional dashboards required depending on how many account groups the unit maintains.
- Inbound Dashboard — This dashboard contains incoming messages to unit account(s). All messages flow into the appropriate universal inbox for the unit. The Inbound dashboard then contains a set of columns, with each column providing a filtered view of that universal inbox based on channel, account and message type.
- Resolution Dashboard — This dashboard contains the resolution queues for the unit. Once a message in the Inbound dashboard has been handled (i.e., “resolved”), it is marked as such and moved to the Resolution dashboard using a macro.
- Outbound Dashboard — This dashboard shows all outgoing messages for the unit. One set of columns contains all messages across all combined unit accounts, sorted by message status (i.e., draft, scheduled, sent, failed to post). The remaining columns show messages sorted by channel, account and message type.
By default, Sprinklr provides users with four standard dashboards that are populated based on the artificial intelligence and algorithms built into the system. These dashboards include:
- Smart Alerts Dashboard — This dashboard shows notifications for volume, engagement and sentiment alerts as determined by Sprinklr’s system.
- Smart Reporting Alerts Dashboard — This dashboard shows notifications for unexpected change in follower count, impressions/views and Facebook negative feedback.
- Smart Triage Dashboard — This dashboard groups account messages into what Sprinklr has determined are engageable, nonengageable, leads, complaints, inquiries and compliments.
- Standard Outbound Dashboard — This dashboard shows draft, scheduled, approval pending, approved, sent and rejected messages from unit account(s).
If a user account does not have any dashboards within the Engagement section of Sprinklr, it is still able to utilize the standard template dashboards.
Users can also create and share dashboards with others. These appear under “My Dashboards” on the left-side drop-down dashboard menu.
Starring a dashboard marks it as a favorite and makes the dashboard appear in the left-side drop-down dashboard menu under “Favorite Dashboards.”
Dashboards shared to the user, including any dashboard built during the onboarding process, appear under “Shared Dashboards.”
Any tags on dashboards appear next in the list.
Users can add additional dashboards by clicking the three-dot icon in the upper right corner of an open dashboard and then selecting “Clone Dashboard” to create a duplicate dashboard to use as a template or selecting “Add Dashboard” to build a new dashboard from scratch. This same menu is used to edit, share, lock (to prevent changes) and delete the dashboard.
Engaging with Inbound Content
Users can search columns to filter messages. This may be useful when looking for a particular message. When dealing with large quantities of messages, the search function can filter messages to a smaller batch of related messages for group processing.
To open the search menu, hover over the column header until icons appear and click the magnifying glass icon. (Note: Search is not available on all column types.)
The following search types are available:
- Include Keywords — These words appear in the message. To search for a phrase, include the words inside quotation marks. Due to system limitations, all keywords must be at least three letters long and cannot contain numeric characters.
- Exclude Keywords — Check the box to add an option to block keywords from search results. The same phrase restrictions and character limitations outlined above apply.
- Sender — Search by the username of the account that sent the message.
- Date Range — Limit results to a specific time frame, down to the minute.
Quick tip: If a column’s search results are not performing as desired, check to be sure that each word (including words within phrases) in the keyword search is at least three characters and does not include a number.
Within the specific message in an engagement column, multiple options for engaging are available. The options vary based on channel and message type. Example actions include reply, comment, direct message, like, update sentiment tag and apply a macro. (See “Select and Move Messages,” below, for more information on macros).
To process inbound messages, review the messages in the various columns on the Inbound dashboard. Engage as appropriate. Not all messages will require engagement. Once all necessary engagements have been completed on a message, it can be moved.
Select One or More Messages
When a message is selected within a column, the background around the message will change color and the number of messages selected will appear in a menu bar at the bottom of the screen.
Users can select multiple consecutive messages in a column by clicking the first message, holding down the Shift button and clicking the last message. Users can select multiple messages that are not consecutive by holding down the Control button (Command on Mac) while clicking individual messages until all messages to be selected have been highlighted. All selected messages will have the background color change, and the number of messages currently selected will appear at the top of the column.
Selecting multiple messages is typically used when applying macro actions to a set of messages to increase efficiency as part of a unit’s workflow.
Move Messages Using Macros
After necessary engagements have been completed, move the message to the appropriate Resolution dashboard column using the corresponding macro. The macro will mark the message as completed/archived, remove it from the unit’s universal inbox queue (and the Inbound dashboard) and add it to the unit’s related resolution queue. It will now appear in the corresponding column on the unit’s Resolution dashboard.
To move one message:
- Click to select the message.
- Click the macro icon (it resembles a magic wand) on the toolbar that appears in the message or on the pop-up menu bar at the bottom of the screen.
- Select the appropriate macro. Users can begin typing a word from the macro name to bring it up via search.
To move multiple messages:
- Select only messages that should receive the same macro treatment.
- Confirm the number of selected messages on the pop-up menu bar at the bottom of the screen appears accurate.
- Click the macro icon on the pop-up menu bar at the bottom of the screen.
- Select the appropriate macro. This applies the same macro to all selected messages.
Quick tip: If a user makes a mistake and applies the wrong macro to a message, that message can be found in the corresponding column on the Resolution dashboard. Use search on that column if necessary. Select the message and apply the correct macro to move the message to the correct column.
Quick tip: University Communications and Marketing has found that the more messages selected, the slower a bulk operation can take to complete. Consider doing bulk operations in smaller batches if they cause problems.
Adding New Channel Workflows
Units may add new channels to their content strategy after onboarding, or Sprinklr may add support for new channels (recently including TikTok or Threads). When using a new channel, updates to the unit workflow must be made to ensure all messages are viewable on dashboards.
Channel-Specific Features
View a selection of key features available to MSU Sprinklr users, including scheduled publishing, reporting, link in bio and web galleries.
Additional Channels
Sprinklr supports many additional channels beyond those listed above. For more information on using Sprinklr with Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitch and other platforms, see the Sprinklr Knowledge Portal.
Audience Profile Features
Take Audience Engagement Further
Audience Management
Search for audience members, view profile data and interaction history, and manage custom audiences.
Audience Insights
Generate studies for LinkedIn and X to gather insights into audience demographics and interests.
Related Content
Social Media Best Practices
The University Communications and Marketing website offers additional insights on planning content and strategy, as well as best practices for specific channels.
MSU Community Guidelines
The university has created Community Guidelines that serve as audience member guidelines for permissible activity on university accounts. These are linked to from university account profiles and serve as a guideline for when comments on social media channels can and will be moderated.
Documentation updated: Nov. 1, 2024