What Is Pabau Engage?

Pabau Engage is your clinic's unified communications inbox. It brings every conversation you have with clients and leads — text messages, WhatsApp, email, fax, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, web chat, and phone calls — into a single screen, connected directly to your Pabau client records. This article explains what Engage does, how it is organised, and where to go next to set it up.

One Inbox for Every Channel

Instead of checking a phone, an email account, and several social apps, your team works from one conversation list. Engage supports the following channels: SMS, WhatsApp, Email, Fax, Calls (with Voicemail), Facebook, Instagram, and Chatbot (web chat handled by an AI assistant). Each conversation shows the full message history in one place, and your team can reply on a different channel than the one the message arrived on — for example, replying to a web-chat enquiry by SMS.

Only the channels your clinic has actually set up appear in the navigation rail, so the screen stays uncluttered. As soon as you connect a new channel, it appears automatically.

How You Open Engage

Engage has no separate login. You open it from inside Pabau, and your Pabau session carries over automatically. If you ever see a "You're not signed in" or "Your session expired" message, simply reopen Engage from Pabau to start a new session.

A Quick Look Around

The inbox is arranged into four areas:

• Navigation rail (left): filters such as All conversations, Unread, Starred, Mine, and Unassigned, plus your Labels, your active Channels, and the Archived and Trash folders. The New message button starts a new conversation.
• Conversation list (middle): with Chats and Calls tabs, plus search, sort, and filter tools.
• Conversation pane: the full message history with a reply composer at the bottom.
• Client panel (right): the linked client's next appointment, contact details, balance, and allergies, with shortcuts into Pabau.

From the conversation header your team can star, archive, assign, label, and mark conversations read or unread. We suggest reading our Getting Started with the Engage Inbox article for a full tour of each area.

The Channel Catalog is where you connect and manage channels. Open it from the Channels button (or the Settings cog) in the navigation rail. Each channel appears as a card: a green Live ribbon means it is connected and working, while unconnected channels show a button such as Connect, Set up WhatsApp, or Buy a number. Email works out of the box — it is two-way from day one, with no setup required.

We suggest reading our The Channel Catalog: Your Communications Hub article for a full guide to every card and setting.

Engage is built on top of Pabau, so conversations are tied to real client records. When a known client messages you, their details appear in the client panel. When someone new gets in touch, you can link the conversation to an existing client or create a new lead or client without leaving the inbox, and communications are logged back to the client card in Pabau.

If your clinic uses a Pabau AI Chat Assistant, it can answer enquiries and book appointments on its own — and every one of its conversations appears in the Engage inbox. A bar above the composer shows when the assistant is active, and your team can click Takeover conversation to pause it and reply personally, then hand back with Resume AI.

Engage can also route incoming conversations to the right team member automatically. We suggest reading our Conversation Routing: Auto-Route Incoming Messages in Engage article to learn more.

Engage billing has two parts. Phone and fax numbers you buy through Engage carry a monthly fee, billed to your Pabau payment method — the exact price is always shown before you confirm a purchase. Day-to-day usage (calls, faxes, and text messages) is charged in Pabau credits. We suggest reading our How Engage Billing Works: Subscriptions and Credits article for the full picture.

We suggest reading our Getting Started with the Engage Inbox article for a hands-on tour, and our The Channel Catalog: Your Communications Hub article for connecting your first channel.

For more guides, refer to related articles below, select additional guides, or use the search bar at the top of the page. These guides will help you get the most out of your Pabau account.

Additionally, to help you fully utilize and understand your Pabau account, we recommend exploring additional guides and resources offered at the Pabau Academy.