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Understanding the Home Screen

The Reach home screen gathers identity, channels, synced conversations, recent messages, and shortcuts into one compact view.

Written by Tarek Khalil

Install Reach: Get the browser extension from the Chrome Web Store.

What you see when you open Reach

When you open Reach on a CRM contact or conversation page, the side panel loads the contact’s information and organizes it into stacked sections from top to bottom:

  1. A Context Strip that confirms what Reach detected on the page.

  2. A contact card with the person’s name, role, company, email, and phone.

  3. Quick actions for starting a WhatsApp or SMS message.

  4. A Channels list showing every channel available for this contact.

  5. The Synced conversation panel if a CRM conversation is linked to Octopods.

  6. A Recent activity section with the latest messages.

  7. Grouped tools for templates, merging users, and other workflows.

The Context Strip

A thin strip at the top of the side panel tells you what Reach detected from your current CRM tab. It appears in one of two states:

  • Green strip — Reach successfully detected an Intercom record. The label reads Conversation #[ID], Contact #[ID], Company, Inbox, or CRM page depending on the page, followed by intercom.

  • Yellow strip reading “No contact detected” — Reach couldn’t match the current page to a contact in your workspace.

When a context is detected, a Refresh button appears on the right of the strip. Click it if you’ve changed what you’re looking at in the CRM and want Reach to re-read the page.

The contact card

Just below the Context Strip, the contact card summarizes who you’re about to message:

  • Name — The contact’s full name, displayed in bold. If the CRM has no name, the contact’s email is shown.

  • Role badge — Either Lead (orange) or Contact (blue), based on the record type.

  • Company and plan — Shown inline to the right of the name, separated by a middle dot.

  • Email, phone, and “since [month year]” — A secondary row with the contact’s email address, phone number (shown in monospace), and the date they became a customer if available.

  • Priority badge — If the contact has a priority set in the CRM, a small colored badge appears — red for high, amber for medium, green for low.

  • Matches button — If the detected page matches more than one contact in your workspace, a [N] matches button appears on the right. Click it to open a picker and choose the correct contact.

Quick action buttons

When the contact has at least one proactive WhatsApp or SMS channel available, Reach shows two buttons below the contact card:

  • Send WhatsApp — Opens the WhatsApp template browser for this contact.

  • Send SMS — Opens the SMS composer for this contact.

The buttons that appear depend on which channel types are available for the workspace. If only WhatsApp channels are configured, only the WhatsApp button appears, and likewise for SMS.

The Channels list

The CHANNELS section lists every channel associated with this contact. Each row shows:

  • The channel icon.

  • The channel name.

  • The phone number in monospace, if the channel has one.

  • A hover-reveal chevron to start composing on that channel. Hovering on a row slides in an arrow — click it to begin a new message.

Channels that are not set up for outbound messaging show a View only label on the right instead of the arrow. You can still see that the channel exists for this contact, but you cannot send from it in Reach.

If the contact has more than five channels, Reach shows the first five and adds a [N] more toggle at the bottom. Click it to expand the full list or Show less to collapse it again.

The Synced conversation panel

When the contact has an active conversation that is linked between your CRM and Octopods, Reach shows the Synced conversation panel with a via Octopods label in green. The panel includes:

  • Channel — The channel the conversation is running on.

  • Via — The specific channel name, if available.

  • External ID — The identifier for the conversation inside your CRM.

  • Display name — The conversation’s display title, if set.

  • Status — Typically Active with a green indicator.

  • Session window — For channels that use session windows (like WhatsApp), shows the remaining time before the window expires.

This panel confirms that messages sent in Reach will thread into the same CRM conversation, and it warns you when a session window is close to ending.

The Recent activity section

Below the channel list, the Recent section shows the two latest messages with this contact in a compact card view. Each card shows the sender, the time, the channel, and a preview of the message body. To the right of the Recent label, a View all link takes you to the full sent history for this contact, and a View all history link at the bottom of the list does the same.

The tools sections

The bottom of the home screen groups additional tools into four sections. Each item in a section shows an icon, a label, and a short subtitle describing what it does. The available actions are:

  • MESSAGE — Templates (browse and send approved WhatsApp templates). A counter on the right shows how many templates are available.

  • PEOPLE — Merge users (find and merge a lead into a contact).

Other items in these sections show a SOON badge to indicate features that are not yet available — they are dimmed and cannot be opened. The live items open their dedicated flows inside the side panel.

When Reach can’t show the home screen

If the current tab is not a recognized CRM page or the API call fails, Reach replaces the home layout with an alternative state:

  • Unsupported tab notice — Heading Unsupported tab and message Navigate to an Intercom tab to start messaging with Reach. Reach lists Intercom in the SUPPORTED PLATFORMS section. Navigate back to a CRM tab to continue.

  • Error panel — A connection or workspace issue prevented Reach from loading the contact. Use the retry action, or sign in again if prompted.

What’s next

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