The Communication Center is where your team manages every patient text conversation in Practice by Numbers. It brings your inbox, conversation history, internal notes, templates, and patient actions into one place, and its status indicators show at a glance which conversations still need your attention.
We'll walk through opening the Communication Center, navigating the layout, and understanding what each conversation status means.
Opening the Communication Center
From any page in Practice by Numbers, find the floating navigation bar at the bottom of the screen.
Select the SMS icon.
The Messages panel opens. If you have unread conversations, the count appears next to the panel title, for example, Unread 1 or Needs reply 1.
When the panel first opens, no conversation is selected. You'll see the message "No conversation selected. Please choose one to get started." This is intentional: it ensures you always choose the right patient before typing, so you never accidentally send a message to the wrong thread.
Getting around the layout
The Communication Center has a refreshed two-panel layout. Your conversation list is on the left, and the conversation you select opens on the right.
Left panel: your conversation list
The top of the left panel holds the tools for organizing your inbox:
Inboxes — choose which inbox (mailbox) you're viewing, or view all of them.
Filters — narrow the list by open/closed status, read status, reply status, or assigned team member.
Unread and Needs reply — one-click quick filters. Each shows a live count.
New Message — start a new conversation with a patient.
Settings (gear icon) — open the Communication Center settings, including Automation & Closure Rules.
Sort — show the newest or oldest conversations first.
Search — find a specific patient or phone number.
Select Conversation and Actions — select several conversations and update them at once.
Below the toolbar, Pinned conversations appear in their own section at the top, followed by the rest of your conversations. Each conversation in the list shows:
The patient's name (or phone number, if no patient is attached)
A preview of the latest message or internal note
The date or time of the latest activity
Status badges such as Needs reply and Unread
The team member the conversation is assigned to, and the inbox it belongs to
Right panel: the selected conversation
When you select a conversation, the right panel shows:
The conversation header — the patient's name and phone number, plus quick buttons to pin, close, mark as replied, assign, attach a patient, and open more options (the three-dot menu).
The message history — every SMS and internal note in the conversation, with dates, times, and delivery status.
The message composer — where you type an SMS or an internal note, use a template, generate a suggested reply, translate, add emojis or files, and open Quick Actions.
If your practice uses the AI Agent, you'll also see its status badge (for example, LIVE) at the top of the panel.
Understanding conversation statuses
The Communication Center tracks two things separately for each conversation: whether someone on your team has read it and whether your practice has replied.
Keeping these separate means a teammate can review a message without it disappearing from your follow-up list.
Status | What it means | How it changes |
Unread | A new patient message that no one on your team has reviewed yet. | Changes to Read once the message is reviewed. You can also mark a conversation as Read or Unread yourself. |
Read | Someone on your team has reviewed the message. | You can mark it Unread again if you want to come back to it. |
Needs reply | The patient is still waiting on a response from your practice. Reading a message does not clear this status. | Changes to Replied when you respond or mark the conversation as replied. |
Replied | Your practice has responded, and nothing else is pending. | You can switch it back to Needs reply from the three-dot menu if you need more follow-up. |
Open | The conversation is active and shows in your main inbox. | Changes to Closed when you close it or a closure rule closes it automatically. |
Closed | No further action is needed. The conversation leaves your Open view, but its full history is kept. | Find it any time with Filters > Conversation > Closed. |
As your team works through conversations, these indicators update automatically, and the Unread and Needs reply counts at the top of the panel update with them. That makes it easy to see what still needs attention at any moment.
"Have you finished with this patient?"
When your practice is waiting on a conversation, a prompt may appear above the composer asking, "Have you finished with this patient?" Use it to wrap up quickly:
Select Replied to mark the conversation as replied. You'll see a confirmation that it was successfully marked as Replied.
Select Close to close the conversation entirely.
Keeping Patient Communication Organized
In addition to message statuses, the Communication Center includes tools to help your team organize and manage conversations.
You can:
Search for conversations
Filter your inbox
Assign conversations to team members
Pin important conversations
Close completed conversations
Manage multiple conversations at once
Send SMS messages and Internal Notes
Use templates and messaging tools
Access Patient Overview and Quick Actions
These tools work together to help your team maintain a clear, actionable patient communication workflow.
What's Next?
For step-by-step instructions on organizing and working through your inbox, see Managing Your Communication Center Inbox.
For information about sending messages, using Internal Notes, templates, Quick Actions, and other messaging tools, see Messaging, Notes, Templates & Tools.
For information about automatically closing older conversations, see Automation & Closure Rules.