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TOOL HOW-TOOctober 24, 20266 min read

How to Use Agorapulse to Run a Team Social Inbox

JH

By Joris van Huët

Enterprise Interim CMO & Marketing Leader · 15+ years · 50+ orgs

Published

2026-10-24

The short answer: connect the profiles you answer for and give each person the right profile permission, write saved replies for the questions that come every week, spend your moderation rule on the most predictable item type, assign the rest by hand, put new teammates and any AI agent behind an inbox approval workflow so their replies wait for a second pair of eyes, and track response time in the reports.

Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.

A shared inbox fails in two ways. Two people answer the same comment, or nobody does because each assumes someone else will. Neither is a people problem; it is what happens when four colleagues watch one stream with no routing. Agorapulse's inbox is built to route. For plans and prices, see the Agorapulse glossary entry.

Before the first shift:

  • The plan that holds this setup. Assignments and reply approval start on Professional, $149 per user a month on monthly billing, and the pricing page lists saved replies and labels under Advanced at $199 (pricing page, checked on 24 October 2026).
  • A routing sheet. One line per topic: delivery questions to support, invoices to finance, press to you. The tool enforces the sheet; it cannot write it.
  • A baseline. Last month's response time from the networks' own insights or a spreadsheet, so the first Agorapulse report has something to beat.

Connect profiles and decide who can do what

Profile permissions are set per profile: Admin, Editor and Moderator can review and reply, Guest cannot, and Owners and Managers get Admin on every profile, per the Inbox guide. Connect a few days before you switch over. Agorapulse syncs 32 days of inbox history at connection, and new comments on posts older than that window never reach the inbox, so a long-running post with active comments still needs watching natively.

Write the replies you send every week

In the inbox, click the speech bubble, then Create saved replies, give the reply a name and type the text; %name% fills in the person's name, per the saved replies guide. Saved replies belong to a profile, so a brand with Instagram and Facebook needs them on both, which Organization settings, Inbox, Saved replies makes quicker. Five good ones beat thirty nobody remembers.

Spend the moderation rule well

Standard, Professional and Advanced each get one automated moderation rule, and Custom gets unlimited ones, per the moderation guide. With only one, give it to your most predictable item. Open Organization settings, Inbox, Automated Moderation, click Create automated rule, start from scratch or from a template, pick the profiles, set the condition, such as text that includes a keyword, and add up to six actions, such as label, assign or mark as reviewed. A rule that assigns every comment containing "delivery" to support takes one recurring decision off whoever is on triage.

Assign what the rule does not catch

Select an item, click the Assign icon, choose a teammate, add a note if it helps, and press Assign. The item appears in that person's Items to review with a yellow banner and an immediate notification, per the assignment guide. Replying, hiding or deleting marks an item as reviewed on its own. Replying in the network's own app does not, so items answered there need marking by hand or they clutter the queue.

Hold new voices for approval

Inbox approval workflows pause a reply, hide, delete or label from a chosen person until an approver clears it, per the approval workflow guide. Open Organization settings, Inbox, Approval workflows, click Create new workflow, name it, choose the profiles or custom inbox, the team member it covers, the actions that trigger it and the approver, then save. On Professional and Advanced you get one workflow with one team member and one approver; Tailored allows several of each, and AI agents as members. The approver works from the To approve filter and can Approve, Take over, or Request changes. The guide asks you to contact support if the feature does not appear on your plan.

Add an agent that drafts and waits

Agorapulse's MCP connector, in beta, connects Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot. In Claude, open Settings, Connectors, Add Connector, enter a name and the server URL https://api.openmcp.agorapulse.com/mcp, and choose who may use it, per the MCP guide. It needs a Claude Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise subscription, and the person connecting must own the Claude account.

Then give it the morning triage: list comments with negative sentiment on the brand's Instagram from the last 24 hours and draft a reply to each, using a saved reply where one fits. The guide states that replies sent through the connector follow an active inbox approval workflow and queue for approval instead of publishing. That queue is the human check. Each connection is personal to the teammate who made it, so the workflow has to cover that teammate, and the approver reads every agent reply before it goes out. The guide adds that Request changes is not offered for items submitted by AI agents, so expect to approve, or take over and edit.

Measure what changed

Community management reporting appears in the plan comparison on the pricing page, and the connector reads the same metrics, response times included. Compare a month against your baseline, and read one rule from the approval guide first: while a reply waits for approval, the team member's response time stops counting. The customer's wait does not stop, so measure the time items spend in To approve as well.

What the help centre warns about

  • Old posts fall outside the sync. Comments on posts beyond the 32-day window do not arrive.
  • Saved replies and approval. With Ignore saved replies switched on, an unedited saved reply skips the workflow, but editing it triggers the workflow again.
  • Workflow edits are not retroactive. Items already pending keep the rules they were submitted under.
  • Assignments give way. An item assigned before a workflow triggers drops its assignment and becomes an item to approve.

Per-user pricing means the vendor grows with your headcount, and a workflow limit of one person and one approver below Tailored points a growing team toward the custom plan. Decide whether you need more than one held voice before the upgrade conversation does it for you.

FAQ

What does Take over do?

It cancels the workflow for that item. Pending hides, deletes or reviews are dropped, while draft replies and labels stay so the approver can keep editing, per the approval workflow guide.

Can the agent publish replies without approval?

Without an active workflow covering its user, yes, it can reply. That is why the workflow comes before the connector here.

How many moderation rules do I get?

One on Standard, Professional and Advanced, unlimited on Custom. Agorapulse invites requests for more through support.

TAGS
AgorapulseSocial InboxCommunity ManagementReply ApprovalAutomated ModerationMCP Server

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I am Joris van Huët, an enterprise interim CMO. 15+ years, 50+ organizations, including ING, P&G, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, WeTransfer and Vinted. I take on innovation projects (venture building, design sprints), agentic marketing (setting up and running AI agents) and hands-on multi-channel work. See the track record.

I wrote and published this with AI assistance, and I answer for it. Claims about my own experience are limited to the track record above, and a statistic links to its source or is labelled as an example. I sell interim and fractional CMO work, which is why this site exists. How this site is written.

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