When to use this
- You are about to delete an inbox (e.g., changing your WhatsApp number, migrating WABA, deactivating a channel) and want to know what happens to the conversations that were in it
- You need to preserve the conversation history before making changes to the channel
What happens
When you delete an inbox, Cloud Chat also deletes the conversations and the messages that belonged to it. The history is not left orphaned and it is not transferred to another inbox: it is removed along with the inbox.
Irreversible action. The conversations and messages from the deleted inbox cannot be recovered afterwards — not even by support. If that channel's history matters to you, do not delete the inbox before sorting out how to preserve the data.
The following also go away with the inbox: the members linked to it, the campaigns, the webhooks and the automations specific to that inbox.
If you need to preserve the history
Before deleting, extract the data you want to keep:
- "Construtor de Relatórios" (Report Builder) ("Relatórios" (Reports) → "Construtor de Relatórios"): build the view you need and export it as CSV/Excel.
- Data Extract API: for bulk extractions — see How to extract data in bulk via API (Data Extract API).
If the change involves a WhatsApp number/WABA and you want to keep the history inside Cloud Chat, talk to the Cloud Humans team before deleting the inbox — depending on the case, there are better paths than deletion.