In two lines: the AI Community Manager is the position that replies in the Inbox — and you can have more than one, each with its own territory. In Suggest drafts mode it writes the reply and your team sends it; in Auto-reply mode it answers on its own, only in the sources you enable.
Where do I configure it?
- Go to Social Media > Inbox and open the Settings tab.
- Open the AI Team section. The table starts empty: use Add position to hire a Community Manager —you can create several— or the Analyst, which classifies sentiment and spam and is one per account.
- Click the row to open its configuration, organized in tabs: General (status, name and agent), Behavior (working mode, escalations and instructions), Knowledge, Territory, Schedule and Test. Each position keeps its own switch to turn it on or pause it.
- If you create more than one Community Manager, Territory is what tells them apart: the sources and types each one covers, plus specific accounts and posts. When two of them cover the same thing, the table order breaks the tie — drag the rows to set the priority.
You need the Inbox running first: at least one connected network and the tray activated with Turn on inbox. Until then there's nothing for it to reply to.
Who replies: choosing the agent
In the Agent section you pick which agent from your AI team holds the seat. The selector only offers agents that reply to your audience on social, so you don't put a lead-facing salesperson in front of your comments. If you don't pick one, it runs on the Default Social agent and shows the DEFAULT badge; the Edit agent link opens that agent's file in a new tab, without losing the configuration you're editing.
At the bottom of the configuration, the Inherits from {agent} block shows the knowledge it's taking from the agent that holds the seat. Whatever you write in Instructions belongs to this seat and takes precedence if the two contradict each other. The whole model is explained in Agents and seats: who's who on your AI team.
The two working modes
- Suggest drafts — the AI writes a suggested reply; your team reviews it and sends it. Nothing goes out without a person clicking send. It's the mode to start with.
- Auto-reply — the AI replies on its own. Two controls define how far it goes: Where it can reply (a matrix where you enable network by network and type by type: comments, messages, mentions) and the escalations in Behavior, led by Escalate complaints to a human — which only works while the Analyst position is active (see the warning below).
Auto-reply publishes without review, and a comment reply is public. Before turning it on: run a few weeks in Suggest drafts to see how it writes, and leave Escalate complaints to a human on — note: this safety net only works while the Analyst position is active; without it messages aren't classified and the Community Manager replies anyway, complaints included. Create it from AI Team > Add position > Analyst before switching to Auto-reply. With the Analyst on, when a complaint or negative sentiment is detected the AI doesn't reply: it marks that commenter's conversation as Needs attention and alerts the team. Enable only the sources you're sure about. Keep in mind that a busy post is many conversations, one per commenter: the AI decides comment thread by comment thread, so on the same post it can reply to some people and escalate others. If something goes off, pausing the position with its switch stops it from taking new conversations right away.
The Schedule tab decides when it works. With Working hours off, the position works around the clock. When you turn it on, you set the time zone and the slots, and choose what happens Out of hours: Do nothing (messages wait for a human), Draft only (it prepares the reply for you to review, without sending it) or Reply anyway. Draft only is the sweet spot for going to sleep with the inbox covered but nothing published without a human reading it first.
How do I use it day to day?
- The list has two views, with the Conversations | Posts switch at the top. In Conversations each row is one person: a commenter's thread on a post (their comment plus the replies below it) or a direct message conversation. That thread — not the whole post — is the unit the AI drafts for and replies to.
- Open a conversation in the Inbox and, in the reply box, press AI draft. Pick a Tone if you want it warmer, briefer or more formal.
- The proposal appears as AI Community Manager suggestion: read it, use Use suggestion to drop it into the box, edit whatever you want and send it.
- To moderate a piece of content as a whole, switch to Posts: each row shows how many comments are Unanswered, and opening it lists that post's commenter threads. Reply opens the same box — AI draft included — without leaving the post, Open in Conversations takes you to the full thread, and Mark all as resolved closes the pending ones on that post in one go.
- If it escalated a conversation, you'll find it under Needs attention; you can also get an in-app notification by turning on AI escalation in the Inbox's notification settings.
- If a conversation is already being handled by a position, the reply box appears covered with Conversation handled by {name} — click to take control. That's on purpose: it prevents two replies going out to the same person. Click it, confirm Take control, and the conversation becomes yours — the AI stops replying in that thread and an internal note records the handover.
- You can also hand a conversation over the other way round: in Assign, under AI positions, pick the Community Manager you want to take it.
Reply with the content in front of you: on a comment or a mention, the context card above the thread shows the post it belongs to, and View post opens it inside MB Suite with its preview and its metrics — the same button sits in the header of the post panel in the Posts view. No need to jump to the network. The full published-post view is in Published tab: see how your posts are performing.
Everything these positions do consumes AI credits —the Community Managers when they write, the Analyst on every message it classifies— and it shows up with the Social Inbox origin in AI Agents > Usage, attributed to each position. Handy for telling apart what your inbox spends from what the rest of the team does, and for narrowing a territory if the cost surprises you. See See your AI usage and control your credits.
To make its writing sound like your brand, define the tone once in Brand Voice and load in the agent what it should always know about you.
Still have questions?
Ask MIA, the MB Suite AI assistant: open it with the MB AI button (⌘J) in the top bar. MIA knows the section you're in, so you can ask it about what you see on screen — and it can also answer how-to questions about using MB Suite.