Views, folders and pins

A view selects conversations. A folder groups shortcuts to views. A pin keeps a frequently used view at the top of your sidebar. Putting a view in a folder or pinning it does not change its filters or who can access it.

Open Settings -> Help Desk -> Views and folders, or click Manage at the bottom of the Help Desk sidebar. The Views tab manages saved views. The Folders tab manages shared folders, personal folders and built-in folders.

Shared and personal choices

Shared folders are curated for the organization by people with settings permission. New shared folders appear automatically in everyone's sidebar, including empty folders. Each person can hide or show a shared folder for themselves and reorder it personally. Hiding a folder does not delete it, change its contents, affect anyone else's sidebar, or remove your pins.

All folders appear together in the Folders table. The Type column distinguishes shared, personal and built-in folders. Use the In my sidebar switches to hide or restore shared and built-in folders. Hidden folders remain in this table. Renaming a shared folder or changing its views preserves your visibility choice. Personal folders show Always in that column and can be deleted in their editor.

The settings table lists shared folders first, then personal folders, then built-in folders. Custom folders are alphabetical within each type. This table order is separate from your personal Help Desk sidebar order, which you change by dragging folders there.

Shared folders are independent of teams: create one for a brand, workflow or support queue without creating a team.

Personal folders belong to you and can contain any views you can access. They also stay visible while they exist. Delete an unwanted personal folder rather than hiding it. Deleting a shared or personal folder keeps its views and everyone's pins.

A view can appear in several folders and remain pinned above them. Team views keep their access restrictions wherever they appear. Personal views cannot be added to shared folders.

Built-in folders

The sidebar has three built-in folders. Their contents are populated automatically and stay up to date:

• Shared views contains every organization or team view you can access. New shared views appear automatically when you have access to them.
• Personal views contains every view you own, including personal views you create later.
• Agents contains shortcuts to teammates' inboxes. Show all teammates, select people individually, or include the members of selected teams. Selected teams include their current and future members, so the folder follows team membership changes.

Built-in folders cannot be deleted. Use their In my sidebar switches in Views and folders -> Folders to hide or show them for yourself. Click Agents or its Edit action to update the people and teams included. These changes keep organization and team configuration, other people's layouts, view access and pins unchanged.

What opens first

The first pinned view opens when you enter Help Desk without a view already selected. Drag pins to choose a different landing view.

All and Your Inbox are organization-wide system views. Their names, icons, filters and sharing are fixed, and they cannot be deleted. Open their names in the Views tab to inspect their definitions. Pinning, unpinning and pin order still belong to each person. Create a custom view when you want a different definition.

Before you customize your pins:

• Agents start with Your Inbox as their only pin. It shows their own assigned, open conversations.
• Non-agents and Octocom admins start with All as their only pin. It shows conversations across statuses, including open and closed tickets, without filtering by assignee or bot ownership. As with ordinary views, spam and external threads are excluded unless their filters are enabled.

Human, Unassigned, Bot, and Spam remain available as views without being automatically pinned. Existing explicit personal pin choices are retained.

Once you change your pins, the ordered selection is personal. An admin changing shared folders does not change it. You can unpin everything; Help Desk still opens your role's default view, without restoring the pin you removed. A direct link to a view continues to open that view.

Create or edit a folder

1. At the bottom of the Help Desk sidebar, click Manage, then open Folders.
2. Open Create folder and choose Shared folder to organize views for everyone, or Personal folder for your own collection. The shared option requires settings permission.
3. Give the folder a name and select existing views. Shared folders accept organization and team views; personal folders accept any views you can access.
4. Save the folder. It appears in the Help Desk sidebar.

Click a shared or personal folder's name, or its Edit action, to rename it or change its views. Without shared-folder editing permission, use View to inspect a shared folder. Editing a shared folder updates it for everyone; editing a personal folder only updates your own folder. Creating, renaming, editing or deleting shared folders requires settings permission. Visibility switches only change your sidebar and do not require shared-folder editing permission.

To remove a shared or personal folder, open its editor and use the delete action. Removing a view from a folder only removes that shortcut. To change the view's filters or sharing, open the Views tab instead.

Change your own layout

Use the Help Desk sidebar directly:

• Drag folder headings to change their order for you.
• Use a view's Pin or Unpin action to choose your shortcuts.
• Drag pinned views into the order you prefer. The first pin is your landing view.

Folder ordering and pins are saved for your sidebar in this organization. They do not change anyone else's layout. Views within folders are alphabetical.

To show or hide a shared or built-in folder, change your Agents selection, or edit a personal folder, open Manage -> Folders. Hidden shared folders stay listed there so you can restore them. Personal folders remain visible while they exist; delete an unwanted personal folder.

Change layouts through Copilot or MCP

You can ask Copilot to organize the sidebar, for example:

• "Create a shared Returns folder containing our Awaiting first reply and Returns views."
• "Pin Your Inbox first and VIP second for me."
• "Hide the Agents folder in my sidebar and create a personal Daily work folder."
• "Hide the shared Store operations folder for me, keeping it for everyone else."
• "Show the shared Returns folder again for user USER_ID."
• "For user USER_ID, keep only Your Inbox pinned and put their folders in this order."

The layout tools are:

Every call includes organizationId. Personal layout tools accept an optional userId; omit it for your own layout. Supplying a teammate's user ID changes their sidebar. The dashboard only edits your own personal layout. Writable MCP callers can currently organize another member's layout within the organization; finer role restrictions for that operation are not implemented. Readonly MCP access cannot make changes. Writing shared folder definitions requires settings permission or Octocom admin access; changing personal folder visibility uses the personal layout tools.

Always read first, preserve the returned preferences or folders you want to keep, and send the returned revision when updating. A stale revision fails instead of overwriting a newer edit. Personal preferences.pinnedViewIds is the complete ordered pin list. An empty array intentionally leaves no pins.

Visibility applies to the target user's shared folders and built-in Shared views, Personal views and Agents folders. It never changes organization or team visibility or configuration. Personal custom folders remain visible until deleted.

To hide a shared folder, read the target user's layout, preserve the returned preferences, set preferences.visibility["shared:FOLDER_UUID"] to false, and send the complete preferences and returned revision to update_sidebar_layout for that same user. Replace FOLDER_UUID with the shared folder's ID. Set the entry to true to show it again. Preserve the other visibility entries, folders, pins and preferences. This changes only the target user's sidebar; the shared folder definition stays intact.

Shared folder IDs and view IDs are UUIDs; removing a folder from the collection removes the folder, not its views. Layout tools never grant access to a view.

For integrations using an organization API key, equivalent REST operations are GET/PUT /rest/v1/view-folders and GET/PUT /rest/v1/sidebar-layouts/:userId. GET returns a data object; PUT accepts the complete folder collection or personal preferences plus its revision. Organization API keys can manage layouts within their organization.

Common questions

How do I add a folder for the team? Open Manage -> Folders -> Create folder -> Shared folder. Choosing Personal folder only adds a folder for you.

Why is a shared folder missing some views for me? A folder never changes permissions. You only see the organization and team views you can access. Personal views cannot be added to shared folders.

Can I hide a shared folder? Yes. In Manage -> Folders, turn off its In my sidebar switch. The folder stays in that table so you can turn it back on later. Your pins and everyone else's sidebar stay unchanged.

Where did my personal view go? Open the Views tab and select Personal. If you hid the Personal views folder, turn it back on in the Folders table, or add the view to a personal folder or your pins.

Why does a view appear twice? Pins are shortcuts above folders. Pinning keeps the view available in its folders too.

Can I change what a view shows by moving it? No. Edit a custom view's filters in Views and folders -> Views. All and Your Inbox have fixed filters; create a custom view for a different definition. See Views for filters, sharing and useful queue patterns.