Read a Message

Written by Uday Kumar Updated September 17, 2026 05:09

Who this is for. AP Helpdesk Analysts, Specialists and Managers, and ProcureToPay Managers and Agents. The Mailbox opens for every AP role, on an agent running either function. See the Roles and Access.

Opening a message is the same gesture in both views, but the pane you get is not the same. By Threads gives you the correspondence and the controls for answering it. By Incoming Messages gives you one message with the agent’s work around it, and moves the rest of the conversation into a panel of its own.

This article covers both panes, the controls on each, translation, attachments, the message metadata, and the thread panel.

Open a message

Select a row. The message opens in the pane to the right of the list and the list stays where it is, so you can work down it without going back.

Opening a message marks it read, so the blue dot on the row disappears when you select it.

The reading pane in By Threads

The pane opens with the thread’s message count and subject at the top, and the message itself in a card below.

Figure 1. The reading pane in the By Threads view.

Table 1. Controls in the By Threads reading pane.

Control	What it does
1 message	How many messages are in this thread.
Arrows, top right	Move to the previous or next thread in the list.
Archive, top right	Moves the thread to Archived. It is not deleted and stays searchable.
Mark Read	Toggles the read state. Use it to put a message back on the unread list after you have looked at it but not dealt with it.
Reading language	Shows the language the message is being displayed in. See Read a message in another language, below.
Blue dot	The message is unread.
Timestamp	When the message arrived.
Reply and reply all	Opens the composer, addressed to the sender or to everyone.
Print	Prints the message.
Ellipsis	One item, View message headers.
REVIEW TASK	Appears where the agent raised a task, with the reason and an Assignee list.
Attachment	Each attachment, by name, as a link.
Reply and Forward	At the foot of the message. See Compose and Send a Message.

The reading pane in By Incoming Messages

This pane drops the reply controls and adds the agent’s work. The sender sits at the top with the reading-language control, the original and translated chips, two icon buttons and the message priority.

Figure 2. The reading pane in the By Incoming Messages view.

Table 2. Controls in the By Incoming Messages reading pane.

Control	What it does
Reading language	The same control as in the other view, showing the current language.
English (Original) and English (Translated)	A pair of chips that switch between the message as sent and the message translated. The second is grayed and reads Unavailable when there is no translation to show, which is the normal state for a message already in your reading language.
Message Meta	Opens the Message Metadata dialog.
Processing Timeline	Expands the timeline further down the message.
Priority chip	High, Medium or Low, as the agent judged it.

Below the header sit the Intelligent Summary, the message body, the attachments and the reasoning panel. Those are covered in Review the AI Decision.

There is no ellipsis in this view. The two icon buttons replace it.

Read a message in another language

Vendors do not all write in English, and the agent does not require them to. The reading-language control sets the language the message is displayed in.

Select the reading-language control in the message header. Its tooltip names the language it will translate into.
Type in Search language... or scroll the list, which runs alphabetically from Albanian.
Select a language. The message is redisplayed in it.

The reading language list with its search box

Figure 3. The reading language list.

Translation applies to reading only. It does not change what was sent, and it does not change what the agent worked from. In the By Incoming Messages view the two chips let you flip back to the original wording, which is worth doing before you rely on an exact phrase.

The Email Thread panel carries its own copy of the control, so each message in a conversation can be read in a different language.

Attachments

Attachments appear under the message body, with a count. In the By Threads view they are links. In By Incoming Messages each also carries the classification the agent gave it and a download control, and in the Email Thread panel each carries its file size.

Selecting an attachment opens it in a viewer over the page, so you can check a document without downloading it.

Figure 4. The attachment viewer toolbar.

The toolbar gives you, from left to right, the page number with arrows to move through a multi-page document, zoom out and in with the current percentage between them, a full-screen control, rotate, and download. Close the viewer to return to the message.

A classification of unsupported means the agent could not read the file as a document type it handles. The file is intact and you can still open it. What it does mean is that nothing was extracted from it, so any reply the agent wrote was written without knowing what was inside.

Message metadata

The metadata is the message as the agent received and resolved it, rather than as it is displayed. Open it with View message headers in the By Threads view, or the Message Meta button in By Incoming Messages. Both open a dialog titled Message Metadata.

Figure 5. The Message Metadata dialog.

Table 3. Fields in Message Metadata.

Field	What it holds
Message ID	The mail system’s own identifier. Quote it when you raise a support case about a single message.
Direction	Inbound or outbound.
Sender Type	How the sender was resolved. This is finer than the chip on the row: an Enrolled sender has been matched to a vendor record, an unenrolled one has not.
Processing State	Where the agent got to, matching the Processing State filter.
High Importance	Whether the sender flagged the message.
Detected Intents	What the agent believed the sender wanted, numbered, each with the reasoning behind it. More than one intent on a message is normal.
Attachments	A table of file name, file format and classification.
Record Match	A table of vendor ID, vendor name and match type, showing which vendor the message was tied to and how. Contact means the exact address matched, Domain means only the domain did.

Read Record Match first when a reply went to the wrong vendor. A match on Domain alone is the usual cause, because two contacts at the same vendor can resolve to the same record.

The email thread panel

In the By Incoming Messages view, the rest of the conversation sits in an Email Thread panel on the right.

Figure 6. The Email Thread panel.

It shows the message count and a sort control, Newest first, and then one card per message: sender, address, sender type, recipient, its own reading-language control, the subject, the body and the attachments with their sizes. A Reply button sits at the foot, and the chevron beside the heading collapses the panel to give the message more room.

This is where to look when a vendor says they already told you something. The panel puts the whole exchange in date order without leaving the message you are working on.