Building an omnichannel inbox

I've been studying user-focused product development for a while now, specifically Product-Led Growth, and I'm finally turning an idea into reality: building an inbox platform, starting with WhatsApp only.

I've always been a curious person. I like understanding how things work, so I chose to start with WhatsApp because it's the most complex and challenging channel to integrate. I believe the challenge of building a real platform will give me a more complete view of the entire product development process, end to end.

The goal of the project is to end up with, essentially, an inbox for businesses to manage their WhatsApp conversations.

What I'm building

The initial idea is to cover the most basic WhatsApp features, the ones businesses rely on every day, in their simplest possible form. Templates, for example, are part of the MVP, but only basic Marketing and Utility templates, and without all the button options available in Meta's dashboard, just a few simpler ones. As for sending and receiving messages, some message types like contacts, location, and polls aren't part of the MVP, but can be added later.

What's included in the MVP:

• Inbox with all conversations, including status management and assigned agent

• Ability to start conversations with existing contacts using template messages

• Contact creation and management

• Template creation and management

• WhatsApp channel integration and management

• Notification system

Decisions along the way

During development, I had to make some important decisions. With templates, for instance, which are more complex in terms of rules and have many configuration options, I decided to keep them simple in the MVP, just enough to cover the basics, because without templates it wouldn't be possible to start new conversations, which would undermine the whole idea of having the minimum that businesses use day to day.

Another thing that took me a while to finish, not because it was difficult, but because I'm quite demanding when it comes to quality, was the conversation message interface. I wanted it to be functional and practical, while also feeling fluid, making it easy to understand the message hierarchy, each message's type, and intuitive for the user. I ended up building something quite similar to WhatsApp's own interface, and I'm really happy with the result.

Next steps

Right now I'm finishing up templates, and next I'll build the notification system. After that, the plan is to refine a few things in the interface, add some missing rules, and then release the first version of the MVP. That should take me a few more days before I consider this first phase done.

After launching the MVP, I plan to keep working on this project. The idea is to add other channels, expand the template functionality, and add more features over time.

I'm eager to see the project running in practice. Even though I've set up the infrastructure for production, things are always different once it's actually live, so I want to see how the platform holds up and what kind of problems come up.