Loading conversation history

Use this to load a person's earlier message history. To read messages, use /inbox/poll with personUrl.

Inbox monitoring captures every new message, but only from the moment it is enabled. When you need what was said before that – for example, before following up with a lead you wrote to months ago – load that person's history once. It involves 2 key steps:

1. Loading. Execute the st.syncConversation action for the person. Linked API reads the conversation back to its first message and stores it.
2. Reading. Poll /inbox/poll with personUrl. The loaded history comes back together with the messages the inbox captured, each message once.

Loading

Depending on the number of people whose history you need, execute a workflow with one or multiple st.syncConversation actions. Here's an example:

Workflow:

[
  {
    "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
    "personUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person1"
  },
  {
    "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
    "personUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person2",
    "days": 14
  }
]

const workflow = await linkedapi.customWorkflow.execute([
  {
    actionType: "st.syncConversation",
    personUrl: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person1"
  },
  {
    actionType: "st.syncConversation",
    personUrl: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person2",
    days: 14
  }
]);

const { data, errors } = await linkedapi.customWorkflow.result(workflow.workflowId);

workflow = linkedapi.custom_workflow.execute(
    [
        {
            "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
            "personUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person1",
        },
        {
            "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
            "personUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person2",
            "days": 14,
        },
    ]
)

result = linkedapi.custom_workflow.result(workflow.workflow_id)

linkedin workflow run <<'EOF'
[
  {
    "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
    "personUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person1"
  },
  {
    "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
    "personUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/person2",
    "days": 14
  }
]
EOF

[
  {
    "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
    "success": true,
    "data": {
      "syncUntil": "2023-01-31T00:00:00Z"
    }
  },
  {
    "actionType": "st.syncConversation",
    "success": true,
    "data": {
      "syncUntil": "2023-01-15T00:00:00Z"
    }
  }
]

💡 days is the syncing period, not the depth of history. It sets how many days new messages keep being added; the action always reads the whole conversation, however old it is.

days is 1 to 90, 30 by default, and syncUntil in the completion tells you when the period ends. With inbox monitoring enabled, new messages from this person keep arriving through the inbox after that moment as well.

When the reading reaches the first message of a thread, that thread is reported with historyComplete: true in /inbox/poll with personUrl. A very long conversation may not be read to its start within the action's time limit: the messages read are kept, and the thread stays historyComplete: false.

Loading history does not enable inbox monitoring and does not produce inbox webhook events.

💡 For loading history in Sales Navigator, use nv.syncConversation action. It finds the person's Sales Navigator threads and reads each of them.

Sync once

Load a person's history once – not before every read. New messages reach you through the inbox, so there is no need to run the action again to check for them.

If you do run st.syncConversation again within 24 hours of a completed reading of the same person, it responds quickly: Linked API rereads only the messages since that reading, or responds immediately and finishes the check during the next periodic syncs. In the second case, a message the periodic sync missed can appear in polling later – usually within minutes – rather than by the time the action completes.

Running the action again never shortens the period: syncUntil stays at the later of the current end and the new one.