> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getmateo.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Message Log

> Learn how to retrieve a log of messages sent and received within Hellomateo.

Lets assume you have a ERP system and need to sync back a message log for every contact across channels from Hellomateo.

In essence, there are two ways to sync back messages to the external system:

1. **Push Sync**: Hellomateo pushes messages to the external system via a webhook.
2. **Pull Sync**: The external system pulls messages from Hellomateo via the API.

We recommend using the Push Sync, as it is more efficient and real-time. However, if you are not able to set up a webhook on your external system, you can use the Pull Sync.

To set up a Push Sync, you need to create a webhook in Hellomateo that sends contact updates to your external system. Learn how to set up and consume webhooks in the [Setting up Webhooks](/webhooks/setting-up-webhooks) guide. Upon receiving a webhook, you can either use the `contact_id` of the conversation directly from the webhook payload, or query `external_id` of the contact:

```bash theme={null}
curl "https://integration.getmateo.com/api/v1/contact?select=external_id&contact_id=eq.<conversation.contact_id>"
```

The webhook payload also contains the `raw_content` of the message, which is either the raw text or for emails the HTML content. You can use this to update the message log in your system.

The Pull Sync is a bit more complex, as you need to periodically poll the Hellomateo API for changes. We recommend setting up a cron job that runs at least every night to fetch all messages that were updated since the last run.

```bash theme={null}
curl "https://integration.getmateo.com/api/v1/message?select=id,raw_content,timestamp&contact_id=eq.1&timestamp=gte.2021-01-01T00:00:00Z&limit=10&offset=0"
```

You can leverage all of the available [filtering options](/concepts/read) to only retrieve the data you need, and [pagination](/concepts/pagination) to retrieve the data in chunks. If you have a lot of messages per period, you might hit our rate limits. In this case, migrate to the Push Sync.