Team chat

Chat lives under Communications › Chat in the office and on the Chat tab of the field app. The idea behind it: "chat is the front door; the records are the rooms." Talk here, then move anything that needs to happen onto the record it belongs to.

Conversations

• New message starts a one-to-one direct message. If you have messaged that person before, the existing conversation opens, so the history stays in one place.
• New group (people with Manage chat) creates a group with a Group name and an Audience: Chosen people only, Everyone in the workspace, A team, An access profile or A Smart Group. "Computed audiences keep membership current." Pick a team and anyone who joins that team is in the group. Extra members (kept even if the audience changes) adds people outside it.

Above the list, All, Unread, Direct and Groups narrow it down. Search messages searches "messages and files" across your conversations. Each conversation's … menu ("Conversation options") has Pin / Unpin and Mute / Unmute. Some conversations belong to a record, such as a job's thread, and show with a link icon.

Sending

Type in Write a message. In the office, Enter sends and Shift+Enter starts a new line. On a phone keyboard, return adds a line and Send is the button.

• Attach a Photo or File, up to 25 MB each.
• Add an Emoji or a GIF.
• Record a Voice note.
• Type @ or use Mention to name someone in the conversation. They get their own notification. If you edit a message and add a new name, that person is notified too.

On the phone these sit behind the + button ("Message tools"). In the office they are buttons beside the text box.

Tap a photo to open it full size, with Download (in a browser) or Save (on a phone), and the sender and time underneath. The conversation's other photos come with it: swipe, or use the arrows, to move between them.

Working with a message

Each message's menu ("Message actions") offers:

• Reply, which quotes it.
• React with an emoji.
• Copy, for messages with text.
• Promote to record (also opened by pressing and holding a message).
• Edit, for your own messages that haven't been promoted. Edited messages show edited.
• Delete, for your own messages, and for group admins and chat managers.

A promoted message can't be edited or deleted, because a record now depends on it.

Promote to record

Promote to record turns a message into something that gets done:

• Raise as issue ("Starts the report → review → close loop."). Give it an Issue title, optionally a Job and a Note, then Promote: the issue report opens with them filled in. It can name a job, site, vehicle or piece of equipment, with photos and the team involved, and a vehicle asks whether it is safe to use. Report issue raises it. The issue links back to the conversation from its Origin tab. The photo in the message stays in chat.
• Attach to a job as a note ("Copied into the job's comment thread."), with its attachment.
• Save attachment as evidence ("Keeps capture metadata against the job."). It needs a message with an attachment.
• Raise as request ("Routed to the people who can action it."). It needs a request category set up first.

Groups and who can do what

Anyone can message people directly and post in the conversations they're in. Creating groups needs Manage chat. In a group, Members and read state shows each member's role, whether they are an audience member or were added manually, and whether they have read the latest message. Group owners, group admins and chat managers can:

• Make admin or Remove as admin.
• Remove from group, or Add person.
• Change photo or Remove photo for the group.

A group can't be renamed after it is created.

Delete group or Delete chat, in the conversation's … menu, is for the group's creator, its admins and chat managers. It removes every message for everyone in the conversation and can't be undone. A record's own thread can't be deleted from Chat: it lives with the record.

Reading a live conversation

Messages are separated by day, with Today and Yesterday where they apply. Typing indicators name who is typing, and a direct message shows Online when the other person is connected. Connecting… means your own connection is recovering. It says nothing about whether a colleague is online.

Presence and typing aren't proof that someone read or agreed to anything. When you need a recorded acknowledgement, post an update with a required read. See Updates and announcements.

Tip: for anything that needs to happen, promote it. A message scrolls away. A promoted issue, note or request stays on the record with its author and time.

With no signal

On the phone app, your recent conversations stay readable with no signal, from the copy saved when you last had it. A text message sent with no signal shows as Waiting to send and goes when signal returns, only once. Photos and GIFs need signal.