Messages: chatting with your team

Messages is where your firm talks among itself: one chat for everybody, one for every job, and private chats between a few of you. None of it reaches your clients — they talk to you in the comments on their document checklists.

Opening Messages

1. Click the round chat button at the bottom right of the screen.
2. Choose Messages at the bottom of the panel. The other tab, AI chat, is the assistant.

A red number on Messages counts what you have not read yet. On a computer, Expand docks Messages at the side of the screen, with your chats on the left and the one you are reading beside them. Drag its edge to make it wider; Collapse puts it away.

What is in the list

The search box at the top narrows everything below it. Under it, pinned, is your firm's Team chat. Then come four filters:

• All — every recent chat, newest first.
• AI — your saved chats with the AI. Only you can see them, and each one stays for a week after it closes. Opening one takes you back to it in AI chat.
• Jobs — a chat for every open job you can see. Show finished brings back the chats of finished jobs.
• People — your private chats with one teammate, or with a group.

A dot on a filter means something new is waiting under it. The pin on a job's chat, Keep at the top, holds it above the rest.

Who can read what

• The team chat — everybody in your firm. Its header says so: Team only — your clients never see this.
• A job's chat — everybody who can open that job. The chat of a private job stays with the people allowed to see the job.
• A direct message — only the two of you.
• A group chat — only the people in it. Its header says so: Group chat — only the people in it can read this.
• Your AI chats — only you.

A chat for every job

Every job has its own chat from the moment it exists — nobody has to set one up. Open it from Jobs in Messages, or from the job's page: Open chat, under Team on its Job details card.

The chat carries the job's name, with the client under it, and clicking the name opens the job. The pencil beside the name, Rename this chat, renames the chat only — never the job — and clearing the name gives it the job's name back.

Finished jobs drop out of the list, so it stays the length of the work in front of you. Nothing is deleted: Show finished brings their chats back.

Chatting with one person, or a few

1. In Messages, press the pencil, New message.
2. Pick one teammate, or several.
3. For one person, press the button that offers to message them: it opens your chat with them, the same one every time. For several, give the group a name if you like — Group name (optional) — then press Start group chat.

A teammate's profile page has the same door: Message, beside their name, opens your chat with them. In a chat with one person, their availability shows under their name. A group's name is changed with the pencil beside it, in the chat's header.

New messages in a direct message or a group chat show in your notification bell, one line per chat per day. They are not emailed unless you switch on email for Direct messages in your own notifications.

In the team chat and in a job's chat, Mention a teammate (the @) names one of the people on it, and in a job's chat they get a notification. A direct message or group chat has no @: everyone in it already hears about every message.

In a conversation

• Messages appear for everyone moments after they are sent. While someone is typing, their face shows at the bottom of the chat with three moving dots.
• Point at a message — or tap it, on a phone — to see its buttons: React, Reply and ⋮.
• React offers six quick emoji; the + beside them, More emojis, opens every emoji, with a search box and skin tones. Press a reaction under a message to add yours, and press it again to take yours back.
• Reply answers one message in particular, and quotes it above yours.
• ⋮ shows exactly when the message was sent, and offers Copy.
• The paperclip, Attach a file, sends a file of up to 25 MB. A picture shows as the picture itself. When one is sent on its own, with no words, the list reads Photo — or File for anything else.

Unsending a message

On your own message, open ⋮ and choose Unsend. Vylan asks first — Unsend this message? — then removes it for everyone in the chat: its words, its files and its reactions go, and everyone sees Unsent message where it was, in the chat and in the list.

When someone leaves your firm

Your direct message with someone who has left stays where it was, but nobody can write in it any more. It says so where the box used to be: You can still read this chat.

Team chats need team mode

The team chat, job chats and People come with team mode. On your own, Messages holds your AI chats.