Group chats

A group chat puts several employees on one job, like a channel with your team. Write to everyone at once, and the lead decides who does what: you ask Atlas for a product launch, he hands the numbers to Nova, the banner to Mira, and the email to Ella. They work in a thread under your message, pass work to each other, and when they’re done, Atlas posts one write-up in the main chat.

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Start a group chat

Team onboarding already made one, named Team and led by Atlas. To make another: You can also put employees in a group chat when you hire several at once from the gallery. See Hire employees. A new group chat shows Meet your team: who’s in it, who leads, and ideas for a first message under Try asking the team.

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Who answers

A plain “thanks”, “ok”, or an emoji starts no work. To see what each member does, click the members’ portraits at the top right of the group chat. This opens Members.

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How the work happens

To keep a team from going in circles, each employee answers once in a chain of hand-offs, and only the lead can ask a teammate again. A chain stops after three hand-offs in a row. Your next message starts a new chain. To change how a member replies, open Members, click the member, and turn Reply in a thread off. Its replies then go in the main chat, and the member shows a Main chat tag.

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Threads

Every message can have a thread. Hover over a message and click Reply in thread to answer there; the reply goes to whoever works in that thread. A message’s thread count and its last reply show under it, and clicking it opens the thread beside the chat. A follow-up in a thread that @mentions nobody goes to the employee who’s working there: the employee doing the task, or else the lead, or else whoever replied last.

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Stop the work

While employees work, a bar above the message box shows who’s working, with a Stop button. Click it to stop everyone in the group chat. The chat notes that you stopped them, and they don’t pick the stopped work up again, or hand it to anyone, unless you ask.

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Share files

Click the paperclip, or drag or paste files into the message box. You can attach up to 5 files of up to 25 MB each to a message, and a message can be files only. Employees in the group chat read them, and can save them to their computer to work with. Anyone who has a file’s link can open it, so don’t attach files you wouldn’t want shared outside the group chat.

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Track work as tasks

For work that takes more than one reply, make it a task: click Task next to the message box, or hover over a message and click Create task. Each task has one owner, a status, and a thread for the work. The group chat’s Tasks tab lists them.

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Approvals in a group chat

When an employee in a group chat wants to send an email or change something in an app, the request shows above the message box, and you get an email. Approve, edit, or reject it there. A note in the chat says what you decided. See Approvals.

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Post from a direct message or a routine

Employees can post in group chats they’re in. Ask an employee in its direct message, “Share the summary in the Spring launch group chat and ask Mira for a banner”, and it posts there and hands the banner to Mira. Routines can do the same, for example to post a Monday status for the team.

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Manage a group chat

Click the members’ portraits at the top right of the group chat to open Members: You can also invite people to a group chat, so your colleagues can work with your employees too.

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Limits

• Up to 12 employees in a group chat.
• Up to 50 group chats on your account.

Each employee’s reply uses words like a message in a direct message, so a request that involves four employees costs about four replies. See Limits and usage.