Chat with your team: channels and messages

Chat, in the rail under the Inbox, holds your team's channels (team chat): places where your team talks, such as general for everyone or managers for a few. Beside Chat, a number says how many messages you have not read yet, in all of them.

Chat is for the users of your team. A customer of the business, with an external role, as in the customer portal, has no Chat and sees no channel.

The Chat page lists the channels you joined, each with its name, a lock when it is private and its unread messages, then:

• Direct messages: your direct messages and group chats;
• Agent chats: one row for each agent you talk to, as a direct message. Click one and your whole conversation with that agent opens, its earlier parts above, with one box at its end. An agent finds and reads only what you said to it, never what you said to another agent or to the assistant.

Click a channel to open it: on a computer the list stays at the left and the channel opens at the right; on a phone the channel fills the screen.

An admin can turn Chat off for the base in Settings, Chat (Hide the assistant, Chat or Files); the base then keeps the channels and the messages but does not show them.

To write a message in a channel:

1. Open the channel and type in the box at its foot.
2. Attach files if you like. To mention someone, type @ and pick a name from the list, as in an item's comments (Open an item's page: comments, history, Follow and Duplicate).
3. Send it. The message shows at once, with your name and the time.

A message takes Markdown, as a comment does: bold, italic, code, code blocks, lists, quotes, tables and links. A link to another site opens in a new tab.

The messages are grouped by day, the newest at the bottom. Scroll up to read older ones: they load as you go.

A mention and a direct message notify their users (Get notified of mentions and messages). Any other message in a channel tells only the users who set the channel to Every message (Choose how a channel notifies you).

Edit or delete your message

Each message has a menu. On your own messages the menu offers Edit and Delete:

• Edit changes the text in place. The message then shows (edited), and its files stay.
• Delete removes the message. When it has replies, its place stays so that its thread stays too.

You edit only your own messages, never another person's or an agent's answer, and you delete only your own, unless you moderate the channel (Make a user a channel manager or moderator). Your own comments on an item are edited and deleted the same way (Open an item's page: comments, history, Follow and Duplicate).

A direct message is a conversation between you and one other person; a group chat is one between you and up to eight others. To start one:

1. On the Chat page, click New message.
2. Search for users by name and pick one or several.
3. Click Start. The conversation opens. If you already have one with exactly those users, that one opens: the same users never get a second conversation.

The Chat page lists your direct messages and group chats under Direct messages, each named after the other users in it, with its unread messages. Only the users in a conversation see it; an admin of the base who is not one of them does not. Its users stay as they are: a direct message or a group chat has no settings, and is not renamed or deleted. Only the users of your team are offered, never a customer of a business.

A thread keeps a reply next to the message it answers, so the channel stays easy to read. To reply in a thread:

1. In a message's menu, click Reply in thread.
2. The thread opens in place under the message, with its replies and a box of its own. On a phone it opens on its own page.
3. Write your reply and send it.

The message then shows how many replies it has, in every open tab. A thread has one level: you reply to the message, not to a reply. Threads are for channels; an item's comments stay one list.

A reaction answers a message without writing one: under each message of a channel, a direct message or a group chat, click Add reaction and pick one of eight: 👍 ❤️ 😂 🎉 😮 😢 👀 ✅.

• Each reaction shows under the message with how many people gave it; yours is highlighted. Point at it, or press and hold on a phone, to see who.
• Click a reaction to add yours, and click it again to take it away. Each person gives each reaction once.
• A reaction shows in every open tab within a few seconds, and tells nobody.

Reactions are for the messages of a channel; an item's comments take none.

Paste the link of an item of the base in a message, such as an order's page, and the channel shows a card of the item under the message: its table, its name and its main fields. Click the card to open the item. The link in the text stays as you wrote it.

• The link is the address of the item's page, /orders/<id>, with the base's address before it or not. A message shows at most three cards, for the first three items that it links to.
• The main fields are the first three fields that the table's list shows and that have a value.
• Each user sees the card only for an item that their role lets them read, with only the fields that their role shows. The other users see the plain link. The card shows the item as it is when you read the channel, so a change to the item shows in its card too.
• A link to another site, to an item of another base or in a direct message or a group chat shows no card.

A group mention tells every user of a group in a channel at once. Type @ in a channel to see, after the people, the groups you may mention. Pick one, and the message tells each of its users, as a mention of them:

• @channel tells every user of the channel.
• @here tells the users of the channel who were active in the base in the last five minutes.
• @ and a role, such as @Sales, tells the users of the channel who have that role in the base.

The author of the message is never told, and nobody is told twice. A user who set the channel to Nothing is not told. A group mention tells at most the first 50 users of the channel.

Who can use @channel and @here, in the channel's settings, sets who mentions these two groups: Every user of the channel, at first, or Managers only. Managers can always use them. When it is set to managers only, the list does not offer @channel and @here to the other users, and Base Captain does not send their message with one of them. Every user of the channel may mention a role.

A pinned message stays easy to find in its channel, such as a price list or the rules of the channel. To pin a message:

1. In the message's menu, click Pin to channel.
2. The message shows a small Pinned mark.

The channel's header shows Pinned messages with their number. Click it to see the list, the newest pin first, each with its author, its text and its time. Click Go to message to go to it in the channel, or to its thread for a reply. To unpin a message, click Unpin in the list or in the message's menu. When you delete a pinned message, it is unpinned too.

The users who may post new messages in the channel pin and unpin: every user of the channel while Users can post new messages is on, and only its managers while it is off (Choose who posts and replies in a channel). In a direct message or a group chat, every user of it pins.

Bookmarks are named links at the top of a channel, under its header, such as "Price list" or "Shipping rules". A link to a page of the base opens in the base; a link to another site opens in a new tab. A channel shows the row of bookmarks only when it has at least one. To add a bookmark:

1. Open the channel's menu and click Add bookmark.
2. Give it a Name and a Link: a page of the base, such as /products, or an address that starts with http:// or https://.
3. Save it.

To change or delete a bookmark, open the menu beside it and click Edit or Delete.

Every user who reads the channel sees its bookmarks. Only the channel's managers and the base's admins add, change and delete them, so only they see Add bookmark, Edit and Delete. An archived channel has no Add bookmark. Direct messages and group chats have no bookmarks.

In Chat, a dot on each user's picture says whether they are here (presence). A green dot means active: they used Base Captain, in any base, in the last five minutes. A grey ring means away: they did not, or they are not signed in. You see the dot on the author of a message, in a channel's Users, in your direct messages and in the list of New message.

Set your status

A status tells your team what you are doing, such as "📅 In a meeting". You have one status, the same in every base where you have a role. To set it:

1. Open Chat and click Set a status, at the foot of the list of channels.
2. Pick an emoji and write a short text, up to 100 characters. One of the two is enough.
3. Under Clear after, pick when it ends: In 1 hour, Today, This week (at the end of Sunday) or Never.
4. Click Save.

The emoji of your status shows beside your name in Chat and on each mention of you in a message, or 💬 for a status with no emoji. Point at it to read the text and when it ends. At its end, the status goes by itself. The foot of the list then shows your status in place of Set a status: click it to change it. To remove it before its end, click the × beside it, or Clear in the form.

The number beside Chat in the rail counts the messages and replies you have not read in all your channels, direct messages and group chats; the Chat page gives each one's own number. Your own messages never count.

Opening a channel marks it read, and a new message that arrives while the channel is open on your screen is read too. A message that arrives in another channel raises the numbers at once, with no reload.

To read a message again later, open its menu and click Mark unread. That message and each later one that is not yours are unread again, and the numbers go up. The channel stays unread until you open it again.

Each channel's notifications are yours to choose. In a channel's menu, open Notifications and pick how the channel tells you of its messages:

• Every message: each message and each reply in the channel, except your own.
• Mentions only: only a message that mentions you, a group you are in, or one of your keywords. This is how a channel starts.
• Nothing (mute): no notification, a mention included. The channel shows dimmed on the Chat page, still with its own number of unread messages, but it adds nothing to the number beside Chat in the rail.

A direct message or a group chat starts at Every message; set it to Mentions only or Nothing in the same way. Your choice is yours alone: nobody else sees it.

Chat notifies you of these things, each notification linking to the conversation. They are not in your Inbox and not in its count: the count beside Chat in the rail shows them, and reading the conversation clears them.

• a mention of you, of a group you are in (Mention a group: @channel, @here or a role) or of one of your keywords, in any channel: "Jane Cooper mentioned you in #general";
• a message in a channel you set to Every message: "Jane Cooper wrote in #general";
• a message in a direct message or a group chat you are in: "Jane Cooper sent you a message", or in a group chat "Jane Cooper wrote in Jane Cooper, Mark Rivera, Admin". A message there that mentions you notifies you once, as a mention.
• a moderator's delete of your message, with the reason: "A moderator deleted your message in #general: Off topic".

A message that both mentions you and is in a channel you set to every message notifies you once, as a mention. An edit notifies only the users that it newly mentions. A reaction notifies nobody, and a channel you set to Nothing notifies you of nothing.

Keywords

Keywords, in Settings, Notifications, are words that notify you as a mention does, such as "refund, invoice". Put a comma between two words. Chat looks for them as whole words, in capitals or not, in the messages of the channels that you joined, never in your own. Each base keeps its own keywords.

Push notifications and email

Each Chat notification is pushed at once to the phones and computers where you turned that on. It is emailed to you only when you have not used the base in the last 5 minutes:

• A mention is emailed at once.
• A channel message or a direct message waits 5 minutes, and is emailed only if you have not read it and have not used the base since it came.
• One email then holds every notification that waits for you, such as "3 direct messages", each line who wrote, where, and the start of the text, then its link. A link opens the conversation in the base's Chat.
• A message is in one such email at most, and the time between two of them grows from 15 minutes to 1 hour.
• A mention in an item's comment is emailed the same way, with the item's link.

Both are set in Settings, Notifications (See everything open for you in the Inbox).

Chat in Base Captain works this way:

• A channel is live. A message that someone else writes, edits or deletes shows in every open tab within a few seconds, with no reload.
• Messages tell nobody with a pop-up, as a comment on an item does not either.