Messaging & chat

Two distinct in-portal communication tools — and they're not what their names might suggest:

Mitch Wigham

Updated 24 June 2026 · 6 views

10 · Messaging & chat

Two distinct in-portal communication tools — and they're not what their names might suggest:

Team chat (/messages) — internal team chat. Channels and direct messages between staff.
Live chat (/chat) — the agent side of the customer-facing chat widget. Incoming visitor conversations land here for staff to pick up.

Use Team chat to talk to colleagues. Use Live chat to answer website visitors.

Team chat

/messages (titled "Team chat") opens a familiar two-pane layout:

+---------------+------------------------------------------+
| Channels & DMs|  # general                          👥 4 |
| Channels      |------------------------------------------|
|  # general    | Emma   10:01                              |
|  # ops        | anyone got the Acme pwd?                  |
|  🔒 proj-014  | Mitch  10:02                              |
| Direct msgs   | In the vault: acme-prod                   |
|  @ Emma       |                                          |
|  @ Jamie      | [📎] [Message # general…        ] [Send] |
+---------------+------------------------------------------+

📷 Screenshot placeholder: screenshots/team-chat.png

Features

Public channels (anyone in the org can see and join) and private channels (🔒, members only)
Direct messages — 1-to-1 with another user
File attachments via the 📎 button (stored against the message)
Emoji reactions — hover a message and pick from a quick set
Edit and delete your own messages (edited messages show an "(edited)" marker)
Quote-reply — a message can reference an earlier one, shown as a quoted snippet above the reply
Unread indicators per channel and a per-channel mute option
Messages are grouped by day

The message list refreshes on a short poll (every few seconds) rather than a live socket, so new messages appear with a small delay.

Creating a channel

Click New channel.
Choose Public or Private.
Give it a name (lowercase, hyphenated by convention, e.g. proj-014-carms-court).
Optionally add a description.
Create channel — you're added as the channel admin.

To start a DM, click New DM and pick a user.

⚠️ Caution. Public channels are visible to every user in the org. Keep credentials and customer-confidential discussion in private channels or DMs.

Permissions & membership

Public channels are visible to everyone; click Join to post.
The channel creator is added as ADMIN; other members are MEMBER.
From a channel's members panel anyone can add another user.
You can leave a channel; channels can also be deleted.

Live chat

/chat (titled "Live chat") is the agent queue for the customer-facing chat widget. It is for staff roles only (SUPER_ADMIN, ADMIN, MANAGER, AGENT).

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|  Live chat.                                    [Refresh]  |
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
|  Waiting 2   Active 3   Unassigned 1   Closed 14          |
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
| [Open] [Waiting] [Active] [Closed]                        |
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
| Visitor          Status    Agent       Messages  Waiting  |
| Jane (visitor)   Waiting   Unassigned     3         2m    |
| acme@…           Active    Emma          11         5m    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

📷 Screenshot placeholder: screenshots/live-chat.png

How it works

Visitors start a chat from the embedded widget on a customer-facing site. Each conversation is a session with the visitor's name and (optionally) email.
Sessions are WAITING until an agent picks them up, then ACTIVE, then CLOSED when wrapped up.
The queue shows KPI tiles (waiting / active / unassigned / closed) and auto-refreshes every 10 seconds.
Click a session row to open the conversation and reply.
A session can be linked to a helpdesk ticket so the conversation carries over.
A bot can suggest relevant knowledge-base articles to the visitor before an agent joins.

When to use which

	Team chat (`/messages`)	Live chat (`/chat`)
Who you talk to	colleagues	website visitors
Conversation unit	channels & DMs	visitor sessions
Who can use it	any user with messaging	staff roles only
Lifecycle	ongoing	waiting → active → closed
Linkable to	—	helpdesk tickets

Common workflows

"Where's the agent install link?"

Team chat → # ops → quick question, colleague answers.

Loop a colleague in

Team chat → add them to the channel, or start a DM.

Pick up a customer chat

Live chat → a Waiting session → open it → reply. Link it to a ticket if it needs follow-up.