Chat
1. What it is
Chat gives your organization real-time messaging — one-on-one direct messages, small groups, and channels — with @mentions, presence indicators, file sharing, inline replies, reactions, and built-in search. An optional Ask AI assistant can be brought into any conversation with an @mention or a trigger phrase, answering questions grounded in the conversation’s own history.
- Enablement: Chat is a licensed app. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps, and it is off by default for every tenant.
- What it is not: Chat is the synchronous, real-time messenger. The separate Messages app is the asynchronous, email-like counterpart, announced in Notifications and read in Messages. “Direct messages” in Chat and “Messages” are different products, switched on and off separately (information barriers apply to both).
What people use it for
- Reach whoever is on shift right now — the shift lead at a store, without knowing who it is today.
- Catch up after time away — what’s new, what mentions you, and a private catch-up from Ask AI.
- Answer what’s waiting on you without leaving Chat — approvals and Must-Reads as cards in Needs you.
- Turn a chat message into a task — into your own My Tasks, with who asked.
- Messaging yourself in Chat — drafts, links, files and reminders, kept for yourself.
- Come back to a message later — Remind me about this or Save for later from the message’s menu; both are listed under Saved.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps → Chat → Enable.
- Open the Chat app from the left-hand navigation and go to Settings. Review the defaults — one-to-one messages, new group chats and channels, file uploads, typing indicators, and the Ask AI assistant are all on by default. Adjust anything your organization needs off before users start chatting.
- Optional — restrict access. If only certain groups or departments should use Chat, configure an access policy. Chat supports contextual access policies (the gate is enforced on every request, not just the first visit).
- Optional — customize Ask AI. A company admin sets the assistant’s name, icon, description and greeting in Ask AI › Guidelines › Assistant; Chat → Settings keeps only the history tip.
- Optional — load sample data. The Settings page has a Sample data section that loads sample conversations and messages so you can explore the app without waiting for real activity.
- Confirm it worked. Open Chat → Dashboard as an admin. You should see the activity widgets (even if they show zeros). Have a test user open Chat and start a conversation — they should see the conversation list, the “New message” button, and (if enabled) the @Ask AI mention in the composer.
Pairing that silently does nothing: Answer from conversation history requires Semantic search to also be on. If you turn on Answer from conversation history but leave semantic search off, the assistant has no embeddings to retrieve from and its answers will not reference conversation history. Both are on by default.
When you first enable semantic search (or turn it back on), a background job backfills embeddings for all existing messages. The Settings page shows embedding progress so you can tell when history is fully searchable.
3. How it fits together
Every chat is a conversation. There are three kinds:
- One-to-one (direct message) — a private conversation between two people. When you start a chat with one person, the app opens your existing one-to-one with them or starts one. It has no name, and neither person can leave it.
- Group — a small conversation of up to 20 people with no name of its own; the list shows the members’ names. Naming a group, or adding a 21st person, turns it into a private channel: everyone stays in it and the history comes along. Turning a group into a channel needs the right to create channels.
- Channel — a named conversation for a team, a topic or a place (names are lowercase words joined by dashes, such as
store-412-team). A public channel can be found and joined by anyone in your organization from Browse channels; a private channel is seen only by its members, who add people to it. Channels can have threads: reply to a message in its thread so the main conversation stays readable, and follow a thread to see its new replies under Threads. A channel admin or a Chat admin can archive a channel: it leaves everyone’s list, stays readable under Browse channels › Archived, and can be restored from there.
Your own conversation. Each person also has one conversation that only they are in, titled with their name and “(you)” — a one-to-one underneath, for drafts, links, files and reminders, in the OneMango Desktop app. Messaging yourself in Chat is written for employees; the FAQ covers turning it off.
Members and roles. Each member of a group or channel has one of two roles: admin or member. The creator of a group or channel starts as admin. Channel admins can rename the channel (giving a group a name turns it into a private channel); conversation admins manage members, delete anyone’s messages, and configure the conversation’s settings (including the permissions below and the Ask AI proactive opt-in). Conversation admins make another member an admin, or remove someone’s admin role, from the member list (Make admin / Remove admin); the last admin can’t be demoted, and someone no longer active in your organization can’t be made an admin.
Pinning and muting. Members can pin conversations so they appear at the top of their conversation list, and choose how each conversation notifies them from its … menu: All messages, Mentions only or Nothing. A mute set on the phone or in the native apps shows in that menu as Muted until … (or Muted) — Unmute, so it can be undone on the web too. Messages that ask you to confirm you’ve read them — Important messages and read receipt requests — still reach your bell, and your email if it’s on in a muted conversation.
Per-conversation permissions. Groups and channels list them under Conversation settings (the gear button beside the conversation’s name, shown to its admins):
- Who can add new members?
- Who can see the group (or channel) member list?
- Who can send messages in this group (or channel)?
- Who can send important messages and request read receipts? — only where Important messages or read receipt requests are on and allowed in that conversation
- Who can reply in threads? — channels only
Each is answered with Any member, Conversation admins and company admins, or Company admins only, and all default to “any member” (fully open).
Important messages and read receipt requests. A sender can mark a message as Important (recipients must explicitly acknowledge it) or request a Read Receipt (the message body stays hidden until the recipient confirms they have read it). Both are per-message choices in the composer. They are available in direct messages, groups and private channels of up to 50 people — not in public channels or in channels of more than 50 people. In a group or a channel, the sender sees “Read by X/Y” and who has and hasn’t read it, and when the sender was a manager or a conversation admin at the time they sent it they can also send a reminder to the people who haven’t; in a 1:1 chat the sender sees when it was read. When an Important message has a backup who is not in the conversation and someone still hasn’t confirmed, the backup’s notice names who hasn’t and offers a “Message” button that starts a chat with those people (through your company’s usual chat rules); the notice never shows the backup the message’s words.
Approval cards. An approval card in Chat that was decided somewhere else says who decided it and, when known, where — for example “Approved by you, from Notifications” — rather than only “Already handled”.
Seen by. Senders see who has seen their messages: “Seen by Bob” in a 1:1 chat, and in a group, under their latest message someone has read, the names of who has read it — up to three, then how many more (“Seen by Ana, Bob, Cy +2”). A conversation of more than 50 people shows “Read by N%” instead, which opens the list of who has read it; a channel of up to 50 people shows neither. In a group, a person your works-council settings keep out of read reports is never named. Admins can turn all of this off with Show who has seen a message; senders then see only “Sent” or “Delivered”. Important messages and read receipt requests keep their own “Read by X/Y” either way — they are an explicit ask.
Ask AI in Chat. When @Ask AI in chat conversations is on, an AI assistant can be mentioned in any conversation with @Ask AI (or the admin-customized name). The assistant replies in the thread, grounded in the conversation’s own message history when Semantic search and Answer from conversation history are both on. Admins can also set custom trigger phrases (default: “/ai”; workspaces set up before September 2026 keep “hey ai, /ai” until an admin changes it) that invoke the assistant without an @mention. A conversation’s admins can additionally opt it in to proactive suggestions, where the assistant chimes in when it detects an unanswered question, a meeting intent, or a commitment.
Editing and deleting messages. Users can edit their own text messages within 15 minutes of sending. Users can delete their own messages at any time (no time limit); conversation admins can delete anyone’s messages. Both capabilities are governed by business-level settings that the admin can turn off.
File attachments. Messages can include up to 10 file attachments. Files are checked on the way in — type and size — before they are stored. Blocked file types include executables (.exe, .bat, .sh, .msi, .dll, etc.) and browser-renderable formats (.html, .svg) that could carry scripts. Allowed types cover documents (call transcripts and captions — .vtt and .srt — included), images, audio, video, archives, and fonts.
Inline translation. Any member of a conversation can translate a message into their preferred language or any supported language. Translations are cached server-side — the same message in the same language is translated once, so repeat viewers and teammates with the same language preference reuse the cached result.
Relationship to other apps. Ask AI in Chat can open Service Desk tickets from inside a conversation (when Take actions from chat is on). Video huddles (Start huddle (Live Assist) in a conversation’s … menu, or the full-width Start huddle button at the end of the conversation on a phone) require the Live Assist app, enabled and published to the people who will use them. Chat and the Messages app are switched on and off separately. Turning one off does not turn off the other. Information barriers apply to Messages too, even while Chat is off: a company admin sets them here in Chat or in Admin → Compliance → Information Barriers, which stays open while Chat is off.
More ways to use Chat
- Threads — in a channel, reply to a message in its thread. Replies can carry files, a GIF or a voice note. You follow a thread you started, replied to or were @mentioned in (or one you chose to follow), and followed threads are listed under Threads with their new replies.
- Browse channels — find a public channel and join it, or start a new one, from Browse channels at the top of the conversation list.
- Schedule a message — on the full site, open the arrow beside Send and pick a time under Schedule message…, from a minute to a year ahead. A conversation’s waiting messages are shown above its composer, where you can edit them, send them now or cancel them; on the phone the conversation shows how many are waiting, and Saved lists every one you have waiting so you can cancel it there; editing one and sending it now are on the full site. If the message can’t be sent when its time comes (you left the conversation, or it was deleted), you get a notice with what it said.
- Remind me — from a message’s ⋮ menu, pick when to be reminded about it; when it comes due the reminder reaches your bell, and your phone and the desktop app notify you unless your notifications are paused. Save for later keeps a message to come back to. Both are listed on Saved, where you can cancel a reminder or remove a saved message.
- Pin for everyone — from a message’s ⋮ menu; the message shows in the conversation’s pinned bar for every member (up to 25 per conversation). Pinning a conversation is different: it keeps that conversation at the top of your own list, and only you see it.
- Polls, GIFs and voice notes — from the composer. A poll’s votes stay in its conversation, so a poll can’t be forwarded.
- Forward — from a message’s ⋮ menu, send a copy to another conversation; it says who wrote it and where (a private channel or a group is not named).
- Status — Set a status… in the conversation list’s ⋮ menu (on the phone, Status at the top of Chat) sets a status or pauses your notifications for a while.
- Who’s on shift — reach whoever holds a role at a location right now, see who is on shift in a conversation, and notify them with @onshift: Reach whoever is on shift right now. Who may use @onshift is a Chat setting — by default managers, people who lead a team and the conversation’s admins.
- Adding people — every people box also takes Import a list or type names (paste names from anywhere) and Add everyone from a channel or group. People who can’t be added — no longer active, Chat not open to them, or kept apart by an information barrier — are marked with the reason before you add.
- App updates in a channel — a channel’s admins turn on App updates in this channel (Open shifts, Coverage gaps, Team recognition, Celebrations) in the channel’s Conversation settings (the gear button beside its name) on the web, and on the phone on the channel’s Members page. Each kind of update is offered only when its app is in use.
- Needs you — approvals and things to acknowledge or sign arrive in Chat’s Needs you conversation as cards people answer there, while the company has one-to-one messages on: Answer what’s waiting on you without leaving Chat.
4. Running it
Reviewing analytics
Go to Chat → Analytics (visible to admins and chat app admins). The page shows four metrics:
- Adoption — percentage of provisioned users who sent at least 5 messages across at least 3 conversations (1:1 chats count) in the last 14 days, with a 12-bucket trend chart
- DAU/MAU stickiness — daily active users as a percentage of monthly active users, with a 30-day daily trend
- Messages across departments — percentage of messages exchanged between people in different departments, with the top department pairs by volume
- @Mention response rate — how quickly @mentioned messages receive a reply, broken into 1-hour, 4-hour, and 24-hour buckets with a median response time
You can export the full dataset as a CSV for further analysis.
Exporting chat history for a legal matter
A company admin can export Chat history from Admin → Compliance → Chat Export: choose up to 50 people and a range of days (at most 3 years), and optionally some of their conversations. The export is built in the background as a ZIP with one file per conversation those people were in — every message in those days, deleted messages and earlier versions of edited ones included — and can be downloaded by the admin who started it for 7 days, after which the file is deleted. Every export is recorded with the admin’s name. Where the company has Messages, the same export can include those people’s Messages conversations too (Include Messages, ticked by default), in a messages folder of the same file.
A company admin can also keep everything in a conversation past your retention settings with Hold a conversation on Admin → Compliance → Retention & Legal Holds: find it by its name or its people, without joining it, and nobody in it is told; lifting a conversation’s hold, there or from the conversation’s own menu, asks for a reason.
Managing deleted conversations
Go to Chat → Recently deleted. A Chat admin sees every deleted conversation there; anyone else sees the ones they deleted themselves. When someone uses “Delete for everyone” on a conversation, it enters a 30-day restore window. You can restore individual conversations or select multiple and restore in bulk. After 30 days the conversation and its messages are permanently purged, unless a legal hold keeps them.
Searching chat history
Go to Chat → Search. Search uses full-text keyword search by default. When Semantic search is enabled, a meaning-based mode is also available that finds messages even when the exact words differ. The search page supports filters by conversation, sender, and date range. Results link directly into the matching message in its conversation.
A separate Find a conversation box in the conversation list lets users filter their conversations by conversation name, member name, or message content without leaving the list view.
Moderating content
When Content moderation is enabled (off by default), new and edited messages are checked against blocked words and content patterns after they are delivered — the real-time send path is never blocked. Violations are either flagged (message stays visible, queued for review) or hidden (message removed until a moderator approves it), depending on the moderation action setting. An optional AI moderation layer adds LLM classification on top of keyword checks, at a per-message cost.
Customizing the Ask AI assistant
A company admin sets the assistant’s name, icon, description and greeting in Ask AI › Guidelines › Assistant; they apply wherever the assistant answers — chat conversations, the Ask AI sidebar and the phone. Chat → Settings keeps only the history tip (under Ask AI), a line added to the assistant’s first answer from a conversation’s history.
Monitoring the dashboard
Go to Chat → Dashboard (visible to all users). The personal dashboard shows:
- Active conversations this week with a 4-week sparkline
- Median response time on @mentions compared to the team
- Messaging hours heatmap with a working-hours percentage
- Top conversations with 14-day trend arrows
- AI answer feedback (reactions on AI messages, from a nightly rollup)
- Ask AI activity (turn volume, latency, and token usage)
5. Settings
All settings are at Chat → Settings (company admins and Chat admins; Keep messages for and Information barriers are changed by company admins alone). The page is grouped into sections — Messaging, Channels, Files and links, Ask AI, Retention and legal, Analytics and Sample data — and each row shows what the setting is set to now; select a row to change it, and Save in the panel that opens.
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| One-to-one messages | On | Whether users can start one-on-one direct messages; when off, existing one-to-one conversations stay readable but take no new messages (a conversation with yourself has its own switch) |
| New group chats and channels | On | Whether people can start groups, create channels and join public channels they aren’t in (Browse channels closes when off); groups and channels people are already in keep working |
| Conversation with yourself | On | Whether each person can keep a conversation with only themselves; when off, existing ones stay readable but take no new messages |
| Edit messages | On | Whether users can edit their own text messages after sending (within 15 minutes) |
| Delete messages | On | Whether users can delete their own messages and conversation admins anyone’s; when off, nobody can delete messages — conversation admins included |
| Translate messages | On | Adds Translate to a message’s menu; the text goes to your translation provider, or to an AI model when none is set up. Up to 30 translations per person per hour |
| Huddles | Off | Live Assist huddles adds Start huddle (Live Assist) to each conversation’s … menu, and a Start huddle button at the end of the conversation on a phone (requires the Live Assist app, enabled and published to the people using it). AI huddle summaries (records huddles) records every huddle and posts an AI summary to the conversation when it ends, unless it was too short to summarise; participants see a recording notice |
| Important messages | On | Whether the Important message composer option is available |
| Read receipt requests | On | Whether the Read receipt request composer option is available |
| Show who has seen a message | On | Whether senders see “Seen by” — the reader in a 1:1 chat, and up to three names then how many more in a group of up to 50 — and “Read by N%” with its list in conversations of more than 50 people. When off, senders see only “Sent” or “Delivered”, and nobody can see how far anyone else has read. Important messages and read receipt requests are not affected |
| Typing indicators | On | Whether the “user is typing” animation appears |
| Who can create channels | Managers and admins, plus anyone who leads a team | Who may create channels and turn a group into a private channel; company admins and Chat admins always can |
| Who can use @channel, @here, @onshift and group mentions | Managers and admins, plus anyone who leads a team | Who may notify a whole conversation at once; company admins, Chat admins and a conversation’s own admins always can there |
| Location channels | Off | A channel for every location at the level you choose (such as Store), public or private, with an optional second channel of who’s on shift there today; needs location levels set up in Admin › Locations |
| Team channels | Off | A private channel for every manager and their direct reports |
| Incoming webhooks | On | Lets a channel’s admins add a URL other tools post into the channel with; turning it off stops every webhook at once, and they post again when it is turned back on |
| File uploads | On | Whether file attachments are allowed in messages, with Max file size — images and documents (MB) (25) and Max file size — video (MB) (500) |
| Link previews | On | A card with the title, site and picture of the first link in a message; turning it off stops new cards |
| @Ask AI in chat conversations | On | Lets anyone bring the assistant into a conversation with @Ask AI; Stream replies as they’re written shows a reply as it is written |
| Trigger phrases | On, /ai | Also invokes Ask AI when a message starts with one of the phrases, case-insensitive, no @mention needed (workspaces set up before September 2026 keep “hey ai, /ai”) |
| Let Ask AI speak first | On | Lets Ask AI post suggestions unasked in conversations whose admins opted them in |
| Answer from conversation history | On | Grounds Ask AI’s answers in the conversation’s own history (requires Semantic search) |
| Take actions from chat | On | Lets Ask AI carry out actions (e.g. open Service Desk tickets) from inside a conversation; every action needs the asker’s confirmation (workspaces set up before September 2026 keep Off until an admin turns it on) |
| Summarize threads | On | Adds Summarize to groups and channels |
| Catch-up digest | On | Offers a private “Catch me up” in a conversation with many unread messages (requires Summarize threads) |
| Daily briefing | On | Each early morning, a short AI summary of what a person missed in chat on their AI Home; people can opt out in their notification settings |
| Read attachments | On | Lets Ask AI read PDF, Word and text files up to 5 MB attached to the message that asks or the one it replies to |
| Polish drafts | On | Offers AI rewrites of a draft in the message composer; only the writer sees them |
| Quick replies | On | Suggests up to three private one-tap replies when a message asks a question |
| Chat Agent in the Ask AI sidebar | On | Enable Chat Agent in Ask AI (read-only) lets users search chat history and find conversations from the Ask AI sidebar; Enable Chat actions in Ask AI lets them start chats, send and schedule messages and more from it, with confirmation before each action |
| Semantic search | On | Enables meaning-based search across messages, with a nightly gap-fill (500 messages a night) |
| Monthly AI token budget | 0 (unlimited) | Caps the AI tokens all Ask AI features together use per calendar month (UTC) — chat, the private pane, voice and the kiosk; when it is reached Ask AI pauses until the 1st. 0 = unlimited |
| Ask AI history tip | The built-in tip | A line added to the assistant’s first answer from a conversation’s history |
| Keep messages for | Forever | Company admins only: how long messages are kept, set separately for one-to-one messages, groups and channels (at least 30 days). Each night, messages older than that are hidden from everyone, and they are permanently deleted 30 days later; anything on legal hold is kept for your records. This keeps applying while Chat is turned off |
| Designated chat moderators | Nobody | Company admins only: the people who review flagged chat messages instead of every company admin |
| Content moderation and video subtitles | Off | Changed on Admin → Apps → All Apps → Chat → Configure, not on this page |
| Information barriers | None | Company admins only: pairs of groups whose people can’t message each other (also in Admin → Compliance → Information Barriers, open while Chat is off) |
| Who can view chat analytics | Company admins and Chat admins only | Who else may open Analytics and its CSV export |
| Working hours | 9 to 18 | The workday’s start and end hours, used by the dashboard’s outside-working-hours statistic |
6. More help
- Chat FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Chat from these articles.