Chat

Chat is internal messaging between the people in your workspace — direct messages, groups and channels. It's separate from Ask AI, where you chat with Opzello AI, and from the WhatsApp inbox, where you talk to customers outside the workspace.

Accessing Chat

Open Chat from the sidebar. It only appears when the workspace owner has turned on Chat in Workspace Settings → Features and your workspace role can open the Chat section.

What you can do depends on your role's level for Chat. The workspace owner sets it in Workspace Settings → Roles:

• None — no Chat. The entry is hidden.
• Own — direct messages with teammates only.
• Team — the above, plus starting groups and joining and posting in public channels.
• Manage — the above, plus creating channels, archiving channels, and removing people from any group or channel, even one you didn't create.

The workspace owner always has Manage.

Whoever creates a group or channel is automatically its admin (marked admin in its member list) and can rename it, add people and remove them, whatever their Chat level.

Plans

Sending in Chat is part of the Team plan. On any other plan — including the free trial — Chat is read-only: every conversation and message stays readable, and you can still mark conversations read, mute them, pin them, archive them for yourself and leave a group. Starting conversations, sending messages, reacting, joining channels and managing members need the workspace owner to be on the Team plan. Upgrading unlocks everything again, with all your history in place.

Direct messages, groups and channels

• A direct message is a private 1:1 thread. Start one with New → New message in the toolbar above the conversation list and pick a teammate — if a DM with them already exists, it opens instead of creating a duplicate.
• A group is a private, invite-only conversation with more than two people. Anyone with group-creation access can start one and choose who's in it from the start.
• A channel is built around a topic rather than a guest list, and is either public or private. A public channel is discoverable — use New → Browse channels to see every public channel in the workspace and join the ones you need. A private channel stays invisible until one of its admins adds you to it.

Creating a group or channel

To start a group, click New → New group, type a name, tick the people you want in it and click Create group.

Only people with Manage level for Chat can create channels. In the same window, switch to the Channel tab, type a name and choose:

• Public — anyone in the workspace can find and join it.
• Private — only people you add can see it.

Then click Create channel. You add people to a channel afterwards with Add people in its Details panel. When the workspace has no channels yet, Browse channels also shows a Create channel button.

The conversation list

The toolbar above it

Two controls sit above the list, and they are the whole width of the column:

• New opens a small menu with the ways to start a conversation — New message, New group (only if your role can create groups) and Browse channels.
• The search field beside it filters the list you already have, as you type. It matches on the conversation's name, ignores case, and ignores Arabic diacritics and the different ways of writing alef, teh marbuta and yeh — so typing "احمد" finds "أَحْمَد", and typing "jose" finds "José". It searches your archived conversations too, and holds the Archived group open while it has matches in it. Clearing the field (the × in it, or Escape while you are typing in it) puts the list back exactly as it was, headings, pinned order and all.

This field is not the Search or jump to… box in the top bar; that one searches the whole app, this one only narrows this list.

The groups

The left pane doesn't list your conversations in one long line. It groups them under headings:

• Pinned — anything you've pinned, held at the top no matter how quiet it goes. Only you see your own pins.
• Channels — every channel you're in, with a count of them beside the heading.
• Direct messages — your DMs and your groups together, since a group is really an ad-hoc conversation with a few people rather than a standing topic.

Inside each heading the most recent activity comes first. A section with nothing in it doesn't appear at all, so a brand-new account starts with an empty pane and the prompt to start a conversation.

Every row shows the same things:

• A glyph that says what it is — the other person's avatar (or their initials) for a DM, a # for a channel, a people icon for a group.
• The last thing said in it, prefixed with who said it — including system notices like "Sara added Husain".
• An unread badge counting messages you haven't read, capped at 99+. A row with unreads, or the row you're currently reading, is shown in bold.
• A bell with a line through it if you've muted that conversation, and an archive box if the conversation has been archived for the whole workspace.

Each row also carries a ⋮ menu holding the settings for that one conversation — pin, mute, mark unread, archive and leave — so you can deal with a thread without opening it. Those same actions live in the Details panel of an open conversation; they're described under Pinning, muting and archiving below.

A conversation you've archived for yourself drops out of these groups and into a collapsed Archived group at the bottom of the pane.

Reading and sending messages

Open a conversation to read it. Messages are a single flat column: each one shows the sender's avatar, name and time, and a run of messages from the same person collapses — the second, third and fourth lines show only the text, lined up under the first, instead of repeating the same name and timestamp four times.

Messages, including "so-and-so joined" or "renamed to ..." system notices, arrive live as they happen — no need to refresh, even for a channel you're just sitting in. Scroll to the top of a thread to load older messages; the page keeps your place instead of jumping while they load.

Type in the box at the bottom of a conversation and press the send button, or press Enter — on a computer, Enter sends the message and Shift+Enter starts a new line without sending. On a phone or tablet, Enter always starts a new line instead, since there's no keyboard shortcut to distinguish from typing; use the send button there.

The smiley button to the left of the box opens an emoji picker. Picking one inserts it at your cursor rather than at the end of the message, so you can drop an emoji into the middle of a sentence you've already written; the picker closes on Escape without touching the draft.

Right-to-left languages such as Arabic are laid out correctly within a message, while the timestamp next to it always reads left-to-right.

If a conversation has been archived for the whole workspace, a banner says so at the top of the thread and the box below turns read-only — nobody can post to it, though the history stays readable.

Reacting to a message

Instead of replying, you can react. Every message has a + beside it that opens the same emoji picker; choosing an emoji adds it under the message as a chip.

• A chip shows the emoji and how many people have picked it. Hover it to see their names.
• Click a chip to add your own reaction to it, or click it again to take yours back. Your own reactions are highlighted.
• Reactions appear for everyone in the conversation as they happen, without a refresh.
• Only emoji from the picker can be used, and a conversation archived for the whole workspace stops accepting reactions the same way it stops accepting messages.

Mentioning someone

In a group or channel, type @ followed by a name to open a picker. Choosing someone inserts a mention chip without sending the message.

Mentioning matters because a group or channel notifies you about mentions only by default — an ordinary message in a busy channel won't reach you, but one that names you will. The exception is someone who has set that conversation's notifications to None: that setting wins over everything, mention included.

The Details panel

Open a conversation and click Details in its header. A panel opens beside the thread (on a phone it replaces the thread until you close it) holding everything specific to that one conversation, including its member list.

Notifications

Choose how much this conversation notifies you:

• All messages — every message. This is the default for a direct message.
• Mentions only — only messages that name you. This is the default for a group or channel.
• None — nothing at all, mentions included.

The setting is yours alone; nobody can change it for you, and changing yours doesn't affect anyone else in the thread. Mute in the row's ⋮ menu is the same setting reached faster — it sets None, and unmuting from there sets All messages, so use this panel if what you wanted back was Mentions only.

Members

A group or channel lists everyone in it here. If you're that conversation's admin — or your role has Manage level for Chat, even if you didn't create it — you also get Rename and Add people, and you can remove people from the list. A DM has no member list, since it's just the two of you.

Pinning, muting and archiving

Below the members are the actions that only affect your own copy of the conversation, the same ones the row's ⋮ menu offers:

• Mark as unread puts the badge back on the row so it's waiting for you next time — useful when you've read something you can't deal with yet.
• Pin moves the conversation into the Pinned section at the top of the list. Unpin puts it back.
• Archive moves the conversation out of your list and into the collapsed Archived group at the bottom of it, without leaving it or affecting anyone else. It means "out of my way for now", not "block this": the next message someone writes there brings it straight back into its normal group, with its unread count, and so does anything you write in it yourself. Renames and joins don't — only a real message. If what you want is a conversation that stays quiet, mute it (set its notifications to None) instead of, or as well as, archiving it. Unarchive, from that group's own ⋮ menu or from the conversation itself, brings it back by hand.

Leave conversation is the last item, and it's the one that isn't private: leaving a group or channel removes you from it for everybody, and you'll need to be added back (or rejoin, if it's a public channel). Leaving doesn't erase the thread's history for the people who stay. A DM can't be left — archive it instead.

Unread counts

The unread badge next to Chat in the sidebar is the total of every conversation's unread count, and clears for a conversation as soon as you open it. Conversations you've archived don't count toward it — but only for as long as they stay archived: the next message pulls one back out of the Archived group and its unread count rejoins the badge, so nothing piles up somewhere you're never told about.