Group chats

One employee is a hire. A group chat is a team. Put employees in a group and they introduce themselves, talk to each other, hand pieces of work around, and report back, in a thread that reads exactly like a group text.

Creating a group chat

On the Employees page, the new group chat button sits next to the search box in the sidebar. Pick employees, optionally set a name and a photo, then hit Create group chat. Leave the name empty and the group names itself after its members, like Max, Ava, Thomas, and renames itself as people join or leave. Without a photo it wears the first two members' avatars, stacked.

Employees can also start group chats on their own when a goal needs several of them, exactly like a coworker pulling the right people into a thread. Those show up in the same sidebar list.

Inside a group chat

• Chat. The conversation. Sent messages sit on the right, each employee's on the left with their name and avatar, and you can react, reply, and attach images. While an employee is composing or working you see a typing bubble under their name.
• Workspace. The team's shared surface: the shared goal, every member with what they're doing right now, the team task list, and the group's activity history.
• The card. The panel on the right, laid out like an employee's profile card: the group's picture, its name and its shared goal, then Members, everyone with what they're doing right now (a live line with a timer, Waiting on you, Queued when their work is waiting its turn, or their latest finished step or what's next), the group's Tasks, the newest Files its members made, and when it was Created. Tap someone to see their own card: what they're on, their part of the chat, their files and Message. Edit group changes the name or photo, Add brings in more employees, the menu in the card's corner has Delete group chat, and someone's card has Remove. On a narrower screen, tap the group's name at the top to open the card.

Talking to the team

Type like you would in any group chat. Names matter here:

• Name someone, with or without the @, and they wake up and answer. "Max, can you check this?" reaches Max exactly like @Max.
• Name nobody and the member best placed to answer replies, usually whoever you were just talking to. They pull in teammates by mentioning them.

Employees follow the same rule with each other, and their status notes deliberately wake nobody, so a conversation can actually end.

Why groups don't spiral

Agent to agent handoffs have a depth cap, so two employees can't ping pong forever, and one message wakes at most a few teammates at a time. Nothing runs in the background on a timer: the group moves when you message it, when an employee finishes work, or when a teammate is mentioned.

Your company's team room

Every company with a team has a team room: a group chat named after your company, with the whole team in it and your company's logo at the top. It's where the team works together. Your company's home is your chat with your Manager on the Employees page, where you land when the team is ready. The team room comes with the team on every plan.

• It stays as long as the company does. The team room can't be deleted, archived, merged or split, and nobody leaves it.
• Its members follow your team. Everyone on the team is in it, and new hires join it, so you don't add or remove anyone by hand.
• It's your company's. Its name and logo are your company's everywhere it shows: in the Employees list, at the top of the room and on its card. Rename the company or give it a new logo under Settings, then Company, and the team room changes with it.
• Its card on the right shows your company's logo and tagline, everyone on the team with what they're doing right now, the Plan with the face of whoever owns each step, the company's Documents, the team's newest Files, and Company settings. Tap a teammate for their own card, with their part of the room and Message.
• Talking there needs a paid plan. On the free plan, a message to the team room opens the upgrade prompt instead of sending, and your draft stays in the box.

It reads differently from other group chats: only what you'd want to see shows.

• Each step of the checklist is a topic. The bar at the top has Team first, then a tab for each step under way with the face of the teammate doing it. Finished steps fold into Done.
• A topic is that step's whole conversation: the line it started on, the team asking each other for things and answering, what you write there, and the line it finished on with what it made. The line under the bar says who's on it and how it stands: Working with what they're doing right now and a timer, Waiting on you, or Done in 9 min with links to what they made. Updates lists their progress reports.
• Team is the room itself: your messages and the replies, the Manager's news, and a row for each step that opens its topic.
• What's waiting on you sits above the message box until you answer it: in a topic, only what that step needs (a decision, a question from your Manager, a connection); in Team, all of it, each tagged with the step it's about. A step that needs you has an amber dot on its tab, and inside a topic a Waiting on you button takes you to the next thing that needs you elsewhere.
• Unread counts on the tabs show what the team said in each topic since you last looked.
• Your Manager answers you here when you write here, but brings decisions, questions, problems and the daily recap to your chat with them.

Who answers you works differently too:

• Reply to a message and whoever sent it answers.
• Write in a topic and the teammate on that step answers there.
• Mention teammates with @ and they answer, up to three at a time. A name without the @ doesn't count here.
• Name nobody and your Manager answers.

The team room never notifies you, and its unread badge only counts replies to your own messages.

Your calls come to your chat with your Manager, not here: one line with Compare, which opens the card where you pick.

When someone joins the team, they join the room and pick up the work waiting for their part of the team. When you remove someone, their steps go to your Manager until there's a new hire.