Conversations and Messaging

Messages is Qik's built-in team messenger. Your staff and other logins can chat one-to-one, in small groups, or with everyone in a team, and share Qik records in the conversation. This article covers starting conversations, managing participants, one-way announcement conversations, disappearing messages, muting, mentions and unread status.

Before you start

• Messaging may need to be enabled for your organisation. Contact support if you don't see it.
• Each person needs access to Messages through their role. If someone sees "Ask an administrator to give you access to Messages", give their role permission to view and create conversations (and comments) in the right scopes. See Roles and Permissions.
• Only people with a login can read and reply. You can add a person who has a profile but no login yet, but they won't see the conversation. Qik warns you, for example: "Alex won't see this — they don't have a login yet."

Opening Messages

Click Messaging in the top bar to open the Messages panel. (If your organisation shows it as Inbox, your notifications are there as well.) The badge shows how many conversations have unread messages. The panel is organised into sections:

• Mentions: recent messages where someone @mentioned you.
• New and Unread: conversations with messages you haven't read.
• Conversations: the conversations you're part of, most recent first.
• Groups: conversations belonging to the teams or groups you're in.

Avatars show which colleagues are online now. Click See everyone online to see the full list. To get alerts when the dashboard is in the background, click Enable under Desktop notifications.

Starting a conversation

1. In the Messages panel, click New conversation.
2. Under To, search for and pick people. When you start from a group, buttons such as Add all Coaches · 4 add everyone in a position at once.
3. Under In, choose the scope the conversation lives in. This affects who else (such as administrators or group members whose role allows it) can see the conversation.
4. For a conversation with more than one other person, you can name it (Name the conversation (optional)).
5. Write the first message and send it.

You can also start a conversation from a list. Select people (or a group), open the actions menu and choose Start conversation. For a group, you're asked which positions to include.

If you message the same people in the same scope again without giving the conversation a name, Qik reopens your existing conversation instead of starting a new one. Naming a conversation always starts a new one.

If you pick more than 25 people, Qik asks you to confirm (for example "Notify all 40 members?") before notifying everyone.

Sending messages

• Press Enter to send. Messages appear straight away. If a message can't be sent, it's marked Not sent, with Retry and Discard options.
• Add images, and share Qik records. Shared records appear as cards in the conversation, and participants can open them if their role allows it.
• Use a message's options menu to edit or delete your own messages. Edited messages show (edited). A deleted message can be restored straight away with Restore.
• When a message is deleted, the text of any notifications about it is cleared too. Push notifications already shown on someone's phone can't be recalled.

Disappearing messages

To send a message that expires, open the composer's more options and choose Send and disappear…, then pick when it expires: Expire in 1 hour, Expire at the end of today, Expire in 1 day or Expire in 1 week. The message shows when it will disappear (for example "Disappears 5:00 PM"). When that time passes, it's removed from the conversation for everyone. It isn't permanently deleted, though: administrators can still find it. Don't use disappearing messages for anything that must never be stored.

Mentions

Type @ followed by a name to mention someone. Dashboard users can mention other dashboard logins, and app users can mention other app logins. A mentioned person gets a notification titled "Jane Smith mentioned you", and the message appears under Mentions in their Messages panel. Mentions get through even if the person has muted the conversation.

Notifications for new messages

Each new message notifies the other participants in the app and with a push notification on their phone (if they use a Qik mobile app with push notifications). Messages are never sent by email. See Push Notifications.

Muting and snoozing

In an open conversation, click the bell icon:

• Mute: no notifications for new messages until you unmute.
• Snooze for… 1 hour, 8 hours, Until tomorrow or 1 week: muted until then, then back to normal automatically.
• Unmute: turn notifications back on.

While a conversation is muted, new messages don't notify you and don't add to your unread badge. @mentions still notify you. Muting applies to you as a person, across all your logins and devices.

Unread status

Qik tracks which messages you've read, per person rather than per device. Read a conversation on your phone and it's marked read in the dashboard too. Your own messages are always counted as read.

Managing participants

Open the conversation's People panel to see who's in it.

• If you're allowed to edit the conversation (for example, you started it or you're an administrator), use Add someone to add people and Remove to remove them.
• Anyone can Leave a conversation ("Leave this conversation? It will leave your inbox.").

One-way (announcement) conversations

A conversation can be set so that only its owners can post. Everyone else can read but not reply. Use this for announcements, such as a staff notices channel for all front-of-house staff.

• The setting is the conversation's Posting policy: Everyone (the default) or Owners only.
• With Owners only, the conversation's owners (whoever started it, plus anyone listed as an owner) and administrators can post. Everyone else sees "You can read this conversation, but you can't post in it."
• Only an owner or an administrator can change the posting policy. To change it, open the conversation record (from Conversations on the Communications dashboard) and edit Posting policy.

Archived conversations

When a conversation's status is set to inactive, it's archived. It stays readable, shows "This conversation is archived.", and nobody can post in it, including administrators. Set it back to active to reopen it.

Who can see a conversation

• Participants can always read the conversations they're in.
• Other people can see a conversation if their role lets them view conversations in the scope it lives in. For example, administrators, or for group conversations, group members whose role allows it.
• Conversations and their messages are records like any other. People with the right permissions can find them under Conversations on the Communications dashboard.

Choose the In scope carefully when starting a sensitive conversation. Anyone with view access to that scope may be able to read it.

Tips

• Use one-way conversations for announcements, so replies don't drown out the message.
• Snooze busy group conversations rather than leaving them. You'll still be notified when you're @mentioned.
• For discussion about a specific record (a person, an event, a workflow card), comment on the record instead. See Comments and Notes.

FAQs