Communication: channels, team chat & direct messages

Comments happen everywhere in the product: on an invoice, on a task, on the schedule. The Communication area in the sidebar collects them in one place — and alongside them everything that arrives through the customer portal. A channel rail on the left does that, just like in Slack.

The video shows how to keep track of mentions, the team chat and customer chats in the Communication area and how to message your team, partners and customers inside an event.

Play video2:04

You’ll find the individual steps written out below as well.

The channels

The rail on the left is the first decision on the page. The channel you picked is in the URL (?kanal=…) — so you can link to it, bookmark it, and move through the channels with your browser's back button.

• To me — your mentions. This is the channel the page opens with.
• Team chat — the internal chat for everything that belongs to no event.
• Customers — all — the messages from the customer portal, grouped per event, newest first.
• One channel per event — everything about one event: its comments first, its customer messages below. The events offered are those with something to show.
• Direct messages — your one-to-one conversations, right at the bottom. The group only appears once you have a conversation; you start a new one via New message.

On a desktop the rail sits vertically on the left; on a phone it lies horizontally above the content. The Collapse channels button makes it narrow — your browser remembers the setting per area. On a phone the rail is the list: pick a channel and you see it as a full view with All channels as the way back.

Direct messages

A direct message is a conversation between exactly two people — and it is private. Owners and admins do not read other people's conversations either; everyone only sees their own. That is not a setting anyone could flip, it is a fixed rule of the system.

You start a new conversation via New message and pick the person. Who is offered depends on who you are:

• From the office you can write to anyone on the team — colleagues and everyone who is on board through the employee portal.
• From the crew you can write to the office. You reach other colleagues only when you are scheduled on the same job — someone who only works on a different event is not in the list.
• Customers and partners are out of direct messages entirely. They have the customer channels and the emails on the event.

In a thread your own messages sit on the right, other people's on the left, each with a profile picture. Opening one jumps to the newest message; Load older brings back more. An Unread dot in the list shows whether you missed something, and it disappears when you open the conversation.

If someone uses the employee portal as an app, a new direct message announces itself as a push notification on their phone — just like a mention. On a computer it shows up in the bell.

If you write to someone who no longer exists or whose access has been blocked, a message tells you so — the message does not disappear silently.

The team chat

In the Team chat channel there is an input field that is already open. Whatever you write there is read by everyone with access to management. Customers and partners never see the team chat.

It is meant for anything unrelated to a particular event: “The storage room is locked on Friday”, “Team round at 10 tomorrow”, “Who is driving the van next week?”.

You can address someone directly with @, exactly like in any other comment. The mentioned person gets a notification in their bell, and one click jumps straight to your message.

The team chat picker lists owners and admins only. Contacts with portal access are deliberately missing: they cannot open the team chat, so a mention would be a link to nowhere for them. Address them on the task or document in question instead — or send them a direct message.

To send it, click Send or press Ctrl+Enter (Mac: Cmd+Enter) — exactly like any other comment. Enter on its own only starts a new line.

The history has a fixed height and scrolls inside itself; the input field always sits below it. When you open the channel you start at the newest message. If a new one arrives while you are at the bottom, it follows automatically — if you are reading further up, a New message hint appears at the bottom instead, and clicking it takes you to the end.

You can edit your own messages with the pencil icon and remove them with the bin — other people's you cannot.

“Customer waiting”

When you open Customers — all, the Customer waiting block sits above your customer messages: events whose latest customer message is newer than the last look in the office. A click takes you to the event’s customer channel — there it counts as read and the entry disappears.

Two things about it:

• The signal belongs to the event, not to a person. “Waiting” means nobody in the office has opened that message yet — not that you personally failed to reply. It is a team agreement.
• A message from you does not trigger it. If the office wrote last, the event is not listed, however old the read marker is.

If nothing sits under “Customer waiting”, nobody is waiting right now — the block only appears when there is something to read.

Customer messages

In the Customers — all channel you find the messages from the customer portal: grouped per event, newest first inside each group. Every row carries a label saying whether it came from the customer or the office, plus the preview text and the time. The Waiting label marks exactly those customer messages nobody in the office has opened yet — the same rule as in the block above.

At the bottom, Show older loads the next page.

You do not reply here. The hub is the overview; writing happens on the event's customer channel. A click on a row takes you straight there.

The same customer channel also exists right on the event — in the Communication tab under Customer. Only there does a message stamp itself as read: reading the Partners or Emails channel does not acknowledge any customer message.

One channel per event

Pick an event in the rail and you get both sides on one surface: the event's comments on top, its customer messages below. Only events with something to show are offered — each with its date, so that with several events sharing a name you pick the right one.

Posts your crew wrote in the employee portal show up here with the Crew label. Anyone with the Manage roles permission removes such a post via the bin — after a short confirmation. If you lack the permission, a message tells you so; if the post is already gone by then, likewise.

The same event has its own, more finely split channels in the Communication tab: Team & crew, Customer, Partners, Emails, and one per commented area. The hub bundles them, the tab separates them.

Searching

A search field sits at the top of the channel rail. As you type, the rail narrows straight away to the channels whose name matches — so you find an event even when many are running. Collapsed groups open on their own while you search. Esc or the small × clears the field again.

From two characters on, the entry Search in messages appears below the field. Clicking it or pressing Enter searches the text of the messages themselves: comments, team chat, customer messages and your own direct messages. You only find what you are allowed to read anyway — other people's direct messages or events outside your access never show up. The search term is highlighted in every hit, newest first; one click takes you to the matching channel. The 60 most recent hits are shown — if you do not find what you are looking for, make the term more specific.

In an event's Communication tab the search field only filters that event's channels; searching all messages happens on the Communication page.

Archived events

When you archive an event, its channel moves into the Archive group at the end of the rail. The group is collapsed so it stays out of your way day to day. Nothing is deleted: the thread stays readable, and search still finds messages from archived events. Bring the event back from the archive and its channel is back with the others.

Narrowing the list

A filter card sits above the list. Which filters it holds depends on the channel:

• Event — only comments for one particular event. The list offers exactly the events that have comments at all, each with its date. With No event you see what belongs to none. In an event channel this picker is missing: the event comes from the rail there.
• Area — only documents, only tasks, only the schedule and so on.
• Period — the last 7, 30 or 90 days.

You can combine all three freely. On the right of the same card it says how many comments are loaded right now, for example “24 comments”. If any filter is active, a Reset filters button sits next to it, putting everything back to the channel's starting point. While a filter change loads, the list turns pale for a moment — the old selection is still shown, but no longer applies.

If a combination finds nothing, it says “No comments for this selection.” along with the same reset button. That is something else than “Nothing here yet. …” — that is how you tell whether your filters are too tight or whether nothing has really been written.

New comments while you read

When someone writes anywhere in the workspace, the row is not simply pushed between yours — the text would slide out from under your finger. Instead a button appears above the list, for example “3 new comments”. Only your click pulls them to the top of the list, and the counter goes to zero.

Two things about it:

• Your filters count along. If you narrowed to one event and someone comments on another, the counter does not rise.
• In the To me channel the button does not count. Whether a new comment is about you can only be told on reload — a counter for it would be guesswork. That you were mentioned reaches you through the bell anyway.

If someone edits a comment you are looking at, its text changes immediately. That shifts nothing, so it does not have to wait.

If the connection drops, it says “Connection lost, reloading”. Once it is back, whatever you missed lands in the counter.

The Team chat and the direct messages behave like any other comment area: new messages appear there directly, without a button.

Reading the rows

Above each day there is a separator line — Today, Yesterday or the weekday with the date. The row itself then only carries the time; hover it to see the full date.

Each row shows

• the area as a label (task, event, schedule, document, inquiry or function sheet),
• the name of the object, for example the invoice number,
• who wrote it and when,
• and the text with mentions highlighted. Your own name is coloured there, every other mention stays neutral — that is how you spot at a glance what is about you.

A click on a row takes you to the place the comment lives — and jumps right to it. For a task comment the task opens in a dialog, even if it was finished long ago. Replies always happen there, not in the overview. That way every comment has exactly one home.

The counter on the sidebar

If a number sits next to Communication, those are your unread mentions. Mentions between colleagues do not count — everyone sees their own number. At zero the counter disappears entirely. Direct messages do not count here — they have their own notification on the phone and in the bell.

There are two ways to bring it down:

• You open the Communication area. Everything on the page — the team chat and the comments in the list — counts as read. The number drops immediately, without a reload.
• You read or dismiss the notification in the bell.

Both count against the same number: what you have seen here also disappears from the bell.

The counter does not simply jump to zero, but to the honest remainder. Mentions that were not on this page at all — because they sit further down behind Show older, or because they hang somewhere that is not shown here — stay unread. So if a number is still there after opening, you really do have something open.

What you do NOT see here

The overview only shows what you are allowed to see anyway:

• Without the View finances permission, no document comments appear — neither the row nor the excerpt nor the document number.
• Without the View events permission, comments on tasks, events, the schedule and function sheets are missing.
• If your role is restricted to certain events, you only see the comments and customer messages of those events here too.
• Inquiry comments and the team chat are visible to everyone with access to management.
• Direct messages are seen only by the two people in them. Anyone not part of it sees neither the conversation nor that it exists.

A mention on a task

If someone mentions you on a task, both the row in this overview and the notification in the bell take you straight into the task dialog — not just to the task list. The named comment is briefly highlighted there.

That also holds for finished tasks and for ones far down the list: the task is loaded deliberately. If it has been deleted in the meantime, or is not visible to your role, a “Task not found” note tells you so — instead of leaving you on the list without a word.

In the task dialog the comment area is open from the start and carries the count in its header, for example Comments (2).

Common questions

Can I reply right in the overview? Only in the team chat and in direct messages. A comment should have exactly one place where it comes into being — click the row and you are there.

Do customers see the team chat or my direct messages? No. The team chat is purely internal, like every comment in Univents. Direct messages are seen only by the two people in them.

Who can I reach with a direct message? From the office: everyone on the team. From the crew: the office, and colleagues only when you share a job. Customers and partners not at all.

Why can't I find a colleague in the “New message” dialog? Because you currently share no job, or their access has expired. Only people who can actually reply are offered.

Why does a team chat post not show up in an event's Communication tab? Because it belongs to no event. The tab there only shows what hangs on that one event — and so does an event channel in the hub.

Where do I find the mention the bell is talking about? Click the notification — it takes you to the comment and briefly highlights it. Or open the To me channel.

Why can't I see a team chat message in the comment list? It already sits in the team chat field — the list therefore hides it, so nothing appears twice.

When does an event leave “Customer waiting”? As soon as someone from the office opens that event's Customer channel. A click on the entry takes you exactly there.