Team chat

Team chat is for the people inside your practice. Patients never see it and it never touches a patient conversation: it is the place to ask a colleague a quick question, hand over a call, or keep a small group in the loop while everyone carries on working.

Every member of the practice can use it, whatever their role, as long as they have a workspace to sign into.

Open it

Click the chat icon at the bottom of the sidebar, beside Support. A dot on the icon means you have unread messages; the counts per thread are in the panel.

In the desktop app, click Team chat at the bottom of the left rail instead. The panel opens beside the rail, and threads dock at the bottom right just as they do in the browser, staying open while you switch between views and take calls.

The contacts panel opens at the bottom left of the page, right next to the button. It stays where it is while you move around the app, so you can keep a conversation going from Today, the calendar or a patient record.

The panel

The panel has three parts:

• Online — colleagues who have the app open right now, each with a green dot. Click a name to open a direct message with them.
• Chats — your existing threads, newest activity first, with an unread count on each. Click Load more to reach older threads.
• People — appears when you search, or when you click New direct message: every member of the practice.

Type in the search box to filter all three at once.

Click New group to start a group thread. Give it a name if you like, tick the colleagues to include, and click Create group. Anyone in a group can add or remove members later, or leave it, from the Members button in the chat window.

Chat windows

Each thread you open appears as a small window docked at the bottom right. You can have several open side by side. When there is no room for another, the oldest windows collapse into a +N pill; click it to bring one back.

• Click the title bar to minimise a window to its title; click again to expand it.
• When a colleague messages you, the thread pops up minimised at the bottom right with its unread count, unless you already have it open. Click the title to read it.
• Click × to close it. The thread stays in Chats.
• Drag any window's title bar sideways to slide the whole row along the bottom of the page when it covers something you need, such as a Send button. The position is remembered.
• Windows stay open as you move between pages, so a half-typed reply is not lost by opening a patient.

Type in the box at the bottom and press Enter to send. Shift+Enter adds a new line. Esc minimises the window you are typing in; in the panel, Esc closes it.

A message that did not send shows Not sent with a Retry button. Retrying never sends the same message twice.

Emoji and reactions

• Click the smiley beside Send to pick an emoji. It goes in where your cursor is. For an emoji that isn't in the grid, use your computer's emoji panel (Ctrl+Cmd+Space on a Mac, Windows+. on Windows).
• To react to a message, hover over it and click the smiley beside it, then pick an emoji. On a touch screen the smiley is always shown.
• Reactions appear under the message with a count. Your own are highlighted. Click one to add or remove yours, and hover over it to see who reacted.
• Everyone in the thread sees reactions straight away. A reaction never sends a notification and never counts as unread.
• If a colleague leaves the practice, their reactions stay on the messages.

On a phone-sized screen the panel and the open window take the whole screen, with a back button to return to the list.

Notifications

• The sidebar badge and the panel update live.
• A colleague who is not looking at the thread gets a push notification on the devices they have enabled under Settings → Notifications. Team chat is push-only: it never appears in the notification bell and never sends an email, so the bell stays for patient and practice events.
• While the thread is open and focused on your screen, no desktop alert fires for it.

On the phone

In the mobile app, open More → Team chat for the same threads (a dot on More shows unread messages). Tap a thread to read and reply. Press and hold a message to react with an emoji, and tap a reaction to add or remove yours. Use New message to start a direct message, or New group to create a group. Tapping a team-chat push notification opens the thread straight away, and no banner is shown for a thread you already have open.