Talk to your team with Team chat

Team chat is built into Crewtavo. It gives your business channels to talk in, like a group text that stays organized: news for everyone, one channel per crew, and one for the office. It’s off until an owner or admin installs it, and it costs nothing extra: messages and photos are stored in your own Crewtavo like everything else.

Install it

1. Open Apps (in the menu on a computer, or under More on a phone) and choose Crewtavo - Team Chat, under Built into Crewtavo.
2. Click Install. The button turns into a ring that fills while it installs, then into a red Uninstall.

Crewtavo starts you with:

• Announcements: everyone reads it; owners, admins and the office post.
• #general: anything for the whole team.
• A channel for each crew, named after it (North Crew becomes #north-crew). Field crew only see their own crew’s channel.
• #office: owners, admins, office and estimators.

Everyone on your team then has Team chat in the menu, and Chat in the bar at the bottom of their phone. A crew added later in Settings → Crews gets its own channel too.

Talking

• Send a message: type it and press Enter on a computer, or tap the send button on a phone. Shift + Enter starts a new line.
• Mention someone: type @ and pick a person or a role, like @Field crew. They get a notification in the bell and, unless they’ve turned it off, a push to their phone. Owners, admins and a channel’s managers can also use @everyone.
• Photos: tap the camera to take a photo or pick up to six. They’re shrunk before they upload, so they go quickly on a phone signal.
• Link a job: tap the job button and pick one. Everyone who can open that job sees a card that opens it; anyone who can’t (another crew’s job) just sees that a job was linked.
• React, reply, edit and delete: hover over a message on a computer, or tap it on a phone. React with Thumbs up, On it or Seen. You can edit and delete your own messages.
• Pin a message: people who manage a channel can pin important messages, like a gate code or a change of plan. Everyone finds them under the pin at the top of the channel.

Unread channels show in bold, and a red number counts messages that mention you. The member list on the right shows who’s in the channel and who’s online.

Tip

Opening a mention’s notification takes you straight to the message.

Who sees what

Channels follow your team’s roles, the same roles as Settings → Roles. To give someone different access, change their role there.

Owners and admins choose what each role can do in Chat settings (the gear at the top of the channel list):

• Can see, Can post and Can manage for each channel. Manage means pinning messages, changing the topic and removing other people’s messages.
• Name color: the color the role’s names and @mentions show in.
• Show separately in the member list: people with the role get their own group, like “Crew lead — 2”.
• Anyone can @mention this role: when it’s off, only owners, admins, the office and a channel’s managers can.
• Crew channels: their own crew only: someone on North crew sees #north-crew but not the other crews’. On for field crew to start with.

Change what you like, then click Save changes. A custom role follows its access level until you give it rules of its own; Follow puts it back.

Owners always see and can do everything.

Note

These rules are kept by the database itself, not just the screen: someone whose role can’t see a channel can’t read its messages or photos any other way either.

Channels

On the Channels tab of Chat settings, owners and admins can:

• Add a channel for the whole team, as announcements, for the office, or for a crew.
• Edit a channel’s name, category and topic. Channels are grouped by category in the list.
• Move a channel up or down.
• Archive a channel. It becomes read-only and only owners, admins and its managers still see it. Restore brings it back.

Notifications

Mentions arrive in the bell right away. By push, email or text, they follow each person’s choices in Settings → Profile → Notifications, under Team chat (push is on to start with). A push comes about a minute after the message, and not at all if the person has already read it.

Messages show up instantly for everyone who has Crewtavo open. Phones and browsers don’t keep a web app running in the background, so someone with Crewtavo closed hears about mentions by push and catches up when they open it.

Uninstall it

On Apps → Crewtavo - Team Chat, click Uninstall. Chat disappears from everyone’s menu, and every channel and message is kept. Installing it again brings everything back as it was.