Chat
1. What it is
Chat gives your organization real-time messaging — one-on-one direct messages, named group conversations, and channels — with @mentions, presence indicators, file sharing, inline replies, reactions, and built-in search. An optional Ask AI assistant can be brought into any conversation with an @mention or a trigger phrase, answering questions grounded in the room’s own history.
- Enablement: Chat is a licensed app. An admin enables it from Apps Marketplace, and it is off by default for every tenant.
- What it is not: Chat is the synchronous, real-time messenger. The separate Messages app is the asynchronous, inbox-resident counterpart (like internal email). “Direct messages” in Chat and “Messages” are different products governed independently.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace → Chat → Enable.
- Open the Chat app from the left-hand navigation and go to Settings. Review the defaults — private chat, group chats, file uploads, typing indicators, and the Ask AI assistant are all on by default. Adjust anything your organization needs off before users start chatting.
- Optional — restrict access. If only certain groups or departments should use Chat, configure an access policy. Chat supports contextual access policies (the gate is enforced on every request, not just the first visit).
- Optional — customize Ask AI. On the Settings page, scroll to the Ask AI identity form. You can change the assistant’s name, icon, and description so the assistant appears under your organization’s own branding. The identity is shared with the Ask AI sidebar — updating it here updates it everywhere.
- Optional — load sample data. The Settings page has a Demo data card that loads sample rooms and messages so you can explore the app without waiting for real activity.
- Confirm it worked. Open Chat → Dashboard as an admin. You should see the activity widgets (even if they show zeros). Have a test user open Chat and start a conversation — they should see the rooms list, the “Start a Chat” button, and (if enabled) the @Ask AI mention in the composer.
Pairing that silently does nothing: Ask AI grounded answers requires Semantic search to also be on. If you enable grounded answers but leave semantic search off, the assistant has no embeddings to retrieve from and its answers will not reference conversation history. Both are on by default.
When you first enable semantic search (or turn it back on), a background job backfills embeddings for all existing messages. The Settings page shows embedding progress so you can tell when history is fully searchable.
3. How it fits together
Rooms are the central object. Every conversation is a room. There are three types:
- Direct — a private one-on-one conversation. When you start a chat with one person, the app finds or creates a single direct room between you. Direct rooms cannot be renamed, and neither party can leave.
- Group — a named multi-person conversation. Any member can be in multiple groups. The creator becomes the room admin; everyone else joins as a member. Groups can be renamed and members can be added or removed.
- Channel — structurally identical to a group (same create, rename, and member-management flows), intended for broader, topic-based conversations.
Members and roles. Each room member has one of two roles: admin or member. The creator of a group or channel starts as admin. Room admins can rename the room, manage members, delete anyone’s messages, and configure per-room settings (including the per-room permissions below and the Ask AI proactive opt-in). Role promotion and demotion are available in the desktop and mobile apps; the web interface does not support role changes yet.
Pinning and muting. Members can pin conversations so they appear at the top of their rooms list, and mute a room for a set period to suppress its notifications.
Per-room permissions. Group and channel rooms expose four permission settings (under Edit Team → Settings):
- Who can add new members — any member, or admins only
- Who can see the member list — any member, or admins only
- Who can send messages — any member, admins only, or domain admins only
- Who can send important messages — any member, admins only, or domain admins only
All four default to “any member” (fully open).
Important messages and read receipt requests. A sender can mark a message as Important (recipients must explicitly acknowledge it) or request a Read Receipt (the message body stays hidden until the recipient confirms they have read it). Both are per-message choices in the composer. Neither is available in channels — only in direct and group rooms.
Ask AI in Chat. When enabled, an AI assistant can be mentioned in any room with @Ask AI (or the admin-customized name). The assistant replies in the thread, grounded in the room’s own message history when semantic search and grounded answers are both on. Admins can also set custom trigger phrases (default: “hey ai”, “/ai”) that invoke the assistant without an @mention. Each room admin can additionally opt a room in to proactive suggestions, where the assistant chimes in when it detects an unanswered question, a meeting intent, or a commitment.
Editing and deleting messages. Users can edit their own text messages within 15 minutes of sending. Users can delete their own messages at any time (no time limit); room admins can delete anyone’s messages. Both capabilities are governed by business-level settings that the admin can turn off.
File attachments. Messages can include up to 10 file attachments. Files are uploaded directly to storage (no file bytes pass through the application server). Blocked file types include executables (.exe, .bat, .sh, .msi, .dll, etc.) and browser-renderable formats (.html, .svg) that could carry scripts. Allowed types cover documents, images, audio, video, archives, and fonts.
Inline translation. Any room member can translate a message into their preferred language or any supported language. Translations are cached server-side — the same message in the same language is translated once, so repeat viewers and teammates with the same language preference reuse the cached result.
Relationship to other apps. Ask AI in Chat can open Service Desk tickets from inside a conversation (when in-chat actions are enabled). Video huddles require the Live Assist app and a configured LiveKit provider. Chat is independent of the Messages app — enabling or disabling one does not affect the other.
4. Running it
Reviewing analytics
Go to Chat → Analytics (visible to admins and chat app admins). The page shows four metrics:
- Adoption — percentage of provisioned users who have sent at least one message, with a 12-bucket trend chart
- DAU/MAU stickiness — daily active users as a percentage of monthly active users, with a 30-day daily trend
- Cross-department messaging — percentage of messages exchanged between people in different departments, with the top department pairs by volume
- @Mention response rate — how quickly @mentioned messages receive a reply, broken into 1-hour, 4-hour, and 24-hour buckets with a median response time
You can export the full dataset as a CSV for further analysis.
Managing deleted conversations
Go to Chat → Recently deleted (admin only). When someone uses “Delete for everyone” on a conversation, it enters a 30-day restore window. You can restore individual rooms or select multiple and restore in bulk. After 30 days the room and its messages are permanently purged.
Searching chat history
Go to Chat → Search. Search uses full-text keyword search by default. When Semantic search is enabled, a meaning-based mode is also available that finds messages even when the exact words differ. The search page supports filters by room, sender, and date range. Results link directly into the matching message in its conversation.
A separate Find a conversation box in the rooms list lets users filter their conversations by room name, member name, or message content without leaving the list view.
Moderating content
When Content moderation is enabled (off by default), new and edited messages are checked against blocked words and content patterns after they are delivered — the real-time send path is never blocked. Violations are either flagged (message stays visible, queued for review) or hidden (message removed until a moderator approves it), depending on the moderation action setting. An optional AI moderation layer adds LLM classification on top of keyword checks, at a per-message cost.
Customizing the Ask AI assistant
Go to Chat → Settings → Ask AI identity. You can set a custom name, description, history tip text, and avatar. This identity applies to the assistant in chat rooms and the Ask AI sidebar.
Monitoring the dashboard
Go to Chat → Dashboard (visible to all users). The personal dashboard shows:
- Active conversations this week with a 4-week sparkline
- Median response time on @mentions compared to the team
- Messaging hours heatmap with a working-hours percentage
- Top conversations with 14-day trend arrows
- AI answer feedback (reactions on AI messages, from a nightly rollup)
- Ask AI activity (turn volume, latency, and token usage)
5. Settings
All settings are at Chat → Settings (admin or chat app admin required).
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Private chat | On | Whether users can start one-on-one direct messages |
| Group chats enabled | On | Whether users can create multi-person group rooms |
| Important messages | On | Whether the Important message composer option is available |
| Read receipt requests | On | Whether the Read receipt request composer option is available |
| Edit messages | On | Whether users can edit their own text messages after sending (within 15 minutes) |
| Delete messages | On | Whether users can delete their own messages; room admins can always delete anyone’s |
| File uploads enabled | On | Whether file attachments are allowed in messages |
| Max attachment size (MB) | 25 | Per-file cap for non-video uploads |
| Max video attachment size (MB) | 500 | Per-file cap for video uploads |
| Typing indicators | On | Whether the “user is typing” animation appears |
| Semantic search | On | Enables pgvector-backed semantic search across messages |
| Video huddles (Live Assist) | Off | Adds a Huddle button to rooms (requires the Live Assist app and a LiveKit provider) |
| AI huddle summaries | Off | Records huddles and posts an AI summary to the room when the huddle ends (implies recording) |
| Chat Agent (Ask AI) | On | Lets users search chat history and find conversations from the Ask AI sidebar (read-only) |
| Chat Actions Agent (Ask AI) | On | Lets users start chats and send messages from the Ask AI sidebar, with confirmation before each action |
| Ask AI in Chat (@mention) | On | Lets anyone bring the assistant into a conversation with @Ask AI |
| Ask AI trigger phrases | On | Also invoke Ask AI when a message starts with a trigger phrase (no @mention needed) |
| Ask AI trigger phrases (comma-separated) | hey ai, /ai | The phrases that invoke Ask AI, case-insensitive |
| Ask AI proactive suggestions | On | Lets Ask AI chime in proactively in rooms that have opted in |
| Ask AI streaming replies | On | Streams Ask AI replies token-by-token rather than posting the full answer at once |
| Ask AI grounded answers | On | Grounds Ask AI answers in the room’s own history via embeddings retrieval (requires Semantic search) |
| Ask AI in-chat actions | Off | Lets Ask AI execute actions (e.g. open Service Desk tickets) from inside chat; every action requires confirmation |
| Ask AI thread summaries | On | Allows on-demand AI summaries of a conversation |
| Ask AI unread digest | On | Enables the catch-me-up digest of unread conversations |
| Ask AI reads attachments | On | Lets Ask AI extract and answer over attachment contents in the thread |
| Ask AI monthly token budget | 0 (unlimited) | Monthly cap on in-chat Ask AI token spend; 0 means unlimited |
| Ask AI composer assist | On | Offers AI rewrite/expand assists in the message composer |
| Ask AI smart replies | On | Suggests one-tap reply chips under incoming messages |
| Working hours start (24h) | 9 | Hour the workday starts; used by the dashboard outside-working-hours statistic |
| Working hours end (24h) | 18 | Hour the workday ends; must be after the start hour |
6. More help
- Chat FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Chat from these articles.