Messaging basics
Start conversations, send messages, reply to a specific message, read a conversation row at a glance, and understand the status icons. Everything you need for day-to-day chat.
Basic This is the everyday core of chat: opening a conversation, sending a message, and understanding what you’re looking at.
Conversations: direct and group
There are two kinds of conversation:
- Direct — a one-to-one thread between you and a single client. Every client automatically has one; it’s the same thread you see on their profile.
- Group — you plus several people, for a cohort, challenge, or your whole roster. Give it a name so everyone knows what it’s for.
Starting a new conversation
Open the chat area and use New conversation, then pick the people to include. One person makes a direct chat; several makes a group.
The conversation list & unread badges
Your conversations live in a list on the left, most-recent activity first. A conversation with unread messages shows a green count badge with the number of unread messages (it caps at 99+). Open the conversation and the badge clears.
Opening the chat area lands you on the list with no conversation selected — nothing is marked read until you click a conversation to open it. (This matters for shared inboxes, below: glancing at the list never marks anything read for your team.) On the web dashboard, press Esc to close the open conversation and go back to the list.
Reading a row at a glance
Under each name is a preview of the latest message in that thread. Two details on that line do a lot of work:
- “You:” in front of the preview means you spoke last. No “You:” means the client spoke last, so that thread is waiting on you.
- A message with no text of its own previews as what it actually is: Photo, Video, Voice message, or Attachment, rather than a blank line. A photo you sent reads “You: Photo”.
The daily sweep. Scan the list for rows without “You:”. Those are the clients who spoke last and haven’t been answered. It catches what unread badges miss: a message you read on your phone this morning and meant to reply to is no longer unread, but it still has no “You:”. Pair it with the Unread filter for a quick end-of-day check that nobody’s hanging.
One shared inbox for your whole team
If you work with assistants, messaging is a single shared inbox under your brand. You (the account owner) are the voice your clients see. Admins on your team work behind the scenes: they open the same conversations, pick up the slack, and reply — and to the client every message still appears to come from you. Clients never see which team member actually typed.
In practice this means:
- The owner and every admin see the same conversations and the same unread badges — whoever gets to a message first handles it.
- A reply sent by an admin is delivered to the client as the owner, keeping one consistent coach voice.
- Coaches (a more limited team role) are separate: they only see and handle their own client conversations, and admins don’t stand in for them.
Whoever opens a conversation first clears its unread badge for everyone — so the list never marks something read just because a teammate glanced at it.
Leaving something for a teammate. If you open a conversation but want someone else (or your later self) to handle it, open its header menu (⋮) and choose Mark as unread. The last message flips back to unread and the thread closes — and because the inbox is shared, it shows as unread for the whole team again.
Tip: There’s nothing to switch or select — open chat and you’re already in the shared inbox. Team roles are managed in your team settings.
Sending a message
Type in the composer at the bottom and press Enter to send. Need a new line or a paragraph? Use Shift + Enter — your line breaks and paragraphs are preserved exactly as you type them.
Tip: Messages support rich formatting (bold, links, @mentions and more). That’s its own guide — see Formatting & mentions.
Drafts are saved automatically
Start typing a message, then jump to another conversation before you send — your half-written text stays put. Each conversation keeps its own draft, including any attachments that have finished uploading, so when you come back it’s exactly as you left it. (A file still uploading isn’t kept — let it finish first.) Drafts are saved to your account, so they follow you between your devices and browsers, survive a refresh or app restart, and clear themselves the moment you send.
Shared with your team. Because your inbox is one shared inbox (owner + admins reply as you), a draft is shared across your team for that conversation — if an admin starts a reply and steps away, you (or another admin) see and can finish the same draft. The most recent edit wins, so the typing indicator below is your cue that a teammate is already on it. Your clients have their own private drafts; they never see yours and you never see theirs.
Tip: In the conversation list, a thread with an unsent draft shows a red Draft: preview, and a thread where someone’s actively typing shows a live “typing…” line — so you can tell at a glance what’s waiting and what a teammate is already handling.
A draft never hides a newer message. If the client has written since you saved that draft, the row shows their message, because that’s the thing you need to see, and your unsent draft steps aside into a small red Draft tag on the right of the row. So a half-written reply can’t quietly mask an incoming question. The Draft: preview only leads the line while your draft really is the most recent thing in that conversation.
Replying to a specific message
To answer one particular message in a busy thread, reply to it. Your message is then attached to a quoted preview of the original, so everyone can see what you’re responding to. Tap or click the quoted preview to jump back to the original message.
Reading the status icons
Your own messages (the green bubbles on the right) carry a small status icon so you know how far a message got:
| Icon | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✓ single check | Sent — delivered to Protocol |
| ✓✓ grey double check | Delivered to the recipient’s device |
| ✓✓ green double check | Read — they’ve opened it |
| ! red | Failed to send — tap to retry |
In a group, “read” reflects when everyone who needs to has seen it.
Turning off read receipts (“Seen”)
Prefer that clients can’t tell when you’ve opened a message — so you can read now and reply later without it looking like you’re ignoring them? Turn off read receipts. In My App → Settings → Features, switch Read receipts off. Then, WhatsApp-style, messages stop at Delivered and never show Read — in both directions, for everyone in your workspace. You still see your own unread badges as normal; only the “Seen” signal to the other side is hidden.
Workspace-wide. This setting applies to your whole team’s chats and defaults to on. Turn it off once and it’s off for every conversation.
Typing indicators
When the other person is composing, you’ll see a small animated “typing…” line in the thread — and they see the same when you type. It’s live in both directions, on web and mobile, and disappears on its own when they stop.
Next: make your messages clearer with Formatting & mentions →