Messages
1. What it is
Messages lets employees send private one-to-one or small-group messages. Each new message is announced in the recipient’s Notifications, alongside tasks and approvals, and read in Messages. It is asynchronous — more like email than Chat — and governed on its own track so an admin can control retention, who may start a conversation, and whether attachments are allowed without affecting Chat channels at all.
- Enablement: Messages requires a license and is disabled by default. An admin turns it on from Admin → General Settings → Messages or from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
- What it is not: Messages is not Chat. Chat provides real-time one-to-one chats, group rooms and channels with presence indicators and typing notifications. Messages provides private, asynchronous conversations, announced in Notifications. Turning Messages off does not stop Chat’s one-to-one chats — they have their own switch in Chat’s settings (Private chat). The two apps are licensed, configured, and retained independently.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → General Settings → Messages and turn Messages on. Alternatively, enable the app from Admin → Apps → All Apps → Messages.
- Open Apps → Messages → Settings to configure its six settings: group messages, attachments, Ask AI in Messages, who can start a message, who can view messaging analytics, and the retention window. All six have sensible defaults (see §5), so the app works immediately without changing them.
- No role assignment or per-user provisioning is needed. Every member in the organization can send and receive messages once the app is enabled. To restrict who may open new conversations, change Who can start a message to Managers and above, App admins and business admins only, or Specific groups only.
- Confirm it works: open the Messages client from the profile menu at the top right (Messages). Start a one-to-one thread with another user, send a message, and verify it appears in that user’s inbox.
What employees see: the Messages client — a conversation list with a reading pane — opened from the profile menu at the top right (Messages), from the Messages tab in Communications when your organization has it, or by searching “messages”. On a phone, it is the Messages row at the top of Notifications. The New Message composer is available there, and from the user directory, org chart, and profile pages.
What employees do not see: the Messages app tile and its dashboard. They are visible only to business admins, designated Messages app admins, and anyone named under Who can view messaging analytics (who see the dashboard but not the settings). Employees who navigate directly to Apps → Messages are redirected to the Messages client.
Silent-until-configured pairing: if you enable Messages but turn Group messages off, employees can only start one-to-one threads. They will see no error — the group option simply does not appear in the composer. This is by design, but can surprise admins who expect group messaging to work out of the box (it does: the default is On).
Similarly, turning Attachments in messages off hides the attach and voice-note controls. Files sent through a direct API call while the toggle is off are rejected with an explicit error, not silently stripped.
3. How it fits together
Threads — every conversation is a thread. A thread is either one-to-one (exactly two people) or a group (three to ten people). One-to-one threads are idempotent: starting a conversation with someone you have already messaged reopens the existing thread instead of creating a duplicate. Group threads are always new.
Example: Priya messages Raj from the user directory. A one-to-one thread is created. Later she messages Raj again from a profile page — the same thread reopens with the full history intact. She then starts a group thread with Raj and two others; that is a separate conversation with its own history.
Messages vs. Notifications — Messages has two related surfaces that are easy to confuse. The Messages client is where employees read and write conversations. It is the list-plus-reading-pane opened from the profile menu → Messages. Notifications (the bell, and the Inbox) lists the notices about messages (e.g. “New mail from Raj”), filed under the Messages category; opening one takes you to the conversation. They serve different purposes: one is the conversation, the other is the alert about it.
Composing — employees start a new message from the New Message button in the Messages client, from the user directory, from the org chart, or from a profile. The composer opens as a drawer, lets the sender pick one or more recipients, add a subject line and write the first message. Files can be attached in the composer and go with the first message (up to 50 MB each); voice notes are recorded from the reply box once the conversation opens. Reply and Forward work the same way: they open the composer with the subject and a quoted body pre-filled. Forward quotes the text only — attachments and voice notes are not carried.
@Mentions — inside a message body, employees can type @ to mention a colleague who is part of the conversation. The mentioned person receives a separate notification so the mention stands out from the regular “new message” alert.
Reactions — each message offers your company’s reactions — the same set as the feed and every other app, chosen by your admin in Communications settings. Tapping a reaction toggles it; each reaction shows a count and who reacted.
Voice notes — when attachments are enabled, the reply box in a conversation on a computer includes a voice recorder. The recorded audio is transcribed automatically while your organization has AI credits available, so the recipient can read it as text instead of playing it back.
Drafts — the composer auto-saves a draft as the user types. Reopening the same thread restores the unsent draft. The draft is cleared as soon as the message is sent.
Governance vs. the client — the Messages app page at Apps → Messages is the surface for governance settings and usage analytics. Only admins, Messages app admins and the people named under Who can view messaging analytics see it (the last group sees the dashboard only). The admin-facing dashboard shows total messages, active conversations, participants, and a 30-day trend chart.
Read state — opening a conversation marks it read automatically. Employees can also mark a conversation unread from a specific message so it reappears as unread in their list. Messages has no read receipts: a sender is not shown whether the other person has read it.
Notifications and push — when someone sends a message, every other participant receives an in-app notification (throttled to one unread notification per conversation to avoid inbox clutter). Each message also triggers a mobile push notification so closed apps are woken. Mentioned users get a separate mention notification instead of the ordinary one. Mobile push honors the registered Messages notification preference, so an employee who turns push off for that category stops receiving it. Muting a single conversation (from the conversation’s own menu) stops both its notifications and its pushes for that employee only.
Relationship to Chat — Chat and Messages share no configuration. An admin can disable Messages while Chat stays on, or vice versa. Retention windows, attachment policies, and access rules are set independently for each app.
Search — Messages search is keyword-based, not semantic. When an employee searches in the Messages client, results match conversations by participant name, participant email, group-thread title, or message body text, and are capped at 50 conversations.
4. Running it
Reviewing usage
Go to Apps → Messages. The dashboard shows six analytics cards:
- Messages sent — all time, excluding deleted.
- Last 30 days — messages in the most recent 30-day window.
- Conversations — total one-to-one and group threads.
- Active (30d) — threads with at least one message in the last 30 days.
- Participants — unique people who are part of any conversation.
- Reactions — total emoji reactions on messages.
Below the cards, a 30-day activity trend chart shows daily message volume.
Changing who can start conversations
Go to Apps → Messages → Settings. Under Who can start a message, choose Everyone with access to Messages (the default), Managers and above, App admins and business admins only, or Specific groups only. This restricts who may open a new thread; replying to an existing conversation is always allowed regardless of this setting.
Setting a retention window
Under Message retention (days), enter the number of days after which messages are automatically purged. The default is 0, which means messages are kept forever. Retention is governed separately from Chat’s channel retention.
Purging runs in two automatic stages, and the second one cannot be undone. Each night, the retention job soft-deletes every message older than the window: it disappears from the conversation, from unread counts, from search and from My Trash — a message past the window cannot be restored, because the next night’s sweep would only remove it again. A conversation whose every message has been removed says so (“No messages in the last 30 days”). Thirty days later, the platform’s nightly purge destroys that message row permanently, taking its voice notes and their transcripts with it. A message’s effective lifetime is therefore the retention window plus 30 days — a 90-day window means a message is unrecoverable 120 days after it was sent. Files attached to a message go with it: they are moved to Drive’s trash the same night and destroyed 30 days later. There is no on-demand purge and no legal hold yet, so this schedule is the only way messages leave the system.
Archiving and muting conversations
Employees can archive a conversation from its action menu. Archiving is per-person — it hides the thread from that employee’s list only. The conversation reappears automatically for everyone if someone sends a new message.
Muting a conversation stops its notifications and pushes for that employee. It does not change unread counts: new messages in a muted conversation still show as unread in the list. The conversation stays visible but stops alerting until the employee unmutes it.
Managing group threads
Participants can rename a group thread (up to 120 characters), add people (up to the 10-person cap), or leave the thread. One-to-one threads cannot be renamed or left — archive is the “hide” affordance there.
Editing and deleting messages
Employees can edit or delete their own messages. Edited messages show an “edited” indicator. Deleting is a soft delete: the message disappears from the conversation for everyone and the rest of the thread is untouched, but the author can restore it from My Trash for 30 days — or, when a retention window is set, until the message is older than the window, whichever comes first. The delete confirmation says how many days that is. After those 30 days the nightly platform purge destroys it permanently — the same second stage a retention-expired message goes through (see Setting a retention window above).
Mobile access
Messages has a dedicated mobile surface. Phone-class browsers are automatically redirected there. The mobile view provides the full conversation list, message reading, composing, replying, and forwarding — all with the same governance rules enforced server-side. Tablet-class browsers stay on the desktop surface.
Loading sample data
During setup or evaluation, go to Apps → Messages → Settings and scroll to the Sample Data card. Use Load sample data to generate realistic sample conversations. Sample records are tagged and can be removed with Remove sample data without affecting real conversations.
5. Settings
All settings are at Apps → Messages → Settings.
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Group messages | On | Allows group threads (up to 10 people). When off, only one-to-one threads can be created. |
| Attachments in messages | On | Allows files and voice notes in messages. When off, the attach and voice-note controls are hidden and the server rejects uploads. |
| Ask AI in Messages | On | Lets people ask Ask AI about their own conversations, mark them read, archive or mute them, and send a message as themselves after confirming. |
| Who can start a message | Everyone with access to Messages | Controls who may open a new conversation. The other choices are Managers and above, App admins and business admins only, and Specific groups only. Replying to existing threads is always allowed. |
| Who can view messaging analytics | App admins and business admins only | Who may open the Messages dashboard (aggregate counts and a 30-day chart, no message contents). The other choices are Managers and above and Specific groups only. It never grants the settings page. |
| Message retention (days) | 0 (keep forever) | Auto-purges messages older than this many days, in two stages: a daily job soft-deletes them (they are not offered back in Trash), then the nightly platform purge destroys the message and its voice notes permanently. Effective lifetime is the window plus 30 days. Attached files go with them. |
A Reset to defaults button restores all six settings to the values above.
Each setting has a real runtime effect: the group-messages toggle is checked when creating a thread, the attachments toggle gates the upload controls and the server-side accept path, the initiation rule is enforced at thread creation, and the retention window drives a daily automated purge.
Where else the enabled/disabled toggle lives
The master on/off for Messages also appears at Admin → General Settings → Messages. Both surfaces write to the same underlying state, so toggling one is immediately reflected in the other. The governance settings (group messages, attachments, Ask AI, who can start, who can view analytics, retention) are only on the Apps → Messages → Settings page.
Real-time delivery
Messages are delivered in real time via WebSocket broadcast. When someone sends a message, every participant’s open conversation updates immediately without a page refresh. If the recipient does not have the conversation open, the new-message notification and the unread badge in their inbox update in real time as well.
6. More help
- Messages FAQ — specific setup and operating questions.
- Chat App Overview — the companion real-time messaging app with channels and rooms.
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Messages from these articles, and from your own mail: it can list what is unread, open or search the conversations you are in (never anyone else’s), mark a conversation read, archive it or mute it (for you only, as the buttons in your Messages list do), say what Messages allows in your organization, and send a message or a reply as you after you confirm it. An admin can switch this off under Messages → Settings → Ask AI.