Making a group
Use a group when a conversation does not match a site or a staff group: a refurbishment, a Christmas rota, the people covering an event.
Open chat and press + (the phone) or New conversation (the admin panel).
Name it, then pick people. You can filter by site, staff group, role or employment type, so "all zero-hours staff at The Anchor" is a couple of taps rather than forty.
Create it. Everybody you picked sees it immediately.
Whoever created the group can add and remove people later, and so can an owner or manager.
Direct messages
Start one with anybody you could work with. Managers can message anyone in their sites; staff can message the colleagues they share a channel with. Contractors are not in chat.
What you can and cannot leave
A group you were added to: you can be removed by its creator or a manager.
Your site, group, managers and everyone channels: these follow the rota, so they are not left by hand. Mute them instead.
Muting and notification levels
Open a conversation and use its info panel (the ⓘ button) to choose:
All messages, the default.
Mentions only, for a busy channel you still need to be reachable in.
Nothing, which stops pushes entirely.
Mute until a time you pick, or indefinitely.
Urgent broadcasts still arrive. Mutes and quiet hours are for the ordinary traffic. A broadcast marked urgent cuts through both on purpose, which is why it asks the sender to think before using it.
Quiet hours
Set your own in the app under Profile > Notifications. During quiet hours normal chat pushes wait; you can allow urgent ones through or block even those.
Pinning and searching
Managers can pin a message so it stays at the top of a conversation: the fire drill date, this week's specials. Search covers the conversations you are in, so an old delivery instruction is findable without scrolling.