Conversations and groups

The messenger has four different kinds of conversation. They share the same chat surface — same composer, same attachments, same search — but they differ in who's in the room and how the chat is started.

1. Direct messages (DM)

A 1-on-1 chat between two Haubot users. The simplest case.

How to start one: open the other person's profile and click Send message. Or use the + button at the top of the conversations list to search for them by name.

What's special: nothing — it's just a chat. Both people see the same thread, both can attach files, both can leave / delete their own messages while they're still unread.

2. Listing inquiries

A DM that's anchored to a specific listing. Everything works the same as a regular DM, but the chat header shows the listing's title and a small package icon that links straight back to it.

How to start one: on a listing page, click Ask the seller. The seller gets the message in their inbox tagged with the listing.

Why it matters: come back three weeks later, you can both still see exactly which machine you were talking about, even if the listing's been updated since. If you message the same seller about a different listing, that opens a separate chat — listing inquiries are kept distinct from each other and from your general DM with the seller.

3. Group chats

Multiple people in one room. Up to a reasonable team size — there's no hard cap, but groups are designed for ~10 people, not Discord servers.

Creating a group

1. Click the + button in the top of the conversations list.
2. Switch the picker to Group.
3. Give the group a title (you can rename later).
4. Search and add participants. Hit Create.

You become the group's admin automatically.

What the admin can do

• Add or remove members.
• Rename the group.
• Set or remove the group avatar (any image; nothing fancy — it just sits next to the group name in your inbox).
• Transfer admin to someone else if you want to step away.

When the admin leaves the group, admin role passes to the earliest joined remaining member automatically. If the admin transfers manually, they become a regular member.

What members can do

• Read the chat, post messages, attach files, send voice notes.
• Leave the group voluntarily.
• That's it — they can't add or remove other people.

Joining and leaving

When someone is added, removed or leaves, a small grey notice appears in the chat: "Alice added Bob", "Bob left the group". These are visible to everyone — there's no "soft leave".

When you leave a group:

• Your messages stay in the chat (they don't get deleted just because you left).
• You can be re-added later by the admin, but you'll start fresh — you won't see messages posted while you were away.
• Realtime updates stop the moment you leave: even if you have the chat open in another tab, no new messages arrive.

4. Saved Messages

Your personal scratchpad. There's exactly one Saved Messages thread per Haubot account, and it's created automatically the first time you open the messenger.

What it's for

Anywhere you'd otherwise paste a link into a "Note to self" — drop it in Saved Messages instead. It syncs across every device you sign in on, the search finds it, the media library lists files you saved here.

Common uses:

• Forward a useful message from another chat to keep a copy.
• Paste a contract or spec sheet you want quick access to.
• Record a quick voice memo to yourself.
• Bookmark a listing URL — the messenger's Links tab will surface it.

What's different from a normal chat

• It's just you in the room. There's no "other side" — every message you send is automatically marked read.
• You can delete any of your own messages at any time, even old ones (in normal chats, you can only delete messages the recipient hasn't read yet — see Forwarding and managing messages for why).
• Saved Messages is always pinned to the top of your inbox above your own pinned chats. You can't unpin it.

5. Contact-form threads

If a guest (someone not signed in) fills out a contact form on the public site, that creates a thread with our support team — it shows up in our staff inbox, not yours. You'll never see these in your messenger.

How the inbox sorts itself

The conversations list (left rail) is sorted automatically:

1. Saved Messages — always at the very top.
2. Pinned conversations — chats you've pinned (click the pin icon on any chat).
3. Everything else, by recent activity — newest message first.

A chat with unread messages keeps its position in the sort order; the unread count appears as a small red badge on the right of the row.

Tips

• Pin chats you reply to often — they jump above the activity-sorted ones. Customers you talk to weekly belong here.
• Delete a chat from your view by leaving it — for groups, that's Leave. For DMs, you can't delete the thread, but you can archive it (we hide it; the other side still has it).
• Unread doesn't mean "new" — it just means you haven't opened the chat since the last message arrived. Cross-device: if you read it on your phone, the desktop catches up the next time it reconnects.