The Chat is a great way to communicate with your workforce. It's easy and instant and lets you keep everything related to your company communication in one app. The chat permissions allow you to control and let you determine how your employees can connect with admins on the chat.
In this article, we will review the Chat Permissions tab inside the chat Settings, which can only be accessed from the desktop and not the mobile app. If you are looking to learn about the Sharing Permissions, click here.
Why Use Chat Permissions
Unless you want your employees chatting with everyone in your company, then setting chat permissions is always a good idea. Chat permissions can be useful in situations where:
You don't want employees opening personal chats with certain members of the company such as the CEO, payroll manager, etc.
You are a large organization and only want employees opening chats with members of their team or branch.
You want to limit communication to be between employees and managers only.
You want to limit which employees admins can communicate with
You want to limit who can create team chats.
Now, let's begin!
Enabling Chat Permissions
To access the chat permissions settings and activate them, follow these steps:
Log in to your admin dashboard (desktop)
Access the Chat feature from the left sidebar
Click on the Settings icon
And, finally, navigate to the Chat Permissions tab
Please note: the Chat Permissions settings can only be accessed from the desktop, not the mobile app.
What Permissions Are There?
Once you access the 'Chat Permissions' tab from your admin dashboard (desktop), you will notice that the permissions are broken into three categories: All User Permissions, Admin Permissions, and Team Chat Permissions.
All User Permissions
These permissions determine how your employees use the chat feature. The options are:
Users can start chat conversations with anyone - this option allows your employee to open one-on-one chats with everyone in the app.
Users can't start chat conversations with other users - By choosing this option, a mobile user will not be able to start chats with other users. Here you have two options, where you can set exceptions to that rule:
Unless they have the same - here you can set criteria based on one of the user profile fields, for example, location, department, direct manager, etc.
Unless those other users are - here you can select certain people you would like the employees to be able to chat with, despite not having access to everyone. For example, the floor managers or HR representatives
Users can never start a chat conversation with - here you can select company members you never want employees to be able to start a one-on-one chat with, for example, your CEO or senior management members.
Admin Permissions
These permissions will determine how your admins use the chat feature. Note that you will only see these permissions if you choose the option 'Users can't start chat conversations with other users' or 'Users can never start a chat conversation with,' when setting the All User Permissions above.
The options are:
Admins can start chat conversations with anyone - here admins will be able to start one-on-one chats with anyone in the app.
Admins can start chat conversations only with users in groups that they are admins in - This option allows it so that admins will only be able to start chats with users they manage, meaning users who are in smart groups of which the admin is an administrator.
Admins can never start a chat conversation with - here you can select company members you never want admins to be able to start a one-on-one chat with for example the company's CEO. Note that this option will only appear if you select this option when setting all the users' permissions.
Team Chat Permissions
These permissions determine if your employees can create team chats or not. The options are:
Users can create new team chats
Users can't create new team chats.
With each option, you also have the option to create exceptions to the rule. This can be done by clicking except, and adding the users to which the rule does not apply.
Note that except for the users can start chat conversations with anyone and the admin permissions, as well as the user can never start a chat conversation with and admins can never start a chat conversation with, these permissions are not mutually exclusive. This means that in some cases you can select more than one option per category. For example, I can select the option that Users can start chat conversations with anyone AND they can Users can never start a chat conversation with two selected users.
Let's look at a few examples of when we might want to use each case:
I never want employees to chat with each other, but I want them to be able to start chats with managers.
In this case, you should choose the option users can't start chat conversations with other users unless those users are and select the from the list the managers.
I want my employees to be able to chat with employees from the same branch, but I want admins to chat with everyone.
In this case under the all-use permissions you should choose the options users can't start chat conversations with other users unless they share the same, and from the list of profile fields, I will choose the field branch. Then under the admin permissions I will choose to allow admins to chat with everyone.
I want employees to chat with everyone, but I don't want them to open team chats.
In this case, under all user permissions select the option that users can start chat conversations with anyone. Then under the team chat permissions select the users can't create new team chats option.
I want employees to chat with everyone but I don't want them to start a chat with the payroll specialists.
In this case, under all users' permissions, you will select the option that users can start chat conversations with anyone AND the option that users can never start a chat conversation with, and from the list select the payroll specialists.
I don't want admins to chat with employees who they do not manage.
Ok in this case since the admin permissions are connected to all users' permissions you will first need to decide the permissions you would like to give your users. You will need to use the option users can't start chat conversations with other users. Then under the admin permissions you can select the option that admins can start chat conversations only with users in groups that they are admins in.
Please note: since the admin permissions are dependent on all users' permissions you can not set all users' permissions to be that users can start chat conversations with anyone. This is because admins are also users on the app and so by default, this rule applies also to them.
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