If your company contains multiple positions or departments you may want to limit who your user can chat with based on these criteria. For example, if you run a restaurant you may want to limit users to only start a chat with the same position, waiter with waiters, cooks with cooks, and so on. Our private chat settings contain the users can’t start chat conversations with other users unless they have the same custom field option. This option lets you fully customize the chat settings to fit your company's needs.

This Article with go over:

Now before we get started on setting these chat settings up let's go over some basic things you should know.

Custom Fields are a smart way to identify and group your workforce. Custom Fields can be anything from T-shirt size, to position, department, or birthday. The options are endless. It is important to note that only drop-down custom fields apply to the chat.

To set up a Custom Field we will navigate to a Users Profile and select the settings icon in the right hand corner.

You will then be brought to the employee details menu. Here, select the + Add Field button, and choose Dropdown. Then we will create the possible options this field will contain.

In the example below you can see I created the Custom Field Position with the options waiter, bartender, cook, manager, and hostess.

Once you have created a custom field for one user that custom field will be added to every one of your user's profiles. You will only need to update it. Take a look at how this looks below!

Pro Tip: If you are still unsure how to set up drop-down custom fields have a look at this article.

Now that you know what the Custom Fields are and how to set them, let's get started on setting up your chat settings!

To activate the chat navigate to the left sidebar, enter the company chat, and press the activate chat button.

After activating the chat, click on the chat settings.

Once you enter the chat settings there will be a variety of options, but for our purpose, we will only use the Users can’t start chat conversations with other users unless they have the same option. Then we will select from the drop-down the Custom Field we want to be our criteria.

Take a look at the example below where I set my chat settings to be Users can’t start chat conversations with other users unless they have the same Position.

Now based on what the Custom Field Position is set as in the user's profile is who they will be able to chat with. Building off of our restaurant example above, bartenders will only be able to chat with other bartenders and waiters with other waiters.

Pro Tip: To learn more about the different chat settings check out this article.

Now that you have the idea, let's go over a few examples you may want to use in your company.

Example 1: Allow only users from the same branch.

To set this up we will first need to make sure we create a drop-down Custom Field called Branch, and that each user profile has this Custom Field filled out. We will set this up the same way we did above with our Position Custom Field only this time it will be called Branch and contain branch options.

Then we will go to our chat settings, to the private chat settings, and set them to be Users can’t start chat conversations with other users unless they have the same Branch.

Example 2: Allowing only those with the same position and branch to chat.

First, we will make sure we have created two drop-down Custom Fields named Position and Branch as we did above. Then we will make sure both of these fields are set inside the with the relevant options.

We will then go to our chat settings, to the private chat settings, and set them to be Users can’t start chat conversations with other users unless they have the same, Position and Branch Custom Field options.

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