Browse your conversations

The Messages screen is where everything lands: channels, direct messages, and family threads, all in one place. The most recent activity sits at the top. This page covers how to read the list and find the conversation you're after.

Staff and Families

Conversations come in two flavors, so school chatter and parent messages stay apart:

• Staff: internal channels and direct messages between you and your colleagues.
• Families: threads with parents and guardians.

On the phone, the Staff and Families tabs at the top switch between them. The tab you're on also sets the accent color on unread badges and dots, so a quick glance tells you which side you're looking at.

The web app keeps it all in one list. Each row already shows whether it's a channel or a person, so there are no separate tabs to flip between. On the phone, the two tabs split into Channels and Direct Messages sections underneath.

Reading a row

Each row tells you most of what you need before you open it:

• Title: the channel name, or the people in the thread. A small lock means it's a private channel.
• Preview: the latest message, in plain text with formatting stripped out. On the phone, a GIF shows up as "Sent a GIF."
• Time: how long ago the last message arrived. The phone keeps it short ("5m", "2h", "3d"); the web spells it out ("5 minutes ago").
• Unread: a colored badge on the right counts what you haven't read. Unread rows also carry a dot by the time and sit in bolder text.

Tap or click a row to open it. Opening a conversation marks its messages as read and clears the badge.

The Messages panel (web only)

The web list opens with a Messages panel across the top. It's a running tally of where things stand:

• Conversations: how many threads you're in.
• Unread: how many of them have messages waiting.
• Unread Messages: every unread message added up across those threads.
• Pending Approvals: how many suggested replies are sitting in your review queue. When that number climbs above zero it turns red, with a reminder line below it.

When you're all caught up, the panel reads "✓ All caught up." To work through pending suggestions, see AI reply drafts.

When you're removed from a conversation

Take someone off a channel or thread and it drops off their list on its own. If you had that conversation open when it happened, it closes and drops you back on the Messages list. Nothing to refresh.

Live updates

The list keeps itself current, so you rarely need to reload. When a new message comes in:

• The conversation jumps to the top.
• Its preview and time update to the latest message.
• The unread badge ticks up, unless you already have that conversation open.

New channels you're added to and new direct messages show up the same way, on their own.

Note: Pull to refresh on the phone, or reload on the web, only if you think you've dropped your connection. Day-to-day, the list syncs without you.

Looking for saved audiences, message templates, or contacts outside your families and staff? See audiences, templates, and external contacts.