Help and Support

Channels

What are channels?

Channels are just groups of people that need to communicate around a topic. Here are some everyday examples:

• Topics like Safety, Quality, or Permits
• Channels for your internal project team (e.g. Superintendents)
• Channels for each of your subcontractors (e.g. Electrical)

Here's an example from a general contractor project. Note how each trade has their own channel and dedicated phone number.

Project can have as many channels as you like. But we suggest you don't overdo your channels at first. See how the team communicates and what topics are important for the project.

If you are an administrator, to add a new channel, click on "Create new channel" at the bottom of the list of channels for your project. Only account administrators can create new channels.

Channel Notification Styles

 When you create a channel, you can set the notification style to one of the following options:

• Broadcast - one-way broadcast messages to a larger group of people, e.g. an entire site
• Group chat (Default setting) - two-way group chat messages
• Notified when mentioned - two-way group chat where people need to be @mentioned in order to be notified

More details on each of these notification styles follows below.

Group Chat Notification Style

If you set a channel as Group Chat, everyone will get a text message or app notification with every new message, unless specific people are @mentioned. For a very large group of people, this can get noisy. That's where the Notified When Mentioned channel setting can be useful. With this setting, people can see the messages in the FieldChat app, but won't get an app notification or text notification unless the whole @channel is mentioned or specific people are @mentioned.

Examples:

Notified When Mentioned Style

For a large group of people, the Group Chat setting can get noisy. That's where the Notified When Mentioned channel setting can be useful. With this setting, people can see the messages in the FieldChat app, but won't get an app notification or text notification unless the whole @channel is mentioned or specific people are @mentioned. 

Broadcast Notification Style

For a very large group people, broadcast-only notifications can be useful. This can be used to notify everyone on the site about site conditions, emergencies, mandatory meetings or other important information. Only channel or customer administrators can send messages in a broadcast channel. 

Broadcast messages are prefixed with an alert symbol when they are received by users in the app or as a text message.

Users will receive always receive broadcast notifications unless they are completely disabled in their personal channel notification settings (e.g. a user's notification settings for the channel are set to "Never send text messages" and "Never send app notifications").

Phone numbers

If you want to send text messages on a channel, it needs a phone number. You can assign a phone number when you create or edit a channel. If you are out of local phone numbers, contact FieldChat Help for more.

Channel admins

Channel admins can invite more users to a channel or remove users from a channel.

Deleting a channel

To remove a channel, select the Delete Channel menu option. In the mobile app, you can find this option in the channel details menu. In the web app, this is in the channel menu. If you delete a channel with a phone number, that number becomes available for use in another channel.