Team chat
Keep conversations, files, decisions, and follow-ups together in channels and direct messages.
Chat gives your team a shared place to talk about work. Use a channel for an ongoing topic, a direct message for one person, or a group conversation for a smaller working group. Open Chat as a full page or keep a conversation beside your work in the floating chat panel.
Start a conversation
People with workspace chat access can find and join public channels. Private channels are visible only to their members. Membership rules may add people automatically. Open the member list to see who is included before sharing information. Team chat is included on Free and paid plans; your seat and workspace permissions still decide what you can see or send. Developer Support and agent conversations have separate access rules.
- Open Chat. The conversation list groups Starred conversations, Channels, Direct messages, External connections, Activity, and Later.
- Choose New channel to create a space for an ongoing topic. Give it a clear name, such as Receiving or Purchasing. New channels start public; change visibility in the channel’s Access settings before posting information meant for a smaller group. Channel creation depends on your workspace permissions.
- Choose New message to pick people or agents. Matte starts selected, so deselect Matte if you want a conversation with people only. One recipient opens a direct message; several recipients create a group.
- For a group, keep the suggested conversation name or enter your own, then choose Start conversation. You can find more recipients by typing in Find a person or agent.
Write and share files
The message composer supports bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, links, numbered and bulleted lists, quotes, inline code, and code blocks. Use formatting to make a short update easy to scan, or send a file with a note explaining what the team should do with it.
Attach PNG, JPEG, WebP, PDF, TXT, CSV, or XLSX files up to 20 MB each. Images can be opened for a larger view, and attachments can be downloaded by people who can access the conversation. If an upload fails, use Retry before sending.
- Mention a person. Type @ and choose someone from the suggestions to draw their attention to the message. The choices follow the conversation’s membership and access rules.
- Mention everyone. @channel, @all, and @everyone address the people in the conversation. @here and @online address active members. Broad mentions depend on the channel’s permissions.
- Ask an agent. An agent added to a group or channel responds when mentioned by name. A broad mention does not ask every agent to run a task.
Keep a discussion in a thread
Hover over a message and choose Reply in thread to discuss that update without filling the main conversation. The thread opens beside the transcript. When a reply also matters to the whole conversation, select Also post in the main conversation before sending it.
Use the conversation’s Options menu to open Threads or Pinned messages. An owner may configure inactive threads to drop out of the normal thread list; showing older threads brings them back. Their history is not deleted just because a thread is inactive.
- React. Choose Add reaction to acknowledge a message with an emoji. Reaction counts show how many people used each reaction.
- Edit. Edit your own message from its action toolbar. An edited label makes the change visible. Agent direct messages have an additional restriction: only your latest message can be edited.
- Delete. You can delete your own messages. People with message-management permission can remove others’ messages. A message with replies may remain as a deleted placeholder so its thread stays readable.
Find a message again
Use the search control in a conversation header to search its history. Chat search can narrow results by conversation, author, and date range, and opens a result in its original conversation or thread. The date control in the transcript lets you jump to an earlier day.
For more precise browsing, choose Options → Filter messages. You can combine conditions for From, Mentions me, Pinned, Saved for later, Has attachments, Has replies, Sent, and Text. The filter tells you whether it applies to the entire conversation or only loaded messages.
- Star a conversation. Use the star in its header to keep it in the Starred section of your list.
- Pin a message. Choose More actions → Pin message to make an important decision or reference available through Pinned messages. Pinning depends on the channel’s permissions.
- Save for later. Choose More actions → Save for later to add a personal follow-up to Later. There you can set a reminder for tomorrow, mark it Complete, or Reopen it.
- Mark unread. Choose Mark unread from here to return to a point in the conversation later. The new-message indicator helps you catch up.
Send a message later
Where the composer offers scheduling, choose a suggested time or a custom date and time. Suggestions include an hour from now, tomorrow morning or afternoon, and the next Monday. Times use your configured timezone.
Scheduled messages must be at least one minute in the future and can be scheduled up to 120 days ahead. Review scheduled messages from the composer, cancel one you no longer need, or retry a failed delivery when Retry is available. The sender still needs access when the message is delivered.
Chat while working elsewhere
Minimize a conversation into the floating chat panel to keep working on another page. The panel supports multiple conversation tabs and can be resized. Expand chat returns the conversation to the full Chat page.
External connections includes Developer Support when it has been provisioned for your workspace. That conversation is shared with the Matte team, and everyone in your workspace is included. Use it for questions, problems, and ideas you want that group to see. It is a managed connection, so its membership and settings differ from an ordinary team channel.