Chat

Real-time conversation between users, inside the application.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Communication:

• Manage Chat Engines — the engines defining who may chat with whom

Architect Panel → Security:

• Permissions — who can use chat at all

What it gains you over a separate tool

Context. A conversation happening inside the application is next to the record it is about, visible to the people who work on that record, and retained under your rules rather than a third party's.

The alternative — a general chat tool alongside — means the discussion about a case lives somewhere the case cannot see, and somebody joining later has no way to find it.

What it is not

It is not a replacement for your organisation's general messaging, and trying to make it one produces a poor version of a tool people already have. Chat here earns its place where the conversation is about the work in this system.

Decide retention before enabling

The question people skip. Chat feels ephemeral and is not — messages are stored, discoverable, and disclosable in a subject access request like anything else.

Conversations about identifiable people are records about those people. Decide how long you keep them and apply it, rather than accumulating years of informal discussion nobody has thought about.

Tell people it is retained

Because the interface looks like chat, people write as though it disappears. It does not. A short note in your guidance prevents the kind of remark that reads badly a year later in an unexpected context.

Chat is not a record

The other half of the same problem. A decision reached in chat is not recorded anywhere the system understands — it is not on the record's timeline, does not appear in reporting, and is invisible to somebody reading the case.

Make it a habit that anything decided in chat is written to the record's timeline. Chat is where the conversation happens; the timeline is where the outcome belongs.

Restrict who can use it

Chat is a route for information to travel between people, which is exactly what your permissions exist to control. Somebody who cannot see a record can still be told about it in chat.

That is not a reason to avoid chat — it is a reason to be deliberate about who has it, particularly on external-facing installations.

Worked example

A team enables chat for internal staff only, with a six-month retention and a line in their guidance saying messages are stored and disclosable. Case decisions reached in chat are written to the case timeline as a note — a habit that took a fortnight to establish and means the record still explains itself.

Recommendations

• Set retention before enabling.
• Tell people messages are kept.
• Write decisions to the record, not just to chat.
• Restrict who has it, especially externally.