How to send a message?

To send a message to a team member, you first have to be in the same project as the person you want to send a message to. This condition might seem odd for some users depending on their permission and that's fine. Let's talk a bit about this (you can skip the next section and jump directly to the next one if you just want to learn how to send messages).

Permissions and Sending Messages

A user could be given permission to Manage projects. This will give them the ability to view all projects in an account even the ones they're not assigned to.

Let's say we have User A with such permission. Then we have User B who is assigned to a project we'll simply call Project X without this permission.

User A is not assigned to Project X, but since he has the required permission, he can see this project. User A decided to send a message to User B who is assigned to Project X.

User B decided to reply to User A's message, but after composing the message, she found that the send button doesn't work. Is it broken? No. She can send a message to another team member (who is also assigned to Project X) just fine.

User B then decided to try a workaround by sending a message from scratch. However, she can't find User A's name in the list of available recipients in Project X.

What went wrong?

The reason behind this is User A is not assigned to Project X. Normally, they won't be able to send a message to one another unless they are both assigned to the project. However, since User A has the "Manage projects" permission, he was able to circumvent this and can send a message to User B.

How to Send a Message to a Team Member?

Now that the complicated stuff is out of the way, let's see how to send a message to a team member.

There are three ways to send a message. The first one is through the mailbox accessible in the project level menu. The second one is through the workflow status widget in the sidebar of the content editor page. And the final one is through the project team widget in the project dashboard.

Option 1

In the project level menu, click Mailbox. This will bring out a dropdown showing you your most recent messages. Click the button "Go to mailbox" at the bottom of the dropdown.

This will take you to the mailbox page. On the left side of the screen, under Actions, click the New message button (#1).

Select your recipients (#2). If your message has something to do with a certain article, you can select it from the "regarding" dropdown menu (#3). Note that the recipients will change to only include users assigned to a workflow status for the article you've selected.

Compose your message (#4) and then you have the option to either send or discard it (#5).

If you've sent it, you'll be able to view it in the Sent mail section which is accessible under the Navigation widget.

Option 2

In an assignment, you can directly send a message to a user assigned to one of its workflow statuses.

Under the workflow status widget, find the user you want to message and click the small "message icon" beside their name.

This will directly take you to the compose message page with all options (recipients and "regarding") automatically selected to match the article and user.

The only thing you need to do now is to type your message and then send it (or discard it if you changed your mind).

Option 3

In the project dashboard, there's a widget that displays all currently assigned users for the current project called project team.

Simply hover your mouse over the name of the user you want to message and an icon that when clicked, will take you directly to the compose message page for the said user. Note: the "manage team" link present in the project team widget in the above image may not be visible to you as it requires certain permissions.