The Wraptor handbook

Messages — team chat, channels, and direct messages

Messages is now Team Chat. /messages redirects to /team-chat, and that page is internal staff chat only. The four email tabs it used to have — All Emails, Sent, Email Threads and Compose — are gone. Customer email lives in the Inbox; the record of what Wraptor emailed a customer lives under Settings → Communications → Customer messages → Activity.

Who it's for

Everyone on the team. Team Chat is where your crew talks to each other inside Wraptor instead of in a group text — an installer asking which bay a truck is in, a designer telling production a file is ready, an owner telling the shop the schedule moved.

It is governed by the Messaging permission, listed under Shop → Team → Roles & Permissions as "Team messaging & channels." The built-in Manager, Designer, Production and Installer roles all hold it, so your whole standard team can use it out of the box.

Installers get the most out of it. Someone on the built-in Installer role has no money, customers, inventory or settings screens: their whole navigation is My Jobs, Schedule and Team Chat, so chat is the only way for them to reach the shop from inside the app.

Team Chat is internal. Customers never see any of it.

Where it fits

Team Chat is the internal half of your communications; the Inbox is the customer half.

Talking to a customer → the Inbox for email, or the job's Customer tab to send an update to their tracking page. See Jobs.
Checking what Wraptor emailed a customer → Settings → Communications → Customer messages → Activity. See Settings.
Talking to your crew → Team Chat.

See workflow-map.md for the full lifecycle and personas.md for role-specific patterns.

Overview

Team Chat is a single page with two panes. The left rail lists your shop's Channels and, under them, your Team — every active teammate, with a dot showing who is around. The right pane holds the conversation you picked. New messages arrive on their own: the open conversation checks for them every three seconds.

Every shop starts with one channel, general. Wraptor creates it the first time anyone opens the page and puts every active member of the shop in it — including people who joined after the channel was made. Direct messages are one-to-one and private to the two people in them.

Team Chat (`/team-chat`)

Sidebar → Team Chat, in the Shop group of the rail. On a phone, tap More in the bottom bar and pick Team Chat. Old /messages links redirect here. Someone on the built-in Installer role sees a shorter navigation — My Jobs, Schedule, Team Chat — so for them it is a top-level tab; every other address, /messages included, sends them back to My Jobs.

The header reads Team Chat, with your member count below it and "· N online now" appended whenever a teammate is active.

The rail (left)

Channels — each row shows a #, the channel name, and a count badge when there are messages you haven't read.
Team — every other active person in your shop: avatar or initials, name, role underneath, and a status dot that fills in when Wraptor last recorded them in the app under five minutes ago. A count badge appears when you have unread direct messages from them. Click a teammate to open your conversation; if you have never messaged them, Wraptor starts it.
If you are the only person in the shop, the Team list reads "Just you so far — invite your crew," linking to Shop → Team.

The conversation (right)

The pane header names what you are reading. For a channel: # and the channel name, plus its description if it has one. For a direct message: the person's avatar, their name, and either Active now or their role. On a phone this header also carries a back arrow that returns you to the rail.

Below it the messages run oldest to newest:

Date separators break the feed into Today, Yesterday, or the full date.
The sender's name and the time sit above the first message of a run; consecutive messages from the same person stack without repeating them. Your own messages are labelled You and sit on the right.
A message from someone the shop has since deleted keeps its place, attributed to Former member. A member you only deactivate keeps their name on everything they wrote.
System lines — for example "Mike joined the team" — sit centred in a small grey pill.
Scroll up and a New messages button appears to jump you back to the bottom.
An empty channel reads "This is the start of the channel — say hi to the crew." An empty direct message reads "This is the beginning of your direct message history." With nothing selected the pane reads "Pick a channel or teammate to start talking."

The pane loads the most recent 50 messages in a conversation.

The message box

The box at the bottom is labelled Message # plus the channel name — Message #general in most shops — or Message [name] in a direct message. Press Enter to send, Shift-Enter for a new line; the box grows as you type. There is also a send button beside it.

Hovering a message shows a copy icon on anyone's message and a delete icon on your own.

Capabilities

Read a channel Click a channel in the rail. Opening it clears its unread badge and marks everything in it read.

Direct-message a teammate Click any name under Team. If you already have a conversation with that person it reopens; otherwise Wraptor creates it. You never end up with two conversations with the same teammate.

See who is around The dot on a teammate's avatar is filled when Wraptor last recorded them in the app under five minutes ago, grey otherwise. The same signal drives Active now in a direct message header and the "N online now" count in the page header. Treat it as a hint, not a roster: Wraptor writes that last-seen stamp at most once every ten minutes, so a teammate who is working right now can still read as grey.

Send a message Type in the box and press Enter. Your message appears immediately; everyone else's client picks it up within about three seconds.

Copy a message Hover any message and click the copy icon to put its text on your clipboard.

Delete your own message Hover a message you sent, click the delete icon and confirm. It is removed for everyone. You can only delete your own — there is no manager override.

Automatic membership Channels are shop-wide. Every active member is a member of every channel, and opening Team Chat re-enrols anyone who is missing, so a person who joined after a channel existed still sees its history. When an invited teammate finishes signing up, a system line announcing they joined the team is posted in general.

Channels you already have Wraptor creates general for you. The Team Chat page has no new-channel button — any other channels your shop already has still appear in the rail and work exactly the same way.

Step-by-step tasks

Open Team Chat
1. In the sidebar, click Team Chat (under the Shop heading). On a phone, tap More → Team Chat.
2. The rail opens with Channels on top and Team below.
3. A channel is already open. The page does not remember where you were last time.
Read and reply in a channel
1. Open Team Chat and click the channel in the rail — general unless your shop has others.
2. Read the feed; date separators mark Today and Yesterday.
3. Type in the Message #general box and press Enter.
4. Leave the page open — replies land within a few seconds without a refresh.
Send a direct message
1. Open Team Chat and find the person under Team.
2. Click their name. The conversation opens (new or existing).
3. Type in the Message [name] box and press Enter.
Delete a message you sent
1. Open the conversation and hover the message.
2. Click the delete icon in the small toolbar that appears.
3. Confirm Delete this message? It disappears for everyone, permanently.
Copy a message out of chat
1. Hover the message.
2. Click the copy icon. The text is on your clipboard.
See who looks active
1. Open Team Chat.
2. Read the header: it counts your members, and adds "· N online now" when anyone reads as active.
3. In the Team list, filled dots are the teammates whose last recorded visit is under five minutes old. A grey dot is not proof someone is away — see the pitfalls below.
Get a teammate into chat
1. Go to Shop → Team and invite them. See Team.
2. Make sure their role holds the Messaging permission — all four built-in roles do.
3. When they finish signing up they are added to every channel and announced in general.

Settings & permissions

Who can open Team Chat

The Messaging permission ("Team messaging & channels"), assigned per role under Shop → Team → Roles & Permissions. Manager, Designer, Production and Installer all hold it by default. Take it off a custom role and /team-chat sends that person to the jobs board, and every chat action behind the page refuses.

Plan tiers

Team Chat is not plan-gated. It opens on every plan and during the 7-day free trial like every other hub, and no plan caps the number of messages, channels or direct-message conversations. What a plan limits is seats — Wraptor Starter includes two, Shop and Fleet are unlimited — so there is nobody to message until you invite your crew. There is no free plan; a shop without a plan lands on the plan picker, and its data is kept. See Plans.

Who can delete a message

Only the person who sent it. There is no admin delete: a Manager cannot remove someone else's message.

Who is in a channel

Every active member of the shop. Channels are shop-wide and there is no private channel — a direct message is the private option.

Notifications

There are none for chat. A new message does not ring the notification bell and does not send a push. The device-push and crew-ping switches under Settings → Communications → Team notifications cover job alerts, not Team Chat.

Tips & common pitfalls

Team Chat is not the Inbox. If a customer emailed you, go to the Inbox. Nothing you write in Team Chat reaches a customer.
Nothing pings you. Unread counts appear in the rail and nowhere else — no bell, no push. They are worked out when the page loads, so open or reload /team-chat to see what came in while you were elsewhere.
Refresh is every three seconds, and only for the conversation you have open. Messages arrive on their own, but not instantly, and a channel you are not looking at will not update its badge until you reload. A conversation that has no messages in it yet is the exception — it has nothing to check from, so the first thing someone else posts there appears only when you reload.
The dot lags. Wraptor stamps a teammate's last visit at most once every ten minutes, and the dot only fills for the last five — so someone sitting in Wraptor can still show grey. Ask in the channel rather than trusting the dot.
Deleting is permanent. There is no undo and no archive — the message is gone for everyone.
Everyone active shows under Team, including a role that does not hold the Messaging permission. They will not be able to read what you send until someone grants it under Shop → Team → Roles & Permissions.
Only the last 50 messages load. Chat is a running conversation, not a record. Anything that has to survive belongs on the job itself — its Timeline or its Rex tab. See Jobs.
Deleting a teammate does not erase what they wrote. Their messages stay in the channel, attributed to Former member. Deactivate is the softer option: they drop off the Team list but keep their name on everything they posted.
You cannot leave a channel. Every active member belongs to every channel, and opening the page puts back anyone who is missing.
The floating chat button is gone. Team Chat used to open from an orb at the bottom-right of every page. The corner button today is the ? help dock — Contact support, Help & docs, Purchase a design, Ask Rex — and it has no chat entry. Team Chat is a page now.

Inbox (WrapMail) — the shop's customer email: reading, replying, threads, and turning an inquiry into a job.
Team — invite teammates, and grant or remove the Messaging permission on a role.
Jobs — the job's Customer tab (tracking link and customer updates) and its per-job Rex chat.
Rex, the AI assistant — the shop's assistant, its threads, and the Knowledge base.
Settings — Customer messages (every email a customer gets, plus the Activity timeline) and Team notifications.
Installers — clicking Message on a listed installer's profile opens Installer messages (/installer-messages), a thread surface of its own, separate from Team Chat.
Plans — seats and what each tier includes.
Workflow map — where communication fits in the lead-to-completion flow.
Personas — how each role uses the communication tools.