Chat: notifications, reactions, polls and pinned messages

Chat notifications get a boost, and chat gains reactions, polls and pinned messages.

Who can use it: everyone can react, vote and see pinned messages. Coaches and club admins can create polls and pin messages. Where to find it: the chat panel on the main app, and Chat in the parent portal.

Chat notifications get a boost

Messages now reach you when you are not looking at the app.

• Email tells you about messages you have not read, a few minutes after they arrive. Nothing to switch on; it works for everyone already.
• Notifications on your phone or computer arrive within seconds and work when the app is closed. Turn them on in My Profile → Notifications, or from the prompt you will see in the app.
• If you are reading a conversation as it happens, nothing is sent — the point is to catch what you miss, not to duplicate what you have seen.

React to a message

Six reactions: 👍 ❤️ 🎉 👏 😂 😮

Tap the + under any message. Tap the same one again to take it back, and hover a reaction to see who used it.

There is deliberately nothing negative in the set. A thumbs-down in a team chat full of parents starts arguments that a message on its own would not, and we would rather not put that on the screen.

Polls

Coaches and club admins can ask the group to choose between options — team dinner Friday at 7, or Thursday at 6:30? — instead of counting fourteen replies by hand.

Tap + Create a poll above the message box. Write a question and the options, or use Yes / No for a straight question. Four choices at the time you create it:

• Make anonymous — hides who voted. This one is permanent, so the poll makes a promise it can keep.
• Let people pick more than one — for “which of these nights suit you?” rather than “pick one”.
• Hide results until someone votes — stops early answers swaying later ones.
• Closes — an optional deadline. You can change it afterwards.

Anyone in the conversation can vote, and change their mind until the poll closes. On a multiple-choice poll the count is of votes rather than people, since one person may pick several.

Pin a message

Coaches and club admins can pin one message to the top of a conversation, so the thing everyone keeps scrolling back for stays put — practice details, a field change, the address for Saturday.

Hover a message and tap the pin. Pinning a different message replaces the pin: there is only ever one, so it is either current or obviously out of date, rather than one of four things nobody has tidied.

Everyone in the conversation sees the pin. Only coaches and club admins can change it.

For club admins

Club administrators are now told about high-severity flagged messages as they happen, and get a weekly summary of anything still waiting for review.

The Reported Messages item in Communications also carries a count of what is outstanding, so you can see at a glance whether anything needs you.