How to turn on chat for a group

Messaging works through the groups you already have in Hubb, so there is nothing new to build. Chat is switched on group by group, which means your church decides exactly where conversations can happen, and can switch any of them off again at any time. Nothing is enabled across your whole church by accident.

Switching chat on

1. In your web office, open the group in the group tree.
2. Go to Group Settings and open the Chat section.
3. Tick either or both of the two options, depending on what the group needs. Direct Messages lets members of the group message each other one to one. Group Messages gives the group a shared conversation everyone in it can see.
4. Press Save. Members can start chatting in the app straight away.

Setting an end date

Both options can either run Ongoing or Until a date and time you choose. An end date is genuinely useful for anything temporary: an event team, a term-time course, a mission trip, a committee that only meets for a season. Chat switches itself off when you said it should, so nobody has to remember.

Making an announcement-only group

Under Group Messages, the Who can send messages? option decides who can post.

• Leaders and Members can message gives you an ordinary group conversation.
• Only Leaders can message turns the group into an announcement channel. Members read but do not post.

The second one is worth knowing about. It suits a large group where a shared conversation would be noisy, or anywhere you want to send information out without starting a discussion.

Setting quiet hours

The At what times of day? option limits when members can post to a group chat. Choose Any time, or set a window with Between and two times. Members can only send messages inside that window. Leaders can always send, whatever the time.

This is a small setting that prevents a common problem: a group chat that pings people at midnight. Setting a sensible window on your busier groups saves a lot of goodwill. Members can also mute a conversation themselves.

Groups that include children

Children are not part of group chats, by design. If you switch group chat on for a group that includes children, the adults in the group get their conversation and the children simply do not have it: the group chat never appears in their messages, they get no notification about it, and a child cannot post into one.

This is deliberate. A group conversation cannot be approved message by message, and every message to a child needs a parent’s approval. To reach the children in a group, a leader either messages them individually in Chat, or sends a mailing or Broadcast to the group, and in both cases every child’s copy goes to their guardian for approval. To reach the parents instead, use the Substitute children option when sending.

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Good to know

• Any administrator who can see a group’s settings can switch chat on for it.
• Switching chat off does not delete anything. Chat history is never deleted. See How to switch chat off for a group.
• Ordinary chat between adults is private to the people in the conversation. Nobody at your church can read it from the web office, including your administrators. A group chat is visible to the group’s leaders in the ordinary way, because they are in the conversation. See Who can see chat messages?
• Members need the app installed and need to be logged in. Our guide on installing the church app covers that, and it is worth sending round when you first switch chat on for a group.
• Start small. One or two groups who will actually use it beats switching it on everywhere and hoping. See Getting started with Messaging, start to finish.