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Comms

Pick a client, pick a channel, and read it in something that looks like the product it came from — so client conversation sits beside the client's work instead of in four other apps.

Where to find it: Comms in the mode switcher.

What this section is about

Comms mirrors conversations from accounts each person connects: Gmail, Slack and Google Chat. The top of the surface picks a client; tabs beside it pick which of that client's channels you are reading. Each pane is dressed as the product it mirrors, because a conversation is easier to read in the shape you already know it.

Connections are per person, not per workspace. That is not a preference: a bot can never be in a human-to-human DM, so the only way to see an inbox is with the permission of the person whose inbox it is.

Who can read a conversation is decided by who was actually in it — not by client access. Having a client does not give you a colleague's DMs.

Important features to use

  1. 01Connect the accounts you want mirroredSettings → Connected accounts. Google asks separately for "send invoices from my address" and "bring mail and chat into Comms" — the second is a much bigger consent, so it is offered as an upgrade on the row rather than demanded on the way in.
  2. 02Set each client's message retentionA client's Settings tab decides whether message text is stored at all. The default is metadata only, which is why a conversation can show "message text isn't retained for this client" — that is the setting, not an error. Turning it up is not retroactive; turning it down hides the back catalogue immediately.
  3. 03Fetch recent messagesIn the client picker's footer. Messages arrive by push, so a workspace connected an hour ago has nothing in it until somebody speaks. This goes and gets the recent history, and it is safe to press twice.
  4. 04Reply, Reply all and Forward on mailRecipients for a reply come from the thread rather than being typed, so a reply can only ever go to the people already on it. Compose and Forward do take addresses. Everything is sent from your own connected mailbox, as you.
  5. 05Star mirrors Gmail's own starStarring in OS3 stars in Gmail and vice versa, and Starred is a folder in the mail rail. It is not retroactive: existing threads show no star until an ingest has seen them again.
  6. 06Read state goes both waysMail read state round-trips with Gmail. Slack and Chat are polled during working hours and only ever marked read — a conversation you read in Slack stops being bold here, but marking something unread in OS3 is kept local, because winding a provider's cursor backwards would fight our own sync.

Common questions

My inbox is empty after connecting Slack.
Nothing has been said since you connected — ingestion is a push. Use Fetch recent messages in the client picker's footer to pull the recent history in.
Messages show as unread that I have already read elsewhere.
For Slack and Chat the inbound check runs on a schedule during working hours, so it can lag. Mail is near-immediate.
A Chat sender shows as users/1234567890.
Google only gives us a display name through a directory lookup, which needs a scope added after Chat shipped. Reconnect your Google account under Settings → Connected accounts and names fill in from the next sweep. Messages, reactions and read state are unaffected meanwhile.
Can I start a new email thread?
Yes — Compose in the mail rail. It sends from your own connected mailbox in plain text, with Cc available. There are no attachments and no Bcc.
Why can I see one colleague's client channel but not another's?
Access follows who was in the conversation. A shared channel both of you are in is visible to both; a DM is visible to the people in it.