Chat Overview

Chat is where your company's day-to-day messaging lives: the running conversation with each driver, private messages between managers, and shared channels for the team. It sits in the left sidebar as Chat, with a red badge showing your unread count.

There are two versions of Chat, and the sidebar entry reads Chat in both — so the quickest way to tell them apart is to open it and look at the left column.

The older experience, Legacy chat, is a plain two-column screen. Its left column has a Search box that matches conversation names only, two chips reading Conversations and Saved Groups, and buttons for Create New Conversation and Send Message to Multiple Contacts. The conversation list is one flat, ungrouped run of threads.

The new Chat looks noticeably different. Its left column is headed Chat, with a Search conversations box, filter pills reading All, Unread, Drivers, and Admins, and the list grouped under headings such as Direct messages, Company channels, and Viki Conversations. A chat bubble icon with an unread badge also appears in the top bar on every page — only the new Chat has that.

The new Chat is switched on one company at a time. If yours is eligible but still on the old experience, a strip above Legacy chat reads "The new Chat is available for your company." with a Learn more button; from there, Turn on Chat moves every manager across at once after a confirmation step. Nothing is stranded — your old history stays reachable under Legacy chat in the Actions (⋯) menu, and every driver conversation carries a "Looking for older conversations?" bar linking back to it.

The left column is your inbox, grouped into collapsible sections: Notifications (your private feed of Viki updates), Direct messages, Company channels, Personas, Recurring, and Viki Conversations. An Archived chats link at the bottom of the list opens the page that holds archived channels. The filter pills above narrow the list to unread items, driver conversations, or internal ones.

Selecting a conversation opens it in the middle. Its header names who you're talking to — a driver conversation reads "Viki and driver name" — and carries Search in conversation and Conversation info buttons. The info panel opens on the right with About, Members, Pinned, and Files tabs, so you can check a channel's membership or pull up an attachment without scrolling.

Two more controls sit at the top of the conversation list beside New conversation: Mark all chats as read, and a More chat tools (⋯) menu holding Templates, Scheduled messages, Recurring messages (chat admins), Archived chats, Inactive drivers, Custom emoji, Notifications, User permissions (admins with Settings access), Moderation (only while something is waiting for review), Legacy chat, and App reminders. Most of these have their own articles.

A direct message is a private thread between you and one other person — a manager or a driver. Adding more people turns it into a group message, capped at ten including you; past that, the app points you to a channel instead.

A channel is a named, ongoing space rather than a private thread: company channels serve your internal team, while broadcast-style channels let managers post and everyone else read. Channels have their own article.

The third kind is a driver's own conversation, under Viki Conversations. Each driver has exactly one, shared by your whole management team, holding texts, in-app messages, and Viki's follow-ups in a single thread.

Start any of these from the New conversation button at the top of the list, whose tabs read Direct message, As persona, New channel, and Viki announcement.

The Search conversations box filters your conversations by the names shown in the sidebar — a channel's name, the driver name on a Viki conversation, and the other people in a direct or group message, so a person's name finds their direct message. To search the words inside messages, open the full search — click the magnifying glass in a conversation header, press Ctrl-K (Cmd-K on a Mac), or type in the sidebar box and click the "Search messages for…" button that appears. Results come back grouped into Conversations and Messages, narrowable by person, date range, conversation type, or to just the messages that mention you — which includes @channel broadcasts, since those mention everyone. A conversation whose title matches ranks above channels the person merely belongs to. Picking one jumps you to that message in place.

Type in the box at the bottom of a conversation and press Enter. The toolbar underneath adds an attachment, an emoji, a saved template, or a scheduled send time; type @ to mention someone — pick a name from the list, or type the person's full display name exactly and it counts as a mention when you send. In group messages and channels, admins can use @channel ("Notify everyone in this conversation") to notify every member at once; typing @channel by hand works the same as picking it. Mentions highlight in the composer and in the sent message. Hovering a message reveals buttons to react, reply in a thread, pin, or edit it.

Driver conversations add one thing the others don't: a Send as toggle offering Chat or SMS. If a driver hasn't opened the mobile app yet, it defaults to SMS so your message actually reaches them, and tells you why; if they have the app, it defaults to Chat. When a driver has no phone number on file, the SMS option is unavailable and says so. Texts show a delivery indicator, and a failed one explains what went wrong — an opt-out, an unreachable phone, a number that can't receive texts. Sending as a shared identity such as Dispatch is covered in the personas article.

A driver conversation whose driver has never signed into the app shows a Hasn't opened the app chip in the header, and the composer defaults to SMS for them. Beside the chip is a Send app reminder button. It texts the driver a link to download the driver app, and the text is recorded in their conversation. The button is disabled when the driver has no phone number on file.

To nudge everyone at once, open More chat tools (⋯) and choose App reminders. The dialog lists active drivers who haven't opened the app yet, notes how many have no phone number and won't receive the text, and sends the same reminder to all of them with one button.

If a driver signed in once but has since lost the app or changed phones, you can ask Viki in chat to reset that driver to SMS-only message delivery. The change comes back to you for approval, and once approved their messages go out by text until they open the app again.

Drivers read and reply in the Chat tab of the VoiceERP mobile app, where their own line with your company sits pinned at the top, alongside any channels or direct messages they belong to. Drivers who haven't opened the app get the message as a text and can simply text back. Either way the reply lands in that same driver conversation in your Chat, so app messages and texts read as one continuous thread.