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, Viki Conversations, and Archived when you have any. 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 in the header: Mark all chats as read, and a More chat tools (⋯) menu holding the surfaces that get their own articles — templates, scheduled and recurring messages, archived chats, inactive drivers, custom emoji, notification settings, and moderation.

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 SMS announcement.

The Search conversations box filters your conversations by name. 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. 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 — and in group conversations, admins can pick @channel ("Notify everyone in this conversation") to notify every member at once. 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.

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.