Messages

Messages gathers every conversation you have on Sway in one place: your private and group chats from the Sway app, the channels of your crews, and the conversations your artist, venue and promoter pages hold with other pages. It opens beside any backstage screen, and as a full page.

Messages comes with every plan, the free one included.

Open Messages

• From any screen: the Messages button in the header, right of the support button. A red badge counts the conversations with something unread, plus the contact requests waiting for you. The panel opens on the right, like the other quick tools. On a phone, the same button sits in the dock at the bottom of the screen and opens a bottom sheet.
• As a full page: Messages in the left sidebar of Backstage, under General, or the arrows icon at the top of the panel, labelled Open in full page. The list and the open conversation then sit side by side.

The panel shows one thing at a time: the list, a conversation, or a new conversation. The arrow at its top left goes back to the list.

The inbox

Six filters run across the top:

Each row names the person, the channel or the page, then the last thing said and when. A conversation between pages adds as and the page you answer it as; a channel adds its crew. A count on the right says how many messages you have not read. Waiting for a reply marks a conversation filed that way, a crossed-out bell one you muted, and a seal a page that is Sway Verified. Load more, at the bottom, brings older conversations.

On All and Crews, Crew channels under the list holds one button per crew: it lists that crew's channels, including the open ones you have not joined.

Search your messages

Type in Search a message... above the filters. The results replace the list: each one names the channel or the page, with the words you typed highlighted. Click one to open the conversation.

The search covers the crew channels and the conversations between pages you can read. Your private chats from the app are not searched.

Start a conversation

New, at the bottom of the list, opens New conversation with three choices:

• A page: write to an artist, a venue or a promoter in the name of one of your pages. See Messages between pages.
• Someone: a private or group chat with people on Sway, like in the app. See Personal chats.
• A channel: a new channel in one of your crews. See Crew channels.

Notifications and emails

New messages light the badge on the Messages button: they do not fill the bell. The bell tells you what asks something of you, under the Messages category of your notification settings:

• Contact request: a page you never worked with would like to write to yours. It is urgent: it is emailed if it stays unread for 30 minutes.
• Request accepted, New offer, Offer answered.
• mentioned you, when someone writes your @name.
• Added to #{channel}, when someone adds you to a channel.
• Conversation assigned, when a teammate hands a conversation to you.

When messages stay unread for 30 minutes and you have not been on Sway for ten, one email lists the conversations waiting, with a link to each. A conversation is emailed once, then not again until you have read it. Muted conversations and pages are left out. Your private chats from the app are only emailed when the app cannot push them to your phone. The Email switch of the Messages category, in your notification settings, turns these emails off.

Who reads what

• A private or group chat: its participants, as in the app.
• #general: everyone in the crew, meaning its owner, its members and the people with access to one of its pages.
• Another channel: the people who joined it, if it is open; the people added to it, if it is private.
• A conversation between pages: everyone who holds Answer pro messages on either page, or in either crew. An internal note stays on its author's side.

Access follows the permission: take it away and the conversations leave that person's inbox at once. Privacy and safety says what Sway keeps and how to report a message.

Where the rest lives