# Chats (https://docs.serviata.ru/en/docs/mobile/chats)

Your team's internal conversations on a phone — what a row tells you, how to find one, and how to start a new one.

**Chats** is where your team talks to each other — not to guests. Channels for a job or a property,
direct messages for one person, all in one list with the most recent at the top.

![Screenshot: mobile/chats/list](https://docs.serviata.ru/screenshots/en/mobile/chats/list.png)

1. How much is waiting, and the ways to narrow it down
2. Conversations, most recent first

## Reading a row [#reading-a-row]

* **The name** — a channel's name, or the person's for a direct message.
* **A property chip** under the name, when the channel belongs to one property rather than the whole
  workspace.
* **The last message**, prefixed with who wrote it. Your own messages show as **You:**, so you can
  tell at a glance whether the ball is in your court.
* **The time** of that message — a clock today, a date after that.
* **An orange badge** with the number of messages you haven't read.

The line under the title — *10 unread · 4 active* — is the same arithmetic for the whole list.

## Finding a conversation [#finding-a-conversation]

The chips narrow the list: **Unread** for what's waiting, **Favourites** for the ones you marked,
**Direct** for one-to-one messages. The magnifying glass searches by name.

The two arrows re-order the list — by recent activity or by name.

## Starting one [#starting-one]

The pencil in the corner starts a new conversation; so does the round **+** on any screen. You can
write to a person directly, or create a channel if your permissions allow it.

<Callout title="Channels belong to a property or to the whole workspace">
  A channel tied to a property is visible to the people who work there, and its name carries the
  property chip you see in the list. A workspace channel is for everyone. Pick deliberately: moving a
  conversation later means starting it again somewhere else.
</Callout>

Opening one is [Messages on your phone](https://docs.serviata.ru/en/docs/mobile/messages/); setting a channel up is
[Channels on your phone](https://docs.serviata.ru/en/docs/mobile/channels/). What the conversations themselves can do — reactions, threads,
pins, files, who can create a channel — is explained once in [Chats](https://docs.serviata.ru/en/docs/chats/) and is the same on
both.

<Callout type="warn" title="This is not where guests are answered">
  Everything here is internal. Guest messages live in the [Smart Inbox](https://docs.serviata.ru/en/docs/inbox/), which is a
  browser's job — writing "sorted, thanks" in a channel does not reply to anybody outside your team.
</Callout>