Learning Hub · Policies
Messages Policy
What does this policy do?
This policy lets you stop a named person sending messages in your chat, and cap how long a message can be. The rules run on the server when a message is sent in your business's chat, and nothing is enforced while the policy is inactive. One thing to know first: the policy card is hidden from your Policies page for now, so you cannot open it, switch it on or change it today. Messages itself is on — you, your team and your clients each reach it from the floating Messages button — and if a saved policy is active, a message sent in the chat is still checked against it. The rest of this lesson is what happens when the card is back and the policy is active. It belongs under General and is not tied to a plan.
How it works
The Active switch
Flicking the Active switch saves the policy at once. Once a policy has been saved, changing any setting marks it active on screen, and Save always saves it as active — the switch is the only way to turn it off again. Switching it off keeps your blocked list and your limit on the screen and in the saved policy; nothing is enforced until you switch it on again.
Blocked users
Pick anyone on your member list — staff, clients, another admin — but not yourself. The list shows a role beside each name, staff first. A blocked person cannot send in any chat in your business: a client's group with the team, a one-to-one chat, or the Team Room.
What a blocked person sees
Nothing on their screen says they are blocked until they try to send. Then the message is refused and a red notice appears: "You are not allowed to send messages. Please contact the administrator." The chat box is cleared before the answer comes back, so the words are gone. A photo is refused the same way and shows as failed. They can still read the chat.
Maximum message length
Set it between 50 and 10,000 characters; 2,000 is the default. A longer message is refused with "Message exceeds the maximum length of 2000 characters" — the number is whatever you set. Only typed text is counted — a photo on its own is not measured — and no chat box counts characters for the person, so they find out after pressing Send, with the box already cleared.
What it does not cover
An ETA sent from a team member's ETA tab is not checked, and neither is editing a message already sent. Community direct messages and a client's chat with a partner business go through other doors and are not checked either.
Auto-reply, ETA buttons, quick replies, read receipts
These four are saved with the policy, but nothing reads them yet. No auto-reply is sent when a client writes. A team member's ETA tab has its own hour-and-minute pickers and does not look at the ETA Buttons switch. No chat screen shows quick-reply buttons. The Read Receipts switch changes nothing: the double tick on a message you sent appears whichever way it is set and only means the message was sent, and "Message info" on your own message, from its menu, lists who has read it whichever way it is set.
Stopping all staff at once
To stop every member of staff sending, rather than one person, use Staff Management → Send Messages. With that policy active and the switch off, a team member can still open Messages and read, but a message sent from the chat is refused with "You do not have permission to send messages". That switch never stops an admin or a client.
Tips
A block is per person, not per chat. If someone should keep talking to the team but not to a client, blocking is the wrong tool — it stops them sending in every chat in your business.
Tell a person when you block them. Their screen gives no warning until a send is refused, and the notice only says to contact the administrator.
Keep the length cap generous. No chat box shows it, so a person only learns of it after pressing Send — and the box has been cleared, so they type it again.
If the policy cannot be read for a moment, the message goes through rather than being lost.
Learning Hub • Messages Policy