Personal Messaging Overview

In addition to Raft and Channel Chat, you can also send individual and group messages to any member of your community. You can find your direct messages by on your Home page, ordered by most recent by default. Use the Filter drop-down to filter by Raft Channels, Direct Messages, Groups you Manage, or Pending Invites.

To learn more about the different types of messaging, visit our Support Center Messaging section. 

Create a New Message

To create a new message on the web platform, select the +Create button at the top right of the screen and select Message. Choose one or more recipients, then select Message. On the message compose screen, you can choose to send a DM (direct message) to one more more people, or you can choose to send your message to a Raft.

Sending a direct message (DM)

The New Message screen defaults to sending a direct message to one or more recipients. To send a direct message to a single recipient, make sure personal is selected. 

Then, choose your recipient by searching and then selecting the recipient from the list. Then select Message. 

On the next screen, type out your message and click Send. And yes, you can send images, GIFs, videos, and files directly!

Sending a Group Message

If you choose more than one person, you can send a message to multiple people at once by creating a personal message group. As the creator of the personal message group, you can give it a name and image to easily find it. You can also create a private Event by creating the Event within the group. 

To create and send a message to a personal message group, simply follow the instructions above but select more than one recipient.

Sending a Message to a Raft or Channel

To send a message to a Raft or Channel, on the New Message screen, select Rafts.

Then search or scroll down the list to find the Raft or Channel to which you want to send your message. Select the Raft or Channel and select Message. Then type out your message and hit Send.

Message Invites

When you send someone a message for the first time, they will receive a message invite. This allows members to easily dismiss spam or unwanted messages while still being able to receive messages from anyone in their communities. You can view your invites in the Chat section on your Home page or in your Notifications.

When you receive a message invite, you will be able to read the message, and will be prompted to accept or reject the message.  

Selecting Allow will add the sender to your list of DMs and allow you to chat with them.

Selecting Decline will hide the sender from your list of DMs. The sender will not be notified that you rejected their message. However, they will still be able to send you additional messages. Each new message will prompt a new message invite. If you do not want to receive any more messages from that sender, you will need to block them. (We will never notify a member that you have blocked them.)

You can bypass message invites by following people you want to be able to receive messages from. You can follow people by visiting their user profile, or from most member lists. You will always receive messages from people you follow. 

Broadcast Messages

Some Community Space Admins also have permission to Broadcast a message, which allows you to send the same message individually to multiple community members (not as a group message). To access this feature, select the recipients to whom you want to send the message, and then select the Broadcast Message button.

Multi-Community Messages

Personal messaging is not community-dependent, which means you can see all of your messages from any community in the same inbox. You can also create a personal messaging group with people from multiple communities.