Team chat — overview
Built-in team chat with threads, mentions, reactions, polls and shift swaps. No WhatsApp tangle, no separate Slack subscription — part of every Onboard workspace.
Restaurant teams talk — constantly. Who covers Friday late shift for Tom? Who closes the safe tonight? What allergens are in the specials? Today those questions ride over WhatsApp, SMS and yellow sticky notes. Onboard centralizes them in one surface that links straight into reservations, shifts and knowledge.
A channel — either a classic group ("Service Tonight", "Kitchen", "Management") or a direct message between two people. Groups are restaurant- or location-scoped, depending on how they were set up.
Threads
Any message can open a reply lane. Replies inside the thread do not clutter the main channel — the main feed stays scannable.
@-mentions
Type @ and pick a person or a role (@admins, @service). The mentioned user gets a push notification and sees a badge in their sidebar — even when the channel is muted.
Reactions & polls
Emoji reactions work like everywhere — a thumbs-up is often answer enough. For structured decisions there are polls: "Who'll cover stocktake on Wednesday?" with predefined options and clear voter visibility.
Shift swaps from inside chat
A server writes "Need cover for Friday 18–22" → Onboard recognizes the message and proposes a structured shift-swap card → the team replies with "I can take it" → the manager approves with one click → the shift planner updates automatically. No more Excel drama.
chat_shift_swaps — an audit trail over every cover, available in the monthly report.Public invite links
Per restaurant /[locale]/chat/invite/[token] invite links can be generated for onboarding. Click → create or sign in → automatically added to the right groups. Tokens are single-use or reusable, revocable any time.
| Name | Type | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| kind | 'group' | 'dm' | — | — | Classic channel or direct message. DMs are created automatically the first time two people message each other. |
| mute | per-user | — | — | Each user can mute push notifications per group without leaving. @-mentions still come through. |
| quick_replies | templates | — | — | Pre-canned replies ("Be there in 5", "Can't make it") for fast service responses. |