Agent Chat in Depth: The Full Chat Sheet

On the web, the Customer channel for your order appears inside the job's detail page, in the Discussion tab. The chat panel occupies the right column of the layout when the screen is wide enough, or the bottom section in a stacked view. Messages load chronologically with date separators (Today, Yesterday, or the full date) grouping each day's conversation. Your own messages appear on the right side of the panel with a blue bubble; the company's messages appear on the left with the sender's avatar and name above the first message in a consecutive run.

On the iOS app, the full chat sheet opens as a modal (.large presentation) from the Order Detail view. Inside the sheet, the navigation title reads 'Messages'. If your account has access to both the Customer and Team channels (which agents do not, but company staff do), a segmented channel switcher appears at the top. As an agent you see a single stream — the Customer channel — with no switcher. Messages are grouped by author run using the same iMessage convention: avatar and name on the first bubble in a run, tight spacing between consecutive bubbles from the same sender, a relative timestamp on the last bubble of each run ('3 minutes ago', 'Yesterday', 'Dec 14').

To reply to a specific message on iOS, long-press any bubble. A confirmation dialog ('Copy', 'Reply', 'Mark important', 'Delete') appears. Tap 'Reply' to quote the message in your composer — the field pre-fills with `> Author: their message` followed by a blank line where you type your reply. When the reply renders in the thread, the quoted section appears as a left-border accent block above your actual reply text, so the recipient always sees what you are responding to.

The iOS chat sheet has a search toolbar item in the top-right corner (magnifying glass icon). Tapping it reveals an inline search bar above the message list. Type any word or phrase and the list filters to only matching messages. A 'No messages match…' empty state appears if the search yields nothing, with a clear-search tap target. Tapping the search icon again (now filled) collapses the bar and restores the full conversation. This is useful for long-running orders where you need to find a specific instruction or delivery note from weeks ago.

There is also a mute option in the more menu (ellipsis icon in the top-right). Tapping it shows 'Mute thread' / 'Unmute thread'. Muting is stored per-device in UserDefaults and silences push notifications for this specific job's Customer channel while the mute is active. The visual indicator changes to a slash-bell icon so you know the thread is muted. Muting does not prevent you from sending or receiving messages — it only suppresses the push badge and sound. This is useful during a shoot day when you are fielding other notifications and do not need real-time alerts from this particular order.