Chat
Chat is the spine of crewbox: channels for departments, DMs for everything else, and alerts that reach a phone in a pocket. It's always on, whatever modules the box runs.
Channels
Channels are open rooms — every crew member can read and join any of them. The box starts with #general; anyone can add more with the + next to "Channels" (names come out lowercase, spaces become hyphens: "Stage 2" → #stage-2). Make channels for departments or stages, not for moments — a festival needs #stage, #foh, #site, not #friday-issue-3.
Unread messages show as a count on the channel row; if someone mentioned you, the badge changes to an @ style so you can see at a glance which unreads actually need you.
Direct messages
Every crew member on the box is listed under Direct messages — online people first, each with a presence dot. A DM is private between the two of you. An office tag beside a name means they're connected from off the event network (from the production office over a tunnel, say) — useful to know before you ask them to physically go and look at something.
Mentions
Type @ and pick a name — @Maya lights the message up for Maya and makes her unread badge urgent. @all, @everyone and @channel flag everyone in the channel; use them like a PA announcement, sparingly. Your own mentions are highlighted more strongly, so skimming a busy channel for "things aimed at me" is fast.
Alerts
The box decides what buzzes, the same for your phone and your laptop. Each channel has a bell in its header with three settings:
- Mentions, where every channel starts: your name,
@channeland the production desk. - All messages: everything in it.
- Muted: only your own name gets through, because somebody needs you in particular.
A DM buzzes for every message unless you mute it. Alerts… at the foot of the sidebar lists every channel's setting in one place, with the stages you follow for changeover calls. A busy channel sounds at most once every 30 seconds; the rest arrive quietly.
Alerts chirp and vibrate; the bell button in the sidebar mutes the sounds when you're next to the stage. While the app is open, a banner at the top says who it is and what they wrote: tap it to go to the message, or × to put it away. It goes by itself after a few seconds, and the channel keeps its unread badge. If the app is in the background, you get a notification instead. For alerts that reach a locked phone with no internet, use the Android app. Tapping one opens the channel, the show log or the running order it is about — Phones and platforms covers what each platform can and can't do.
Writing messages
- Enter sends on a computer; on a phone, Enter makes a new line and the send button sends.
- A half-typed message survives switching channels — it's waiting when you come back. (It doesn't survive reloading the app.)
- Links become clickable automatically. A crewbox link someone shares — a patch sheet, a plot, the network audit — appears as an Open ↗ chip that jumps straight there.
- "X is typing…" under the messages means an answer may already be on its way.
What "sending…" means
A message marked sending… is safely stored on your device and will be delivered — once, in order — when the box is reachable. It is not lost, and resending it by hand will only make a duplicate. This is the offline-first design doing its job; there's more in Around the app.