Communicating with Employees - Messaging & Announcements

1. Recents: shows you all recent conversations
2. Groups: each Location, Department, and Role in your account has its own Messaging group. For example, if you only want to communicate something to your Servers, you can post it under the Server group. You can include attachments and staff can post their own messages or reply to others.

If you want to start a group chat with several people, click on the 'compose' icon at the top right.

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Announcements

To send a one-way message blast to your workforce where you aren't wanting to start a conversation, you will want to use  Announcements, found right beside the Messaging icon. 

From here, you'll be able to select who you want to send the announcement to. You can send to Locations, Departments, and Roles.  

Employees will be notified via email or text/push notification, based on the notification settings they've specified in their account.

Once you click submit, your announcement is immediately delivered. You and your employees can now reference past announcements on the web and mobile app. 

You can also reference past announcements and who they were delivered to by going to the  Activity Log (hover over your profile picture > Activity Log).

The  Activity Log page will give you a breakdown of key activities taking place within your 7shifts company account.  

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Read Receipts 

Read Receipts is available on the Entree plan and higher.

When an Announcement is sent, you can see how many of the recipients have viewed it in the bottom right corner:

Hover over this number to see who has most recently viewed the Announcement:

Click on this number to see the names of who has viewed the Announcement, and the date of viewing:

Click on the 'Unread' tab to see the names of who has not yet viewed. Click on the chat icon next to a name to send a message as a reminder to one employee, or re-send the notification to all employees in the 'Unread' list using the button at the bottom:

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Deleting an Announcement

You can delete an announcement from the web app. 

1. Select the announcement then click on the three dots in the top right corner

2. Click 'Delete'

Note: Once an announcement notification is sent via email, it is not able to be deleted / retracted. However, you can delete the announcement from appearing in the app. 

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Roster Talk

Roster Talk is available for both Messaging and Announcement features. 

You can now create group messages and announcements for all employees working a specific day. Click on the 'Compose' icon to get started:

You can specify by Location, Department, and Role. You can then choose which timeframe to target. 

The 'More' tab contains these schedule choices:

- 'Today' is considered a shift that falls within any Hours of Operation for the Location. Click Here for info on how to set or change your Hours of Operation.

 3. SMS / Push / Email notifications

By default, your employees are informed about changes in 7shifts that affect them via text/push notification and email:

• Messages and Announcements
• When you publish / re-publish a schedule
• When you approve or decline a Time Off request
• When you approve or deny an Availability request
• When you approve or decline a shift change, both employees who requested the change will be notified
• If an employee is trying to give away their shift, other employees who are qualified to work that shift will be notified