Announcements is an Admin-only feature that works just like the “Everyone” message—a notice that goes out to every team member in your Organization. The important difference is that in Announcements there is no reply capability. This is great for cutting down on non-crucial small talk that can be distracting and clutter up your screen.

On the Admin’s Announcement screen there is the usual option to reply (left), but on the 
team member’s Announcement page there is no option to reply (right)

How to Post an Announcement

To access this feature, tap the Announcements entry at the top of your Chats tab.

Choose to send your Announcements in good old text, or

• GIF
• Photo (send one, or take one and send it)
• Gold Star
• File
• Video
• Audio 

Choose the format of your Announcement

When you’ve created the Announcement, it will be automatically pinned to the top of your team members’ Chats tabs. That gives an Announcement special visibility for your most important communications. 

An Announcement is pinned to the top of a team member’s Notification screen

In the event of an emergency you also have the ability to override employees’ notification mutes to send a crucially important Announcement.

For emergency announcements that have to get through

Team members receive an announcement just as if it were an ordinary message sent to the entire Organization, but without the ability to reply to it broadly or to delete it. Anyone who wants to reply must start a new one-on-one conversation with the Admin. Team members can respond by choosing from a selection of one-tap reaction icons, but using these won’t generate notifications to anyone but the Admin/sender.

Admins, you’ll be able to see exactly who has read the Announcement, just as you would with any other message. (See Note) Tap the message to see details about who has—and who hasn’t—read your Announcement.

Admins can see which team members have seen the Announcement

Post a Broadcast Announcement

If you also have Crew Enterprise with Command Center access, you can send your announcement to multiple organizations at once. Tap View next to "Send an announcement to multiple orgs by creating a broadcast" which will take you directly to your Command Center account to broadcast your message.

Other Announcements Options

Tap the filter icon at the top of the Announcements screen to change the settings.

• Enable other team members to post Announcements. (This feature is available to Crew Pro subscribers only.)
• Un-pin your Announcements from the top of team members’ Notification screens
• Change the background color of your Announcements page

Note Crew Pro allows you to receive a daily email report that lists which team members have read your Announcements. Contact Crew Support within the app to find out more.

It's not always convenient, or even possible, to communicate with your coworkers face-to-face, especially when the conversation is between multiple people. Crew makes it easy for the whole team to send and receive messages.

How to Send a Message

From the Chats Tab  Your Chats tab will show the messages you've sent, or replied to, and the messages you've received. Tapping on a message thread will display the entire thread.

1. From Chats tab tap the New Message icon in top right (iOS) or bottom right of the screen (Android)
   • Type the recipients name in the "To:" line, OR
   • Scroll through the list of your coworkers and select the recipient or Group
2. Tap the "Send a message" bar to open up the screen for composing your message. You can also choose to send a GIF, photo (take one or select one), or voice message. 
3. When you've finished composing your message, tap the Send icon

• You can add additional recipients from within the New Message screen, if you decide to do that at a later point, by tapping on the Additional People icon in the "To:" line.
• You may be informed that your recipient, or some of your recipients, aren't currently on the clock. You'll have a choice to send the message anyway, or to delay sending it until they return to work. (See Off the Clock Status for more details on this feature.)

From the Coworkers  Tab You can also send a message by selecting the recipient or recipients from the Coworkers tab, and tapping the "Send a message" bar.

Sending to an Individual  You can send a direct message to an individual coworker. (See above for more details.)

Sending to a Group  You can send a message to a designated Group or an ad hoc group of coworkers.

• When initiating a message through the Chats tab, the Groups of which you are a member will be interspersed alphabetically with individual coworkers in the recipients list; from the Coworkers tab, your Groups are listed separately, above the Coworkers list.
• All team members are automatically members of the "Everyone" Group—consisting of all of the employees in the Organization—and can send messages to this Group.
• You can also choose to send an Announcement if you are an Admin, or your Admin has enabled non-Admins to send Announcements.

Replying to a Message

To reply to a message, select it the Chats tab and tap the message bar to compose your reply.

• You can reply with text, image, GIF, voice, video, or file.
• You can also send a Reaction Icon by tapping the Response Menu next to the message you are responding to. (See Using One-Tap Reactions for More Efficient Communication for more details.)
• From the Response Menu you can also access the Message Details screen. (See Message Receipt Details for more information.)

Note  Users with iOS devices can respond to a single communication in any Org-owned message thread by swiping right on that communication. Everyone will see the response, but they'll know exactly what it's in response to.

Deleting Messages

You can delete individual messages or Group conversations, as needed, to declutter your screen or to remove items that were created in error or have lost their relevancy. To find out more, see Deleting Messages and Groups.

Message Privacy

Most messages are private and accessible only to the people involved in the conversation, unless

• It's an Announcement, "Everyone" or Location message
• The Message Visibility feature has been turned on in Command Center to enable Admin access to all messages

If the message has been made accessible, you'll see a note that it's a "Public message" in the compose bar. (For more details, see the Message Privacy article.)

You probably know by now that you and your team members can respond to the messages you receive in Crew with an assortment of Reactions. Just tap directly on a message within a thread, or the Reaction icon next to it, to see the available selection.

Choose from the options in the Reaction Menu

Reacting to a Message

Scroll through the menu to choose from 20 different Quick Reply icons—including Gold Star. These are great for cutting down on unnecessary organizational chatter because they don’t trigger group-wide Notifications. On the other hand, each typed response will be alert everyone on the message thread—which could be every team member in the organization.

Viewing Team Reactions

Tap on any message in a Chats thread and then the Info icon to go directly to the message Message Details screen. From there, tap “Reactions” to see which of your team mates left which Reaction icons.

Tap “Reactions” on any message to see who sent which reaction icons

From the Details screen, you can also navigate to the Reactions menu by tapping the Reaction icon under the message in the top left corner. 

Note for iOS users

iOs users can tap a lockscreen message and have access to a selection of a few of the most popular reaction options right from there.

iOS users can find some Reaction Icons on their lockscreens

It’s easy for information and directions to get lost in the shuffle of messages and notifications; you can’t always follow up with an individual conversation or task assignment. The @mentions feature automatically calls out a person when they’ve been mentioned in a Group chat, and alerts them to pay particular attention to that message.

How @mentions Works

When you want to flag someone in a Group chat, simply prefix that employee’s name with the “@” symbol—a list of coworker options for that Group will pop up as soon as you type the “@”—and that team member will receive a Notification.

When you type the “@” symbol a list of Group members pops up;  Calling out Alex Lee with @mentions

When you send a message to a Group in your Organization, it can be helpful to know which Group members have read it. When a message develops into a conversational thread with many posts it’s even more important to be able to tell who has read what. Crew is here to help.

Message Details

Tapping directly on a message within a thread and then the Info icon gives you detailed information about who has read each message, as well as how many people have not yet seen it. 

View diagnostics for each message from the Details screen
 

You can also access this screen by tapping the Reactions Icon next to each message within a thread.

When tapping on an image-only message, you'll then need to tap "Details" in the bottom right to view message details.

From the Details screen you can tap “Reactions” to see who left which Reaction icons.

Tap “Reactions” on any message to see who sent which icons

Other Options

You can quickly react to a message as well as copy a message to pass on or reposition it, as needed. The sender of a message—as well as any Admin—can also delete it.

To copy a message

• iOS users tap “Copy” at the bottom left of the Reactions or Details screen
• Android users tap the Copy icon at the top right of the Details screen

To delete a message

• iOS users tap the three dots at the bottom right of the Reactions or Details screen
• Android users tap the three dots at the top right of the Details screen

One-on-One Conversations

You can even get to the Details screen in a one-on-one conversation, with all the same information and options available as in a Group chat. 

One-on-one conversations are time stamped within the Chats thread to let you know when the other person read your message. Note In Group conversations only Reaction icons let you know how long ago they were left; this info can be found on the Details screen under “Reactions.”

She didn’t respond—Did she see that message I sent?

Beneath a message that’s only been read, photo icons indicate who read it. Tapping on those photos can also lead you to the Details screen.

These people read the message but didn’t respond

Photo icons do not appear in one-on-one conversations. Instead you’ll simply see that the message has been read, in addition to when it was read.

He still hasn’t read that message

Admins can remind team members who seem to be behind on their Group conversations that they have a message waiting to be read.

1. From the Details screen of a specific message, tap on the “Not Read” option. (See above for directions on getting to the Details screen, if needed.)
2. Tap “Remind”

You can “Remind” a team member that they need to check out a specific message

Note Sometimes team members may see all or part of a message on their lock screens. In that case the message won’t necessarily register as having been “read” and no record may appear in the chat thread.

Sometimes you’ll want to remove messages that have been created in error or clutter up your screen, or groups that have lost their relevancy. There are a few ways to do this: to delete them permanently (messages or groups), or to archive them for future reference (messages only).

Deleting Individual Messages

Anyone can delete any message they’ve sent.

1. Tap on the message entry in your Chats tab
2. Tap on the message to delete
3. Tap the three dots at the bottom right corner (iOS) or at the top right (Android)
4. Tap Delete

You’ll then see the notice “Message removed by sender.”

Admins can delete any message they receive that’s been sent by anyone else (e.g. inappropriate messages). The notice “Message removed by Admin” will appear on other recipients’ screens.

Deleting Group Conversations

Organizational admins can delete any group created by any other team member, which will automatically delete the linked group conversation. This can be done from the Groups section of the Coworkers tab, or the “Manage all groups” section of the Admin tab. Once the group is deleted, all messages on all devices included in the group will also be deleted.

1. Head to the Groups section in your Coworkers tab
2. Tap on "Groups" (iOS) or "Manage" next to the Groups section (Android)
3. Tap on "Manage" in the top right corner (iOS)
4. Select the group you want to delete
5. Tap "Edit" (iOS) or the three vertical dots (Android) at the top right of the screen 
6. Select the option to “Delete Group” and confirm it

Archiving Chat Entries

Sometimes you just need to clear your screen, rather than deleting a message or group. In that case you can simply archive the less-important postings. Swipe the group or message to archive it automatically.

Archiving a message

Tapping “Show Archived Conversations” at the bottom of the screen reveals them at the bottom of your list of active messages. Swipe right again to unarchive them.

This screen shows your archived messages and groups.

Any new message that comes in to an archived group will send it back into the active conversation list

Delete Conversation History

You can clear the message history of any conversation.

1. In your Chats tab, tap on the conversation.
2. Tap the people icon in the top right (Android) or the conversation title (iOS)
3. Tap the 3 dots in the top right (Android) or Edit in the top right (iOS)
4. Select Clear Message History. 

Note This only deletes the conversation history off of your phone. 

Pro Tip The option to retrieve messages from deleted groups in the event of HR or legal issues is available through Crew Pro.

Sometimes you just need to clear your Chats screen, rather than permanently deleting a message or group. In that case you can simply archive the less-important postings.

Archiving Messages or Groups

In your Chats tab, swipe the group or message to archive it automatically. Or, manually tap "Archive".

Archiving a message

Unarchiving and Viewing Archived Messages or Groups

Tapping “Show Archived Conversations” at the bottom of the screen reveals them at the bottom of your list of active messages. To unarchive a conversation, swipe it and then tap "Unarchive".

This screen shows your archived messages and groups.

Note Any new message that comes in to an archived conversation will send it back into the active conversation list. 

Because archived conversations are removed from your view, there is not a way to permanently delete them in case you ever need to access them in the future.

Looking for more message and group deletion options? Check out this article: Deleting Messages and Groups

Under most circumstances, any message you send in Crew is private and can be accessed only by those included in the conversation. However, a message will not be private if

• It’s an Announcement, Location, or has been sent to the Everyone Group
• It’s been reported by a coworker as inappropriate
• An Enterprise Admin has turned on the Message Visibility feature in Command Center

If the Message Visibility feature has been enabled, you’ll see a designation on your Message screen letting you know that “Admins may access messages in this conversation.” If an Enterprise Admin turns off the Message Visibility feature, team members will instead see a notice letting them know that “Messages in this conversation are private.”

Ensure that your Organization’s communications are professional and on-topic when you utilize the Report a Message feature. Report a Message is available for our Pro and Enterprise customers, but for those subscribers it functions on all platforms: mobile, Web and Command Center.

Any team member can flag a message they’ve received that doesn’t seem right for the workplace

• inappropriate
• offensive
• just not work-related

and bring it to a manager’s attention. An Admin can then review the reported message and choose to either delete it from the Chats thread, or let it pass. Admins can even report messages themselves, which can be useful in organizations with multiple Admins. And any type of message—text, voice or video—can be reported.

Enable Report a Message

The Report a Message feature must be toggled on by an Admin in the Admin tab. It can be found under the “Profanity and Harassment” heading.

Enable the Report a Message feature from the Admin tab

Note If the feature has been enabled by an Enterprise Admin through Command Center, Admins at the organizational level cannot then disable it through the app.

Reporting a Message

Here’s how to report an inappropriate message.

1. Tap on the Reactions menu button next to the message to be reported. (If it’s an image, you may need to tap it to reveal the Reactions menu button.)
2. Tap the three horizontal dots at the bottom left of the Reactions screen
3. Tap “Report”
4. “Confirm” it or cancel

You’ll receive a Notification that the message was successfully reported.

Here’s how to report a message

The message will then show in the Chats tab as “Message reported.” Other recipients will still be able to view it as originally sent while an Admin reviews the report.

What Happens Next?

The Admin/s will see the report as an Alerts entry in the Chats tab. From there, the Admin will

1. Tap on the Alerts box
2. Select the appropriate item to review
3. Review the reported content
4. Choose to “Ignore” or “Delete message”
5. Confirm the choice to ignore or delete

   

  Here’s how an Admin reviews a reported message

Note When the Admin reviews the reported message, they’ll also see the prior 24-hours’ worth of earlier messages in that thread (up to 10 messages) for context.

If the Admin chooses to ignore the reported message, it will be recorded in the Needs Action feature under “History,” so they can go back and delete it later (if, say, there are additional complaints). Even if the Admin chooses to delete the message, it will still show up under History, as “Resolved,” though no further action can be taken on it.

This message has been “Ignored,” so an Admin could re-evaluate it later

If the message is deleted, it will be replaced by “Reported message removed by admin” in the recipients’ Chats thread.

This is how a message’s recipients will see a message deleted by an Admin

Crew notification controls allow you to be much more specific about how and when you want to get alerts. Don’t interrupt that meeting; make sure you’re not woken up in the middle of the night.

Normally, when a new message comes in you get a notification to your lock screen and your phone will vibrate or make a noise (if you have set it to do so). Mute enables you to silence these notifications for an hour, a day, or until you turn them back on. Any muted conversation will still show up as an unread message, but you won’t be interrupted by it.

You can mute an individual conversation (see How to Mute a Chat), which stops notifications for that conversation. You can also customize the exact notification settings or even set a Mute across all conversations from the Notification Controls screen.

There are two ways to get there. Tap your Profile photo in the top left corner of most tabs, and then

1. Tap the Bell icon in the top right corner OR
2. Tap “Settings,” and then “Notification Settings”

Tap the Bell icon to set your Mute preferences, then tap “Notification Settings” to set your Mute preferences

Normally, when a new message comes in you get a notification to your lock screen, and your phone will vibrate or make a noise (if you have set it to do so). Mute enables you to silence these notifications for an hour, until the next day, or until you turn them back on. The conversation will still show up as an unread message, but you won’t be interrupted by it.

Here’s how to mute a conversation

1. From the Chat screen slide the conversation over
2. Tap “Mute,” and select the amount of time you’d like the conversation muted

If you decide you want to un-mute the conversation, you can do so by sliding it over again and tapping “unmute.”

Here’s how to mute a chat

Note The @mentions Notification will override any mute settings the employee might have chosen.

There will probably be multiple groups under the umbrella of your Organization. (What’s the difference between an Organization and a Group?) Groups allow employees to easily establish conversations with the coworkers they communicate with the most. Most organizations have a “Managers” group; a restaurant might also have “Front of House,” “Kitchen,” and “Bartenders.” These are the people most likely to message each other most often, and the Groups feature streamlines those communications.

You can also assign tasks to a group, so that the people in it can discuss the assignment, if needed, and accomplish it most effectively. Groups also facilitate efficient shift changes by allowing team members to broadcast their open shifts exclusively to the people most eligible to cover them—the members of their own team.

Here is the list of groups on the Coworkers tab

How does a Group work? Only those people invited to the group will be able to access it or read its contents. But every employee in the Organization can see every group the Organization contains, and can send a message to any of them if they want to. For example, if Joe Bartender needs to communicate with the managers of his Organization, he can scroll through his Coworkers screen to find the group called “Managers,” select it, and send his message.

This action will effectively create a new group named “Joe Bartender + Managers.” Going forward, those two parties will be able to communicate back and forth, but Joe will have no access to the contents of the original “Managers” group.

Creating a New Group It’s easy to create the groups your Organization needs. From the Coworkers screen tap the “New Group” button at the bottom of your Groups list.

Conversations Conversations are distinct from groups in that they exist only as long as the message thread continues, and they can’t be accessed by other team members: only the people involved in the conversation will know anything about it.

Admin Privileges

Admins can manage any group created by anyone in the Organization, as necessary. Simply tap “Manage” at the top right of your Groups list. The list can also be accessed from your Admin screen under “Manage all groups.” You can choose to add people to the group, rename it, or delete it entirely.

Admins can delete a Group from here

Note Subscribers to Crew Pro can decide to give only admins the ability to create new groups. Toggle the appropriate button under the Crew Pro section of your Admin add-ons.

Groups make it easy to communicate efficiently with the coworkers you talk to the most. Why plug in all the other bartenders names every time you need to send a message to the team? Why ask everyone in the Organization if they can cover a shift for you, when really only other bartenders can do it? The Groups feature is a handy shortcut that means you don’t have to. (For more information about the Groups feature, see How Groups Work.)

Starting a new group

1. From the Coworkers screen scroll to the bottom of your Groups list (this may be behind the “Show All Groups” button)
2. Tap “New Group”
3. Select the team members you want to include in the group
4. Tap “Create New Group”
5. Name your group
6. Tap “Done” on the keyboard

Here’s how to create a new Group

The new group will now appear on the Chats and Coworkers screens of all its invited members.

Note If you assemble the same people named in a pre-existing group, even under the same name, a duplicate group will be formed.

The Location Groups feature helps you communicate with the employees who are currently working, leaving alone the ones who are at home. It’s completely automatic and easy to set up.

What is a “Location Group”?

When you send a message to “Everyone@[your Organization]” every member of the team gets the notification. That’s useful if you want to send out a communication to every single person in the Organization. But what if you have a message that’s only pertinent to the team of people currently at work? For example, you might let them know that a storm is coming and please pull in the patio umbrellas. If you send that message to “Everyone” it will end up creating a lot of unnecessary notification noise.

You can tell which groups are Location Groups because the icon comes up as a map with a location symbol on it, unlike the other groups which have the message box symbol. When the map icon is tapped it’s immediately clear who is at work at that particular moment, and if a message is sent to that group only those people will be notified.

Here’s how a Location Group appears in your Groups list

Setting up a Location Group is easy. Admins of your organization (see Note) can create new Location Groups with the following steps

1. From the Coworkers tab go to “Manage” your Groups
2. Tap the “+” sign at the top right of the screen
3. Scroll all the way down to “New Location Group” at the bottom of the list, and tap the box
4. Type in the address of the new Location Group, or choose your current location, and tap “Next.” The more accurate the address, the more accurate Crew will be in tracking who is there.
5. Name your Location Group, if you choose. For example “Store #3”
6. Set the location size. This can be useful if you have a very large location. (See Good to Knowbelow.)
7. Tap “Create”

Here’s how to setup a new Location Group

You can set up as many Location Groups as you like, but under normal circumstances it will only be one group per physical location of your business.

Rename or delete a Location Group by tapping on it within the “Manage” Groups capability of the Coworkers screen, or from “Manage all groups” on the Admin screen. Tapping the filter icon in the top right of the screen opens the dialog box.

Delete or rename a Location Group from here

Good to Know

• Crew recommends that you set your location radius to be somewhat bigger than the actual physical space to account for employee phones that are less than perfectly accurate.
• In order to properly show up in Location Groups, your employees will have to grant Crew permission to access the location on their phone.
• Crew never actually tracks employees’ locations; the feature merely reports whether or not any team member is physically at work. So your employees’ privacy is one hundred percent safe.
• Because Crew doesn’t track users locations from moment to moment, the effect of this feature on device battery life is very minimal.

Note Crew Pro subscribers have the option to enable non-admins to create new Location Groups.

1. From the Admin tab tap on “View all add-ons”
2. Tap the “Manage” button on the Crew Pro center
3. Toggle this permission in the “Organization” section

There are two ways to classify your coworkers in Crew: Organizations and Groups. Organizations are usually a company or a specific location of a company (e.g. “McDonalds #1234”), and organizations usually contain many groups. Some examples of the most common groups we see are “Managers,” “Waitstaff,” “Kitchen,” etc.

This is a conceptual representation of the relationship between organizations and groups.

You can create as many organizations as you want. Most Crew users have only one main organization. Some companies, however, create multiple organizations when large groups of workers don’t usually interact. For example, companies with multiple locations frequently create one organization per location, and one additional organization just for management across all the locations (so that management can communicate). (Questions? See How Many Organizations Do I Need?) You can switch between organizations and create new ones from the Organization Selector.

You can see all the organizations you’re a member of from the Organization Selector

Groups, on the other hand exist, only within a single organization. Some new groups are created automatically. For example, “Everyone @ [your org. name]” is appears automatically when you create an organization, and is based on all users in your organization. Sending a message to a group causes all group members to receive the message.

The Groups list on your Coworkers screen, including the option for creating a new group

Creating more groups is easy—from the Coworkers screen tap the “New Group” button at the bottom of your Groups list.

In a busy team there are often lots of different projects going on every day, which involves the same people having multiple conversations on different topics. Make it easier to organize those projects and find the particular conversations you’re looking for by creating a separate Group for each project. Name each Group according to the relevant project, e.g. “Chip Reader Changeover” or “Summer Hiring” and you can include the exact same team members in each one. That way, everyone stays on the same page and it’s easy to get back to the right page when you need to.

These Groups have the same people in them but carry different, and specific, names

Did you know that you can use your team members’ Profile pics to quickly send any of them a private message? Tap the pic in your Coworkers screen to reveal your options:

• give them a Nudge
• say “Thank you!”
• send a direct message
• view the person’s Profile
• award them a Gold Star

You can send a quick message via a coworker’s Profile pic

In some parts of the country you live so far from the next time zone that you don’t need to think about it much unless you’re jetlagged after a vacation flight. But in other regions your business might be right across a time zone line from your home, or from your employees’ homes. This can cause some confusion with shift and schedule times—unless your app Time Zone is properly set.

Time Zone Setting

Locate the Time Zone setting at the bottom of your Admin screen. Tap on it to access a list of worldwide time zones. Select the one that corresponds to the location of your Organization.

Change your time zone setting from here

Why Time Zone Is Important

It’s important to set your Time Zone to match the location of your Organization because if your Time Zone setting remains unset, or is set for somewhere other than the location of your Organization, every time you utilize a feature that is time sensitive—such as a shift time or a weekly schedule—it will correspond to the time zone of the phone depending on where it happens to be at the time. This can result in shifts or schedules—not to mention notifications—that don’t sync up with the clocks of the people using them. Once your app Time Zone is set appropriately, anything you do within Crew will remain true to the Organization’s Time Zone, regardless of where you happen to be at the time. And even if your business and non-business locations are within the same zone you will always be covered when you, and your phone, travel.

Fixing Time Zone Problems

If you’ve already set up Repeating Tasks you can edit them after setting the Time Zone, if necessary. Be sure to Save once you’ve corrected the times. Templates for Regular Shifts must be deleted and re-configured after correcting the Time Zone setting.

If your time settings still seem out of sync, try killing the app and restarting it.

Note If you have business locations in different time zones, you should create different organizations for them, as each organization can have its own Time Zone setting.

Sometimes when you send out a message it’s crucial to get a response from the recipient/s, or at least to know that your message has been read. Of course you could always drop a hint by sending the message again (“Read me this time—I’m important!”) But there’s another, faster, way to remind the recipient that you’ve sent them something that requires their attention—the Nudge.

1. Tap the recipient’s Profile photo from the Coworkers tab
2. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner of the screen
3. Select “Nudge” from the list of actions
4. If necessary, select the appropriate Organization

Here’s how to nudge a coworker

The recipient will get a Notification. Tapping on that Notification will send them to the Chats tab of the Org from which the Nudge was sent.

A chat message, shown here with a Nudge

The phone number is the key

Every unique user on Crew is identified by a phone number—it’s the password you use to sign into the app, and it’s also how Crew sends out the text-invitation to join the app.

With that one phone number you can also log into Crew on devices other than a phone, like an iPad or iPod. You can also use it when accessing the app through the Web on a desktop.

What if you don’t have one?

But what about team members who only use devices without phone numbers, such as tablets, or who have text messaging turned off on their phones? How do they use Crew?

The answer is simple: Google Voice, a free Google service that provides a phone number that’s tied to an individual user, and not necessarily to a particular device. Each team member who needs it can register for their own personal Google Voice phone number. An active Crew user can send the app invite to that number, and the new team member will receive the introductory text message through it as well. He or she can then log in to Crew for the first time.

We want all your team members to be able to join your Crew.

Note What about team members who use a shared workplace device, such as a hostess station tablet, and don’t necessarily want to share their individual Crew accounts with co-workers? Simple. You can also use a Google Voice number to create a unique registration for a shared workplace device.

Crew currently supports the smartphones used by approximately 97% of the people in the US. While that’s a ton of phones, sadly you will occasionally run into a situation where an employee doesn’t have a compatible phone. If one of your employees doesn’t have a compatible phone, there are other options for them to get their Crew messages:

Option 1: Utilize the Web version of Crew. You can go to crewapp.com and tap “login” or go straight to crewapp.com/app. The Web version of Crew has almost all the same functionality of the app version and can be accessed from devices that can view websites.

Option 2: Enable SMS Relay for your organization. SMS Relay is a seamless solution that enables your employees who can’t/won’t install Crew to receive their messages via text message.

How SMS Relay Works

Currently, when you invite a new member to your organization, they receive a text message with an install link instructing them to install Crew. After that text message, they must download and install Crew to receive further messages. That process changes slightly once you enable SMS Relay. With SMS Relay on, as soon as you add an employee to your organization on Crew, they’ll start receiving Crew messages immediately. When a message is sent, the system determines whether or not each member has the app or not and smartly sends the messages where it belongs – either via Push Notification to the Crew app or via text message because the user doesn’t have Crew. Users who receive text messages can even reply by following the link included in their text messages and replying via the web.

How To Use SMS Relay

First, it’s important to note that SMS Relay is not enabled on your account by default. You will have to contact Crew Support in the app to request that it be turned on.

With SMS Relay turned on everyone gets Crew messages, not just the people with the app

When you go to the People tab you can tell who has installed Crew and who hasn’t, because those who haven’t installed yet will show up as “Pending Sign Up.” Without SMS Relay the pending user won’t get any new messages until he or she downloads Crew and signs in. With SMS Relay turned on, the new user will start getting messages immediately, via text. If that person decides not to install the app, or can’t install the app, they’ll just continue to receive text messages. If that user ever leaves the company, or doesn’t want to get any more Crew messages, you can simply remove them from the company as you would any other user. 

How To Enable SMS Relay and How Much Does it Cost?

To enable SMS Relay on your organization, contact Crew Support and tell them you’d like SMS Relay. Subscribers to Crew Pro can also self-enable SMS Relay in the Crew Pro section of their Admin screen.

There’s a small cost associated with SMS Relay because of the expense of sending text messages for users. To help defray those costs, we ask that users of SMS Bridge upgrade to Crew Pro which is inexpensive and comes with some great other benefits. Contact Crew Support within the app to find out more.

Crew Calls allows your team to communicate securely and easily with voice calls—as well as with text messages—from within the app. There’s no need to share phone numbers, or use individual calling-plan minutes, making team communication safer and more convenient than ever before.

Getting Started

Admins should add the Crew Calls feature from the Add-ons list in their Admin tab.

Admins can add Crew Calls from the Admin tab

Important Note You must be running the most recent version of Crew in order to use the Crew Calls feature. It is also necessary to enable the Microphone within the Crew app.

How to Use Crew Calls

Access Crew Calls from the Coworkers tab.

Access Crew Calls from the Coworkers tab

Simply tap the three dots across from the person you want to call. (You’ll also find the phone icon at the top right of a one-on-one chat.) After that, it works just like any mobile device call. A grayed-out phone icon means that person isn’t connected to WiFi or data, or hasn’t enabled their device’s microphone. If you tap it anyway it they’ll receive a message that you tried to call.

A missed call will show up as a 1-on-1 message in the Chats tab

Note iOS users can set their call to Mute or Speaker mode.

Calling Plans

All Crew subscribers receive 30 free calling minutes per Organization per month. Minutes are counted as minutes of connection between two people (e.g. a five-minute call between Catherine and Glen counts as five minutes of their Organization’s total, not five minutes for each of them.)

The Admin (only one person per Organization can administer the Crew Calls feature) can purchase additional minutes in one of two plans: 500 additional minutes or unlimited minutes.

1. From the Admin tab, tap “Manage” next to Crew Calls
2. Select “View Usage”
3. Tap “Get more minutes” to view plan options and pricing, and to purchase

Tap “View Usage” to purchase a calling plan with additional minutes

Managing Crew Calls

From the “View Usage” screen the Admin can monitor how many minutes the Organization has remaining at any time.

The Admin can also control which members of the Organization can make calls. The default setting is to allow any team member to make a call (and so to initiate using minutes). Simply toggle the Permissions button to restrict calling to Admin-only (in this case any Admin, not just the person administering Crew Calls).

Keep your Organization’s communications professional with the Profany Filter, available to Crew Pro and Crew Enterprise users. If a team member includes profanity in any public or private Crew conversation, the content of the message will be blocked, and the intended recipients will see in the Chats tab that the message has been “removed by Admin” or “hidden for inappropriate language” (device specific). There will be no reaction capability for the message, but recipients can still reply to it.

Enabling the Report a Message feature also allows any team member to flag a message they’ve received that doesn’t seem right for the workplace. To learn more, click here.

In the Chats tab, recipients will see that an Admin has removed the message

To enable the Profanity Filter for a single Organization, simply toggle it on from the Admin tab.

Toggle on the Profanity Filter from the Admin tab

The Profanity Filter can also be enabled for Enterprise accounts through Command Center.

There are times when you need simple reactions from a group of people, but you want them now, and without a lot of fuss.

Manager “I’m buying lunch for the meeting. Pizza? Burritos? Noodles?”

If everyone were in the same room how would you handle it? You’d take a quick poll, of course. But your team members are scattered all over the location site. What can you do?

With Crew, you can take a poll, of course!

Here’s how.

1. Send out a message to your team, matching each possible response with a reaction icon

Here’s how to set up a Reaction Poll

2. Your team members respond by choosing the appropriate icon, and because each recipient can only chime in with any particular icon one time per message, what you have is a nice, neat poll, achieved without a lot of notifications flying back and forth.

Use reaction icons to take an informal poll

Noodles it is!

Note Reaction icons can do lots of useful things within the app. Check out this article to find out more.