To be able to view your messages, the people you want to view them must have appropriate viewing permissions enabled in their roles.

You can post and exchange messages with your fellow team members within a project.

Messages associated with a project can be viewed on its details page (Messages, Files, Audit trail section), or My Assignments page. You can always check out how many messages have been posted for a project in total, as well as see how many new messages have been posted at a given moment, if any, in Activity Center.

Viewing project messages

To view messages posted for a project, take these steps:

1. Log in to Easy Projects.
2. Access the Messages, Files, Audit Trail panel.
3. Select the Messages checkbox.
4. As a result, all messages posted for the project will be displayed as a log of messages, uploaded files and audit trail items.
5. New items posted by other users and not yet viewed, are marked with light-blue circles. The counter of unread items is also displayed next to the Messages checkbox.

There are various ways you can post a message for a project.

Posting via project details

To post a message on the project details section:

1. Log in.
2. Select Activity Center on the main toolbar.
3. Locate the project you want to post a message for.
4. Hover over the name of the project.
5. Click the Details button () 
6. Select the Messages checkbox on the Messages, Files, Audit Trail panel if not already selected to be able to view messages posted to date.
7. Type your message in the message box.
8. Click the paper clip button to attach a file to the message.
9. Click 'Post' to post the message.

Posting via Activity Center (for the previous UI version only) 

To post a message from Activity Center:

1. Log in.
2. Select Activity Center on the main toolbar.
3. Click the customization button ().
4. Under Project, select the Messages checkbox to enable messages item in the appropriate column.
5. Locate the project you want to post a message for.
6. Click the messages item in the appropriate column for the project.
7. On the Messages, Files, Audit Trail panel that opens type the text of the message in the box.
8. Click the paper clip button to attach a file to the message. You can also 'drop' a file onto the box using drag-and-drop as a way to attach them.
9. Click 'Post'.

Posting via My Assignments

To post a message in My Assignments:

1. Log in.
2. Click My Assignments on the main toolbar.
3. Click the 'Post message' link (see 5 below) under the project you want to post a message for.
4. Type the message in the message box and click 'Post'.
5. Click the paper clip button to attach a file to the message. You can also 'drop' a file onto the box using drag-and-drop as a way to attach them.
6. After a message is posted, the 'Post message' link changes to the text of the last message posted. The counter of the posted messages increments by one.
7. To post another message, click on the link again.

Posting messages by email

As you receive a notification by email about the posting of a message for a project and decide you would like to reply to it, proceed as follows:

1. Click the 'Reply' button for the message in your email client or browser.
2. Type the text of the message to be posted in the body of the letter.
3. Send the message the usual way.

While you can reply from any notification email you get, make sure that you reply to the correct project.

Users can post messages by email even to projects they are not members of, as long as they receive a notification (like if the project manager chooses to manually send the user a notification) and they are project members.

Posting messages by email only works with single notifications. Notification digests are not supported.

Attachments are currently not supported. The text of any posted-by-email message with an attachment will still be posted, but the attachments won’t be included.

By default this feature is only available for customers running on the Easy Projects servers. For self-hosted customers interested in this feature, please contact us for a quote to implement this on your servers.

Deleting/editing a message:

You can edit or delete a message if you:

• have posted the message; or
• have the permission to edit or delete the project the message is attached to.

1. Access the Messages, Files, Audit Trail panel for the respective project or activity by one of the available methods, e.g., via Activity Center, or the details page.
2. Move the mouse pointer to the right-hand side of the message until a cogwheel button appears.
3. Click the cogwheel button to open a menu with Edit and Delete commands (see the picture).

4. To delete the message, choose Delete. After a confirmation step, the message will be deleted.
5. To edit the message, choose Edit. Click Apply (or press Ctrl+Enter) to save the changes. Next to the edited message the word "Edited" will appear in parentheses.

@mention

If you need to let other project members or other users know about the fact that you have posted a message and let them read it, you can use the @mention feature.

It overrides both any notification rule that you may have set up for your project and common notification rule.

To use @mention:

1. Make sure the cursor is in the message box..
2. Type "@" either at the beginning of a line or after a space (so that it cannot be construed by the system as the @ in an email address).
3. On the list that opens select the user you want to mention. The list is text searchable so you can type any letter any combination of sequential letters being part of the user's name.
4. On selecting the user, a tag will be inserted in the body of the message, e.g.  .

4. Click Post () (for mouse users) or press Ctrl+Enter (for keyboard users) to post the message.

For mouse users: to insert a @ character use the "@" button on message editor toolbar.

The list of mentionees includes the following users: project members, OR ones with Access all projects (not in portfolios), OR ones with a portfolio role of Viewer, Editor or Manager.

Timestamps

The timestamps automatically added for system events are time zone-sensitive. It means that a user in time zone T+2 will see an event with a timestamp that is two hours ahead of that which a user in time zone T will see.

1. User A (whose time zone is UTC-2) adds a message at 10:20 AM. He opens project audit trail log and sees that he added the message at 10:20 AM.
2. User B (whose time zone is UTC+1) opens the project audit trail log and sees that User A added a message at 01:20 PM.

File version update

In case you attach the same file two or more times, it is not overwritten, but is added as a version # of the file already uploaded.

1. You have uploaded a file named replace.dat.
2. Upload the file again.
3. The result will be two uploaded files listed as: