Mandatory Workflow Change
This change will automatically apply to all customers who have this feature enabled at the time of this release. Review the changes below.
Manage texts and team chat in one Messages list, with new access controls
Messages brings customer texts and internal team chat into a single list on the record where the work already lives, and adds administrator control over who can open the message center, who can read customer texts and emails, and who can send them.
What's changing
Until now the message center mixed four overlapping tabs, Email, Internal Chat, Threads, and Mentions, email appeared inline for every company that had Messages turned on, and there was no single list of customer text messages anywhere in ServiceTitan. There were also no permissions on the message center itself, so reaching a job, project, or task was enough to open its conversations. Now the message center has two channel tabs, SMS and Internal Chat, with Threads folded into Internal Chat and @Mentions kept as a filter inside it. Customer texts appear in ServiceTitan in one unified list for the first time, split into Open and Closed so live work stays separate from finished work. A filter bar above the tabs lets you narrow either list by unread state or by the record a conversation is attached to. Conversations open in a portable panel anchored to the lower right of the screen that you can move, minimize, and carry with you as you move around ServiceTitan, and a Messages module is embedded directly into jobs, customers, locations, and service agreements so you can reply without leaving the record. Alongside the redesign, five permissions now govern the message center: one new permission that controls access to the message center itself, two renamed texting permissions, and two new email permissions. No one loses access they have today.
Workflow comparison — before & after
Resources
How it works for your industry
Roofing and Exteriors
- A production manager opens a reroof job and sees the homeowner's texts about gate access and the crew's internal chat about material delivery in the same list, so nothing is missed between the office and the crew on site.
- An administrator withholds View Message Center from a sales role so that a salesperson assigned to a job cannot read the pricing conversation another salesperson had with the same homeowner.
- A dispatcher clicks the Related tab on a supplement conversation and sees every text, chat, and email attached to the project, its jobs, and its tasks, instead of opening each record in turn to piece the history together.
How to prepare
- Email. If your account uses email in Messages today, it stays on. Accounts that do not use email today will not see the email channel.
- Texting. SMS is off by default for every account. An administrator needs to request it before the SMS tab appears.
- View Message Center: controls whether someone can open the message center, read the conversations they take part in, and take part in internal chat. On by default for the Admin, CSR, Dispatch, Field Manager, Sales Manager, General Office, and Accounting roles, and an owner or administrator can turn it off for any role.
- View customer emails: controls whether someone can read customer email conversations.
- Allow full access to customer emails: controls whether someone can send and reply to customer email. It has no effect unless View customer emails is also granted.
- Access customer texts: this is the permission previously called View customer chats. It controls whether someone can read customer text messages. What it controls has not changed.
- Allow full access to customer texts: this is the permission previously called Allow full access to customer chats. It controls whether someone can send and reply to customer texts. What it controls has not changed.