Messages (Basic): View, Print, Archive, Delete

TaxDome gives you lots of tools to manage and keep track of your clients’ messages: View all replies at once or just from one client. Archive your chats, reopen and delete them, find out when a client received a message—and more.

Covered here:

• Responding to Client Messages
• Seeing All Chats for a Client Account
• Seeing Which Chats Have Been Received and Read
• Printing Chats
• Archiving and Reopening Chat Threads
• Deleting Chat Threads

Responding to Client Messages

Team members receive a notification in their Inbox+ and an email whenever one of their assigned clients creates a new chat thread, replies to a chat or makes changes to a task. Whenever someone replies to a thread, the Inbox+ notification is updated; only one notification per chat thread is displayed. When there’s a new message in a thread, the notification is updated and moves to the top. For more details about message notifications, go here.

To view the most recent message and respond to it, click the thread’s name or the Go to... link.

View and reply to a client’s chat by going to Messages in their account. Chats are sorted chronologically by most recent. All unread threads have a green badge indicating the number of unread messages. You can also see the status of client tasks inside each thread. In the Messages tab, everything happens in real time, as with DMs. Click on a thread to view it.

Inside message threads:

• Communicate with clients by typing in the chat field.
• Send a message by hitting ctrl + enter on Windows or cmd + enter on a Mac.
• View and download client-uploaded files.
• Add, view, download and delete firm-uploaded files.
• Add, review and check off client tasks.

When you receive a response from a client whose account includes other users— two or more contacts who have Login toggled on—you’ll always know who is responding inside the chat thread.

• If their email is linked to a contact, their name is displayed in the chat thread.
• If their email isn’t linked, their email address is displayed in the chat thread.

Seeing All Chats for a Client Account

To view all chat threads for a client account, go to Clients, select the account, then open Messages. The circle displayed to the right of the Messages tab shows how many unread chats an account has.

All messages for a client account are stored in the Active or Archived tab. There’s also a Client Tasks tab, where you can see all of the client’s tasks from their chat threads.

Inside the Active tab, chats are sorted chronologically by the most recent response. On the left, a list displays information about the last response time, author, subject and status of the client tasks for each thread. The unread threads have a green badge indicating the number of unread messages.

Go to the Clients section to find out whether someone has any unread or pending messages, then click the unread or active tag to jump to the Messages tab of their account.

Seeing Which Chats Have Been Received and Read

Gray or green checkmarks appear next to each message you’ve sent. Here’s what they mean:

The message was successfully sent.

The recipient has read the message. If there are several users linked to the account, this indicates that at least one has read the message.

Filter your account list to see which clients have open questions or unread messages:

1. Go to Clients, then click FILTER.
2. In the Messages section, select the option you prefer:

• All: all accounts with at least one chat thread
• Active: all accounts with active chat threads
• Unread: all accounts with unread chat threads (if several members were part of the chat, the thread shows up as unread to those who haven’t yet read it)
• Archived: all accounts that have archived chat threads

3. Click APPLY.

Printing Chats

To print a chat thread, click the three dots in the upper far right of the chat window, then select Print from the drop-down.

Your browser will offer you to print the thread.

Archiving and Reopening Chat Threads

Once you receive all the information you need from a client in a chat thread, archive or delete it to avoid clutter. When you archive a chat thread, you still have access to it. However, if it still has incomplete tasks, clients won’t be able to view them on their dashboard.

To archive chat threads, click the three dots to the upper far right, click Archive, then click YES in the Archive Message Thread pop-up.

The chat thread is then moved from the Active to the Archived tab.

If you archive a chat thread but later discover you need it, reopen it.

1. Go to the Messages tab for the client account, then open the Archived tab.
2. Open the chat thread, click the three dots to the far right of the chat, then click Reopen.

In the Archived subtab of the Messages tab, you’ll see the following:

• SUBJECT: the subject line
• PROGRESS: The first figure is the number of completed tasks; the second, the total number of tasks in the chat thread.
• DATE CREATED: when the chat thread was started
• CREATOR: the person who created the thread
• LAST RESPONSE: when the last response to the chat thread was written and who wrote it

By default, a thread list will display 25 thread titles per page. To change the number, click on Rows per page at the bottom left of the page, then choose to view 50, 100 or 250 at a time.

Deleting Chat Threads

Unlike archived message threads, deleted ones cannot be restored. To permanently remove a chat thread:

1. Click the three dots to the far right of the message-thread, then click Delete.

2. Click Delete in the Delete Confirmation pop-up.