Which chatrooms does Vome create automatically?
Overview
Vome generates chatrooms for you as you build. You do not create them one at a time, and you never maintain their member lists.
There are six levels. This article explains what each one covers, when to reach for it, what is on by default, and where you control all of it. It is for administrators.
1. What does "automatically generated" actually mean?
Two things, and the second one is the part people underestimate.
You do not build the room. Turning a level on tells Vome to create a room for each thing at that level.
You also do not maintain who is in it. Each room stays synchronized with whoever currently belongs. Approve somebody to an opportunity and they appear in its room. Take them off a shift and they leave that shift's room. Archived and offline profiles drop out on their own. The room is a view of your current assignments, not a list you curate.
2. What are the six levels?
- Database. One channel reaching every active member you have. Archived and offline profiles are excluded automatically.
- Site. Everyone attached to one location, administrators included.
- Category. One room for a whole program, covering every profile approved for at least one opportunity inside that category. New approvals keep syncing in.
- Opportunity. Everyone approved to that one opportunity.
- Shift. Only the people attending that specific date.
- Group. Everyone in a named group, such as a school, a company team, or a partner organization.
3. Which level should I use for what?
The useful question is not "which room exists" but "who genuinely needs to read this".
- Database for the rare message that concerns everybody. A closure, a policy change, an annual thank you. Used often, it trains people to ignore you.
- Site for anything true at one location and not the others. Parking, a door code, a local cancellation.
- Category when a program has a conversation that outlives any single opportunity inside it. Seasonal changes, a program-wide update, a shared resource.
- Opportunity for the conversation that belongs to the role itself. What to bring, who to ask on arrival, what the work actually involves.
- Shift for the day itself. The weather, the running late message, a last minute change of entrance.
- Group to address a partner as a unit rather than as scattered individuals, which is usually how they think of themselves.
4. Are these on by default?
Not all of them, and the differences matter.
- Opportunity chats are on by default and are created when an opportunity is published.
- Shift chats are set per opportunity and apply to every shift under that opportunity, rather than being switched on shift by shift.
- Category, group and site chats are off by default. You turn them on for individual items, in bulk, or by asking Vome to create them for new ones automatically.
- The database-wide channel is off until you enable it.
5. Can I stop people from replying?
Yes, at every level.
Announcements only means administrators post and everybody else reads. Set it per level, so you can leave shift rooms conversational while keeping the database channel one-way.
The database-wide channel starts in announcements only, and stays that way until you turn on "Allow everyone to chat". That default is deliberate. Telling two hundred people a shift moved is useful. Answering two hundred replies about it is not.
6. The Auto-generated chats panel, card by card
Open Chats, click the gear icon (Chat settings), then open Auto-generated chats. You get one card per level, and every card offers the same three controls.
- Auto-create for new. Set it to Enabled and every new item of that type starts its chat on its own. This appears on the Sites, Categories and Groups cards only.
- Apply to existing. Enable all or Disable all switches chat on or off for everything of that type in one action.
- Manage. The button reads Manage, or shows a live count such as "5 enabled ยท Manage". It opens a picker with a Search by name box, an on or off toggle for each item, and a Done button, so you can choose individual items instead of the whole type.
The Opportunities and Shifts cards have no Auto-create for new switch, only Enable all, Disable all and Manage. That is not an omission: those chats are already created automatically when an opportunity is published, so there is nothing to opt into.
A bulk change takes a moment to work through everything, and Vome tells you it is running rather than pretending it finished instantly.
7. Turning chat on for one site, group or category
You do not have to go through Chat settings. When you create or edit the item itself, look for the Communication section and use the toggle there. The label matches what you are editing:
- Groups: Enable group-level chat.
- Sites: Enable site-level chat.
- Categories: Enable category-level chat.
Once the toggle is on, an Announcements only (admins post) sub-toggle appears beneath it, so you can set the posting rule at the same moment rather than coming back for it. If the item already has a chat, an Open chat link shows as well, which is the quickest way in.
8. Will new categories, groups and sites get a room automatically?
Only if you ask for it.
That is what the Auto-create for new switch in section 6 does, and all three are off by default. Turn one on and every category, group or site you create from that point is paired with a chatroom, with participants added by assignment in the usual way.
Opportunities already behave like this without a setting, since a published opportunity gets its room on its own.
9. Can people edit or delete what they posted?
By default, yes. Users and administrators can both edit and delete their own messages.
There are four separate switches if you need the record to stay exactly as it was sent: stop users deleting, stop administrators deleting, stop users editing, stop administrators editing. Turn on only what you need, since locking everything makes an honest typo permanent.
The two administrator switches are set by the account holder and apply to every administrator in the portal.
10. What about direct messages?
Direct messages sit outside the six levels and have their own rules.
- Direct messages between users and administrators are on by default, and can be turned off.
- Direct messages between administrators are on by default, and can be turned off separately.
There is also a link to time off. Adding a time-off period can show that person as away in chat for those dates, so somebody messaging them sees it before waiting on a reply. The person can uncheck it on any individual time-off entry.
11. What if I need a room that is not one of these six?
Create one yourself.
A custom group chat takes any set of people you choose, and a direct conversation takes one person. Use a custom room when the group does not map to anything structural, such as four people planning across three programs. Use the automatic levels for everything that does, because those are the ones that maintain themselves.
12. Where do I find all of this?
Open Chats from the left navigation, click the gear icon for Chat settings, and work from there.
Everything in this article lives in that panel: Auto-generated chats with its per-level cards, announcements only for each level, the bulk actions, the auto-create switches, message editing and deletion controls, and the direct message rules. The only exception is the per-item Communication toggle in section 7, which sits on the site, group or category itself.
Summary
- Six levels are generated for you: Database, Site, Category, Opportunity, Shift and Group.
- Membership always follows current assignment. You never add or remove anybody by hand.
- Opportunity chats are on by default. Category, group, site and database-wide chats are off until you enable them. Shift chats are set per opportunity.
- Every card in Auto-generated chats offers the same three controls: Auto-create for new, Enable all or Disable all, and Manage for individual items.
- Opportunities and Shifts have no Auto-create switch, because their chats already appear at publish.
- You can also switch chat on from the Communication section when creating a site, group or category.
- Any level can be set to announcements only. The database-wide channel starts that way.
- Site and Group chatrooms depend on the Sites and Groups modules, which need Enterprise.
- Custom group chats and direct messages cover anything the six levels do not.