How To Use Team And Client Messaging in WorkZen

Half the chaos in a service business is conversations living in five places: the office line, someone's personal cell, a group text, and two photo threads nobody can find. WorkZen puts client texting and internal team chat in one Messages inbox, tied to the client records you already keep.

Client texting, shared with the whole team

Open the phone sidebar and hit the Messages tab (it sits next to Contacts and History). Every SMS conversation on the business numbers you're assigned to lives here, shared with everyone who works those numbers, so "did anyone reply to Mrs. Chen?" has a visible answer. Texting clients requires a ZenPhone number; it's your business number the messages come from.

Start a fresh thread with New Message, or hit Message on any lead or client in the Contacts tab. Type in the message box ("Type a message...") and send; the client receives a normal text and their reply lands right back in the thread. Because conversations are shared, the tech who texted this morning and the office manager following up this afternoon see the same history.

A text that didn't make it shows in red, with the reason under it: "Not sent: the recipient replied STOP to this number", "the carrier filtered it as spam", "the company reached its daily texting limit". Some of those lift (a carrier hiccup, the daily limit at midnight) and some never do (a STOP reply). When it's worth another try, use Retry sending under the message on the web, or long-press the bubble and choose Retry in the app: the same bubble goes out again and takes the new result.

On the web, an open conversation keeps its actions as icons at the top right (hover one to see its name). Call opens the dialer with the number filled in and, if you work the line the thread is on, that line already chosen (under Calling from when you have more than one line), so the customer sees the number they texted; start the call from there. With no ZenPhone line of your own, or a role without the dialer, Call hands the number to your device's own phone app instead. A number WorkZen doesn't know also gets Add as lead or client and, if your role can manage clients, Save as contact; a thread tied to a client, lead or company contact gets Open contact record. The Messages drawer on a record has Call too. The phone apps don't have these icons yet.

Message from the page you're already on

Client, lead, and job pages, and the visit modal on the Scheduler, have a Message button that opens a Messages drawer with that contact's conversation right there. It is one thread between your company and that client (or lead), on your company's default texting number, so a text sent from a job or a visit joins the same history as the client page. Confirm tomorrow's arrival window from the visit itself, and the exchange is saved with everything else.

Anyone whose role can view that client (or that lead) can open this thread from the record, read it, and reply, even if they aren't assigned to the default texting number. It still won't show up in their Messages inbox, which only lists conversations on numbers they're assigned to. So if a teammate can't find a client's texts in the inbox, send them to the client's page instead.

Subcontractors can call or text the client of any visit they are assigned to. On the visit, the phone row reads Number hidden but its call and text buttons still work, and the client's email is not shown. Texting opens the same client thread, where the number stays hidden. There is no setting for this; it is always on.

The Messages panel is docked, not a pop-up: it stays open while you move from a job to an invoice to the schedule, and only its own controls close it: the X at its top right, or the arrow on its left edge, right beside the page you're working on (WorkZen remembers whether you left it open). If you have a ZenPhone line, the panel also carries a Dialer tab, so you can place a call from any screen without leaving it; the full phone page with contacts and history is still under Phone.

Photos from clients land in the thread

When a client texts a picture, the image shows up in the conversation, visible to the whole team instead of one tech's camera roll.

A web address in a text (one starting with http:// or https://, or www.) is a link: tap or click it and WorkZen first shows External Website Warning with the full address, then Continue opens it in your browser and Cancel stays put. On the web, tick Don't show this warning again to skip it on that browser.

Send photos by text

Outgoing texts can carry pictures and files too. In the composer, use the paperclip (on the phone apps, it offers Files, Photo Library or Take Photo) and pick up to 10 items; each one appears above the message box as it uploads, with a cross to drop it. Send with or without a message. Images, PDFs, plain-text files and short MP4 or MOV videos go through, 5 MB each. Anything you send this way is also filed under the client, lead or job the thread belongs to, in their Files tab.

Two things to know: the line you send from has to support picture messaging (MMS), and WorkZen tells you before sending if it does not; and a US line needs its A2P registration done, exactly like plain texts. A message that a carrier drops shows "Not sent" with the reason, and Retry sends it again, attachments included.

Team chat: keep internal talk internal

The same Messages tab handles conversations between WorkZen users. Pick a teammate from the Team section and chat one-on-one: dispatch details, job questions, the "gate code is 4482" messages that used to clog personal phones. Team conversations never reach a client.

For crews, hit New group, name it, pick the members, and create. Groups carry a Group badge, and any participant can rename the group, add or remove members, or leave.

Tame the noise

The inbox search bar ("Search conversations...") filters threads as you type. And when a busy group chat gets loud, mute it: Mute for 8 hours, Mute for 1 week, or Mute always, then Unmute when you're back on that job. Done with a thread for good? Delete conversation removes it for everyone in your company, after a confirmation. Want to come back to a thread later? Mark as unread (the icon on the row on the web, a long-press on the row in the app) makes it unread again for everyone on that line.