Team chats
Talk a piece of work through with your team in one shared chat, and bring the AI in with @ai when you want it to answer.
A team chat is a conversation that belongs to a team rather than to you. Everyone in the team can read it and write in it. You talk to each other like in any group chat, and the AI stays quiet until someone asks for it with @ai. When it answers, it has read the whole conversation, and its reply lands in the thread for the whole team to see.
The app puts it simply: “In team chats you can chat with your team members. Use @ai to request an AI response.”
Team chat, personal chat or project?
| Use | When | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Personal chat | You are working on something on your own. | You, and anyone you share it with. |
| Team chat | Several people need to discuss, decide and use the AI together, in one place. | Everyone in the team. |
| Project | One piece of work needs its own chats, files, prompts and instructions kept together. | You, and anyone you share the project with. See Projects. |
A good rule: if you would otherwise paste an AI answer into your team’s messaging tool to discuss it, start a team chat instead. The discussion and the answer stay together, and the AI can see both.
Start a team chat
There are two ways in. Both need you to be a member of the team; admins set up teams in Workspace (see Admin setup below).
From the TEAM switcher
- Pick the team
In the left sidebar, open the TEAM switcher. It shows where you are now, Personal Chats by default, with a count of your other teams. Choose a team, for example Marketing. The chat list underneath now shows that team’s chats.
- Select New team chat
With a team selected, the yellow button reads New team chat. Select it. The new chat screen shows a pill, Chatting with team Marketing, so you always know who will see what you write.
- Write your first message
Say what the chat is for, the way you would to colleagues: “Morning all - the autumn knitwear banner is due Thursday. Dropping ideas in here so we have them in one place.”
From the New chat menu
Open the chevron next to New chat. Under Teams there is one entry per team you belong to, such as New Marketing chat or New Sales chat. The same menu also has New personal chat and shortcuts to the apps.
Ask the AI
In a team chat, the AI only answers when you ask it to. There are two ways.
- Type
@aiin your message. Typing@opens a list with @ai at the top. Pick it and carry on writing. - Switch on @AI. The @AI button in the composer (“Toggle AI Mention - Ask the AI to respond to your message”) turns yellow when it is on. Your next message then goes to the AI without typing the mention.
The model you picked in the composer answers in the thread, using the whole conversation so far as context. Everyone in the team sees the answer, so a request like “@ai summarise the three banner concepts we liked and who owns each” gives the whole team the same summary.
Bring in an agent
The @ list also shows any agents invited to the chat, by their handle, such as @support-triage. Mention one to get an answer from that agent, with its own instructions, tools and knowledge.
Everything else works the same
A team chat has the same tools as any other chat: the model picker, Style, the reasoning effort button, Attach, the knowledge base picker, the agent picker, Share and Chat info. See Files and knowledge, Response styles and Choosing a model.
Who can see team chats
Team chats belong to the team: every member can open them, read the whole thread, including the AI’s answers, and write in them. Before you paste something sensitive, check the Chatting with team pill, or switch back to Personal Chats.
The models you can pick may depend on your team: admins can give a provider’s models to specific teams only.
Good practice
- One chat per topic. Autumn knitwear banner and Q4 newsletter are two chats. The AI answers better when the thread is about one thing, and people find it again faster.
- Name the goal and the deadline in the first message. The AI reads it as context for every later answer.
- Close with a summary. Before you move on, ask “@ai list the decisions we made and the open questions”. The next person to open the chat gets the outcome in one message.
- Use the team for shared context. Put the discussion where the people who need it already are, instead of forwarding AI answers around.
- Attach the source. Drop in the brief or brand guide with Attach, or pick a knowledge base, so the AI works from your material rather than guesses.
Admin setup
Teams are created and managed by admins in Workspace > Team Management: New team, members and the models each team can use. A team can have an owner who approves prompts and controls budgets. To limit a provider’s models to certain teams, use Specific teams in Workspace > Model & Provider Access.