One room for the whole shop, in the Shopmonkey sidebar.

Shop Chat adds an entry to Shopmonkey's left rail. Click it and a panel slides up with the shop's one room. Everyone sees the same room. There are no private messages and no threads, and that's on purpose.

You're signed in with your Shopmonkey login. The extension hands your Shopmonkey session to our server once, the server checks it against your staff list, and you get an eight-hour chat session. There's no PIN and no second password to forget.

Type @ and a roster pops up. Mention someone and the panel opens on their screen. When the panel's closed, the rail entry shows a red unread count, and the extension checks for new messages every thirty seconds and raises a desktop notification with the sender's name and the first line. Clicking the notification brings the Shopmonkey tab forward and opens the room.

Messages are stored on our server, so a new computer sees the same history. If the server or your connection drops, the panel says so once and goes quiet. It doesn't keep popping errors at the counter.

A tech who needs the advisor to call a customer about the Z3 in bay three shouldn't have to walk up front. An advisor who wants to know if the part came in shouldn't have to text somebody's personal phone. Keeping that traffic in the tab the work order is already in means less walking and fewer missed messages. And it isn't buried in a group text nobody can search.

Shop Chat is staff to staff. Customer texting stays in Shopmonkey, and the Message Center in the Owners app is where you work that queue.