Publishing & content

Club chat

Safeguarded team and group messaging with admin oversight.

Club chat gives your members a safe place to talk — team channels, committee channels and ad-hoc groups — without the club living in an unmanaged WhatsApp group. You'll find it under Publish updates → Club chat in the admin sidebar; members chat at /chat on your club site. Chat is available on the Standard plan and above.

Chat is built safeguarding-first: there are no private member-to-member messages, admins and moderators can read every channel, deleted messages leave a moderation trail, and juniors are always represented by their guardian's account (dependants don't have logins).

Who can use this

Admins and moderators create channels, manage who's in them, read every channel, delete any message and handle reports.
Members can read and post in the channels they've been added to, report messages, and leave a channel at any time.
Team managers (coaches) take part like any member — add them to their team's channel with a roster sync.

What's on the page

Reported messages — messages members have flagged, newest first, with a link to the channel and a "Mark resolved" button. This card only appears while reports are open.
Create a channel — pick a type (group, committee, or team), name it, and add an optional description. Team channels are automatically named after the team and filled from the roster.
Channels — every channel with its type, description and an Archive/Restore control. Click a channel name to open its oversight view: the full thread, member management, and a transcript export.

Step by step

Create a team channel

Open Publish updates → Club chat.
Under Create a channel, choose Team (synced from roster) and pick the team.
Click Create channel. Everyone on the roster (plus the team manager) is added automatically.
After roster changes, open the channel and click Sync from roster to pull in new players.

Moderate a reported message

When a member reports a message, it appears under Reported messages.
Click Open channel to read it in context.
Delete the message if it breaks your rules (it shows as "Message removed" — the content is kept for the audit trail), then Mark resolved on the report.

Export a transcript

Open the channel from the Channels list.
Click Export transcript CSV — useful for safeguarding reviews or committee records.

Field reference

Field	What it does
Type	Team (roster-synced), Committee, or Group (ad-hoc). One live channel per team.
Name	Shown to members in their channel list. Team channels default to the team name.
Description	Optional one-liner shown under the name.
Archive	Freezes the channel read-only. Restore any time; nothing is deleted.

Tips & FAQ

Why can't members message each other privately? By design. Channels-only messaging with staff oversight is the safeguarding model committees and insurers expect for clubs with junior members.
How do juniors take part? Dependants don't have accounts — their guardian is the channel member and sees everything on their behalf.
Do members get notified? New messages send a push notification (never email) to channel members who have push enabled on a device. Members control this per category from their account's notification preferences.
Members are posting too fast / spamming. Sending is rate-limited automatically. For repeat offenders, remove them from the channel and follow your club's code of conduct.
Where do members find chat? At /chat on your club site — link it from your navigation or share the link in a broadcast.