In brief: Net Net Chat has four surfaces: Stream, General, one Job Channel per Job, and Direct Messages, and it needs an active trial or paid plan.

Applies to: Everyone in the workspace, on an active free trial or a paid plan.

See also: Mentions in Chat: @ for People, Brackets for Work covers pointing at people and work, and Net Net Pricing: Free Tier, 60-Day Trial, and Paid Plans covers the access Chat needs.

Chat has four surfaces and each one has a job. Stream is the running feed of everything you can see, in time order, where you read and reply rather than start something new. General is the single workspace-wide channel. Job Channels are the primary work surface, one per Job, created automatically when the Job is. Direct Messages are private. Chat is a premium feature, so your workspace needs an active free trial or a paid plan to use it.

You'll find it in the main navigation under Chat.

Chat is a premium feature

This one is worth saying plainly, because it is the most common reason Chat looks broken when it is not.

Chat needs an active free trial or a paid plan. On a free workspace, opening Chat shows a banner inviting you to start a trial instead of the conversation surface, and the chat buttons on Job headers, Deliverable cards, and task rows sit disabled with the label Chat unavailable. Nothing is lost. The moment the workspace has premium access, every one of those surfaces comes to life and any history that was already there is still there. What each level of access includes is set out in Net Net Pricing: Free Tier, 60-Day Trial, and Paid Plans.

The four Chat surfaces

Stream

Stream is the default view and the one you will probably live in.

It is not a channel. It is the aggregate of every conversation you can see, ordered newest first: General, every Job Channel in the workspace, every Direct Message you are part of, and the replies underneath them. Each message carries a small source label so you always know which channel it came from.

Stream has one rule that shapes everything about it. You can read in Stream and you can reply in Stream, but you cannot start a new top-level message there. The composer says so directly: Choose Reply on a message to respond from Stream.

That rule is deliberate. A brand-new message needs a real home, and Stream is not a home, it is a view. When you reply from Stream, your reply lands in the parent message's actual channel and inherits whatever work context the parent already had, which is described in more detail in Chat Threads: Replying, Editing, and Deleting Messages. You get the speed of one scrollable feed without the mess of messages with no address.

General

General is the single workspace-wide channel. Every workspace has exactly one, created automatically, and everyone on the team can see it and post in it.

It is for the conversation that is real but not attached to one Job yet. Agency-wide notes, a heads up about next week, the thing you would say out loud if everyone were in the same room. General accepts new top-level messages, replies, mentions, and filtering just like a Job Channel does.

What General is not is the durable home for delivery conversation. If a thread in General turns into a real decision about a real Job, tag it so it stops being homeless. That is what Tagging and Retagging Messages So Chat Stays Findable is for.

Job Channels

Job Channels are the point of the whole module.

Every Job gets its own channel automatically, named after the Job, created at the same time the Job is. It is where the conversation history of that work lives, and it is the reason Chat is worth having inside Net Net rather than beside it in another tab. We made the wider case for that in a post on team chat software for advertising agency operations.

Job Channels are visible to the whole workspace, not just the people assigned to the Job. In the channel list they are grouped by the Job's status, which moves through the stages covered in Job Lifecycle: Pending, Active, Completed, Archived:

• Active, expanded by default
• Pending, collapsed
• Completed, collapsed
• Archived, collapsed

Anything you post in a Job Channel is automatically tagged to that Job, without you doing anything. Deliverable and Task level conversation lives in the same channel and gets its finer context from tagging and mentions rather than from separate sub-channels.

Direct Messages

DMs are private conversations between two people or a small group. Only the participants can see them, and they are the one surface that does not show up in anybody else's Stream.

Start one from the member search at the top of the Direct Messages group in the channel list. Pick the same set of people again later and you land back in the same conversation rather than starting a second one.

DMs are useful and they are meant to stay secondary. A private thread is a fine place for a question. It is a poor place for the answer everyone will need in three months. When a DM produces something the Job should remember, tag the message to the work so it becomes findable.

Unread and Mentions

Two more views sit next to Stream in the channel list.

• Unread collects the messages you have not seen yet, across everything visible to you
• Mentions collects the messages where someone mentioned you by name, using the syntax covered in Mentions in Chat: @ for People, Brackets for Work

Both behave like Stream. You read, you reply, you do not start something new from them. They exist to answer the two questions people actually open a chat tool to answer: what did I miss, and where do I need to say something.

The screen

The top of Chat carries the controls that matter: search, filter, and the toggle for the channel list.

The middle is the conversation itself, with the composer docked at the bottom. The channel list slides in from the side and runs in a fixed order:

1. Stream
2. Unread
3. Mentions
4. General
5. Job Channels, grouped by Job status
6. Direct Messages

Unread counts sit next to each destination and roll up to the group headers, so you can see that Job Channels have twelve unread without opening every one of them.

Filtering a conversation

The filter panel narrows whatever you are looking at by two things:

• Work context, a specific Job, Deliverable, or Task
• Person, messages that person wrote or replied to

Filtering works on Stream too, which is the fastest way to answer "what has anyone said about this Deliverable anywhere" without opening five channels.

Chat where the work is

You do not have to go to the Chat section to use Chat.

Job headers, Deliverable cards, task rows inside a Job, and rows in My Tasks all carry a chat button showing message, unread, and mention counts for that item. Clicking it opens a drawer with the conversation scoped to that piece of work, and anything you write there is tagged to it automatically.

The counts roll up the way the work does. A Task's messages count toward its Deliverable, and a Deliverable's count toward the Job. Open a Job and the number on its chat button is everything anyone has said about any part of it.

Who can post

One permission covers posting, editing, and deleting your own messages, and all four default roles have it: Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member, as described in User Roles Explained: Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member. Out of the box, everyone on your team can talk.

An Owner or Admin can tighten that per role under Settings → Roles. Retagging other people's messages is a separate permission with tighter defaults, covered in Tagging and Retagging Messages So Chat Stays Findable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a paid plan to use Chat?

You need an active free trial or a paid plan. Chat is a premium feature and a free workspace cannot open it. On a free plan the Chat section shows a banner instead of conversations, and the chat buttons on Jobs, Deliverables, and tasks are disabled. Starting a trial unlocks all of it immediately, and anything already in the workspace is waiting there.

Why can't I start a new message in Stream?

Because Stream is a view of everything, not a place messages live. A new top-level message needs a real home, so it has to begin in General, a Job Channel, or a Direct Message. You can reply to anything from Stream, and your reply lands in the parent's actual channel with the parent's work context already attached.

Do I have to create a channel for each Job?

No. Every Job gets its channel automatically when the Job is created. It is named after the Job and grouped in the channel list by the Job's status, with Active jobs expanded by default and Pending, Completed, and Archived collapsed.

Can everyone see every Job Channel?

Yes. General and Job Channels are visible to the whole workspace. Only Direct Messages are private, and those are visible to their participants alone.

Do Quick Tasks have chat?

No, and that is on purpose. Chat is built for Job-based work, where Deliverables, allocations, and service types give a conversation something to attach to. Quick Tasks are deliberately standalone. The full reasoning is in Chat on Completed, Archived, and Quick Task Work.

What is the difference between Unread and Mentions?

Unread is everything you have not read yet. Mentions is the narrower set where someone tagged you by name with @. Both are read and reply views that sit next to Stream, and both work across every channel you can see.

Can I chat about a Deliverable or a Task without leaving the Job?

Yes. Deliverable cards and task rows carry their own chat button, which opens a drawer scoped to that item. Everything you write there is tagged to it automatically and still appears in the Job Channel, because Task and Deliverable conversation rolls up rather than splitting off.

Related articles

Once you know where conversation lives, Mentions in Chat: @ for People, Brackets for Work covers how to pull in a person or point at a specific piece of work, and Tagging and Retagging Messages So Chat Stays Findable explains what makes a message findable from the Job months later. For how replies behave and what you can change after hitting send, see Chat Threads: Replying, Editing, and Deleting Messages. If you are wondering what happens to a channel once the work is finished, Chat on Completed, Archived, and Quick Task Work answers that, and Net Net Pricing: Free Tier, 60-Day Trial, and Paid Plans covers the access Chat needs in the first place.

Updated on: 08/04/2026