Message the interpreters on your roster
Your agency's shared Inbox: one private conversation with each interpreter on your roster, read by everyone with dispatch access.
The Inbox keeps the everyday back and forth with your interpreters inside OneTerp, instead of on personal phones. Each interpreter on your roster has one conversation with your office. Everyone with dispatch access can read it, dispatch managers can reply, and every reply is signed with the name of the person who wrote it. Messages can carry photos, PDFs and a link to one of the interpreter's jobs. Messaging is on from the start for agencies that join OneTerp now. If your agency joined earlier and you do not see Inbox in your sidebar, ask OneTerp support to switch it on.
Agencies: The shared Inbox
0:32One private conversation with each interpreter. · Open in a new tab
Agencies: Search your Inbox
0:51Find a person, or a word from an old message. · Open in a new tab
Step by step
- 1Open Inbox from the sidebar. The number beside it counts conversations waiting on a reply from your office.
- 2Click "New message" and pick an interpreter from your roster, or open an existing conversation from the list.
- 3Write your message. Press Enter to send, or Shift and Enter for a new line.
- 4To point at a job, click "Tag a job", pick a day on the calendar (a dot means that day has a job for this interpreter), then pick the job. The interpreter sees a link that opens that job.
- 5From the dispatch board, open a job and click "Message [interpreter] about this job". The Inbox opens on that interpreter with the job already tagged.
- 6Use "Awaiting reply" to see everyone who wrote last and how long they have waited. If a message needs no answer, click "No reply needed".
- 7To find a conversation, type in "Search name or keyword" above the list. As you type, the list narrows to interpreters whose name or latest message matches.
- 8To look through every message, not just the latest one, press Enter or click "Search all messages". The matching line shows under each conversation it found.
- 9To clear the search and see every conversation again, click the x at the end of the search box.
- 10Under your last message you see "Seen" and the time once the interpreter has read it.
Tips
- Alerts are generic on purpose. The interpreter's phone and email say only that your agency sent a message, never what it says, because phone alerts and email travel outside OneTerp.
- If a message is still unread after 30 minutes, OneTerp sends one email nudge through your connected email sender. No sender connected means no email, and the message waits in the app.
- You can unsend a message within five minutes. It is replaced with “Message removed” for everyone. Messages can never be edited, so the conversation stays a reliable record.
- When an interpreter leaves your roster their conversation becomes read only for both of you. If they come back, the same conversation reopens.
- In Settings, under Operations & Alerts, then Messaging, choose whether interpreters can start a conversation and set an after-hours auto-reply in your agency's time zone.
- Staff with dispatch view access can read the Inbox but not reply. Billing-only staff do not see it at all.
- Download every conversation from Settings, Data & Backups, Data Export Backups, Messages.
- Choose how message bubbles look with the two buttons at the top of an open conversation: "Easier to read" or "Colorful". On a phone they show as two colored dots. The choice is yours alone, follows you to every device, and can also be set in Account Settings under Display.
- If you are an owner who also interprets, your own name shows as "(you)" in the "Message an interpreter" list and cannot be picked. A message to yourself would alert nobody. To try messaging out, sign in as a different interpreter.
- Keep patient details to what the job needs. A job tag is usually better than typing names and addresses.
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