Send, reply to, edit, and delete messages

Say something, quote something, and correct something.

Everything on this page happens in an open chat: the thread filling the page at /chats, with the composer under it. Replying, editing, and deleting all start the same way, from the message's own menu.

Before you start: have a chat to write in. See Start a direct or group chat.

Chat does not use the dashboard's REST API. Sends, edits, deletes, pins, and reactions all publish over MQTT, the live connection that also delivers other people's messages to you. That is worth telling support, because it explains why all of them fail together while the rest of the dashboard keeps loading.

Send a message

Select the chat in the list on the left.
Type into the box at the bottom, headed Write a message.
Press Enter.

Shift+Enter starts a new line instead of sending. The smiley button to the right of the box inserts an emoji at the cursor, and the paperclip and camera buttons open the attachment flow. See Share files and voice notes.

Your message appears in the thread the moment you press Enter, dimmed, and turns solid when the server confirms it. A message that stays dimmed has not reached anyone.

Reply to a message

Right-click the message you are answering. On a touch screen, press and hold it for a moment.
Select Reply.
Type your answer and press Enter.

A blue bar appears above the composer while you write, carrying the name of the person you are answering and the line you are answering. Select the X at its right to drop the reply and send an ordinary message instead.

The reply lands in the thread with that quoted line above your own text. Selecting the quote scrolls the thread back to the original message and highlights it for a second, which is how someone reading tomorrow finds the question your answer belongs to.

A sent message in a chat thread, carrying above its own text a quoted line in a tinted box with the original sender's name over a single line of their message

Replying quotes the message you are answering.

Edit a message

Right-click your own message and select Edit.
Change the text in the composer, which opens holding what you wrote.
Press Enter.

Edit appears only on messages you sent. There is no time limit, and the edited text replaces the original for everyone in the chat.

The bar above the composer reads Edit Message while you work. Select the X on it to abandon the edit and leave the message as it was. Starting an edit cancels a reply you had lined up, and starting a reply cancels an edit, so the composer is only ever doing one of the two.

The chat composer in edit mode, with a pencil icon and the label Edit Message above the box, the original text loaded into the box, and an X to cancel at the right

Editing a message you sent.

Delete options

Option	Removes for	Reversible
Delete for Myself	You. Every other member keeps the message. Available on anyone's message, including your own.	No
Delete for Everyone	Every member of the chat. Available on your own messages only.	No

Neither option asks you to confirm, and neither can be undone. The message disappears from the thread as soon as you select it.

Which delete do you want?

Delete for everyone when the message was wrong: the part number, the machine, the date. Delete for yourself when it was merely noise in your own view. Deleting for everyone takes a turn out of the conversation with no marker left behind, which is the right outcome for a correction and the wrong one for tidying, because the replies that quoted it stay where they are.

Delete a message

Right-click the message. On a touch screen, press and hold it.
Select Delete for Myself or Delete for Everyone.

The message menu open over a chat thread, with a row of emoji reactions floating above it. The menu lists Reply, Copy Text, Pin for Me, Pin for All, Edit, then Delete for Myself and, in red, Delete for Everyone. Numbered callout 1 marks Delete for Myself and callout 2 marks Delete for Everyone

Delete for Myself removes the message from your view only. Delete for Everyone removes it for every member of the chat.

The same menu carries Copy Text, which puts the message on your clipboard, and the two pin actions. A row of emoji opens above the menu at the same time, for reacting without selecting anything from the list. See Pin messages and add reactions.

Drafts

A draft is text you have typed into a chat's composer and not sent. IoTFlows saves it per chat as you type and puts it back when you open that chat again, on the web dashboard and on your phone alike. Nobody else sees it.

Keeping a draft takes no action. Leave the chat, close the tab, or open the conversation on your phone, and the half-written sentence is waiting. Clearing the box clears the draft.

A draft only saves while you are connected. Text typed during an outage stays on screen, with nothing to tell you it was not stored, and leaving the chat loses it.

A chat thread whose composer holds an unsent half-written message, with the send button active and no message added to the thread above it

Drafts follow you between devices.

When you lose connection

The web dashboard queues nothing. If the live connection is down when you press Enter, IoTFlows shows Waiting for Network, publishes nothing, and leaves your text in the box so you can send it again once the connection returns. Deleting and pinning report the same thing. Adding a reaction reports Trying to connect, which is the same condition under a different string.

Android is the exception: it holds messaging actions you take while offline in an outbox, a queue that publishes them in order once you are back. iOS keeps no queue. See What works offline.

"Waiting for Network" on a page that otherwise works?

Chat rides its own connection, so reports and the asset list keep loading while messaging is down. Reload the tab. If the toast comes back, tell support that the MQTT connection is not establishing, rather than treating it as a sign-in problem. See Get support.

On mobile

Chats are native on Android and on iOS 18 and later, where the message menu opens with a long press and carries the same actions. On iOS 17 and earlier, the app opens the dashboard's web view, so these steps apply as written. See Install the mobile app.