Overview of Employee Messaging

Team Engine's employee messaging features make it easy to manage all employee communication from one place without having to rely on bulletin boards, track down someone in person, or use your personal cell phone. Each company receives its own local phone number that you can use to send and receive messages.

💡Key Employee Use Cases

Companies take advantage of simple employee messaging in lots of ways, including:

  • 🌧️ Weather or emergency alerts (e.g., bad weather, closures, or health updates)
  • 🧾 HR hotline — employees can text questions about benefits, payroll, or policies
  • 👋Communicate with new employees during onboarding to get documents signed, uniforms ordered, etc.
  • 🗓️ Gathering info — vacation requests, sick days, etc.
  • 📣 Company announcements — message the entire team or specific groups for new policies, company events, etc.
  • ⏰ Scheduled messages — plan ahead to send reminders automatically
  • 🗳️ Surveys — gather employee feedback or collect info like uniform sizes

🧭 Getting Started

In the sidebar menu, you'll see two tabs - Messages and Surveys.

To get started, set up your employee directory.

💬 Messages

The Messages tab is where you send one-on-one or small group texts.

You can also send a message to multiple people who aren’t part of an official group or to multiple groups.

📣 Announcements

Announcements have been merged into the Messages tab for a simpler, unified experience.

  • Send one message to an entire group or everyone in your company 👥
  • Replies come back privately — no group chats or reply-all confusion
  • Choose your audience easily by clicking “New Announcement” when composing

💡 Pro Tip: Employee groups can be anything useful — like job role (e.g. Foremen), location (e.g. San Antonio), or department (e.g. Office Staff).

🕒 Note: Announcements can take up to 15 minutes to send to all recipients depending on size.

👉 If you’re asking a question, use Surveys instead for better tracking.


You may then choose the group(s)/all employees to send the message to:


🔍 Advanced Employee Selection

The Advanced Employee Selection feature allows users to:

  • Search for employees who can receive messages.
  • Select multiple employees at once.
  • Upload a CSV/Excel sheet of contact information for bulk messaging.

📎 Adding Files to Messages

Need to share a document or image? Just click “Upload File” 📁 at the top of the message box.

Tips:

  • File limit: 25 MB
  • Keep the {{{url 1}}}  text as is — don’t move or delete it! (It’s how Team Engine attaches your file automatically.)

Here are some ways we're seeing customers use this feature:

  • Supporting culture & building rapport: When someone replies to your text with a reaction GIF, you’ll now be able to see it and reply accordingly. (note: outbound text messages from Team Engine do not support sending of GIFs)
  • Faster completion of paperwork: No more wasting days waiting for new hires to remember to bring in their onboarding documents, when they can text or email photos and PDFs from home.
  • Documenting of excused absences: Employees won’t lose the documentation you need, when they can text it in to you the moment they receive it.
  • Reporting safety issues: Sometimes, a video or audio recording is necessary to understand the context and gravity of a situation, or is needed as proof and documentation of something happening.

This will add a clickable link to the message that the recipient can click on that will open the file in an internet browser like this.

You can receive the following file types which can be viewed in the text message thread itself or within the Documents tab of their employee profile:

More image file types — such as GIFs, SVGs, and WEBPs — will now render in Team Engine, based on browser support. This means you can see the actual image, and not just an icon representing the image for download.

🔗Sending Links

To send a link in a message, you can simply copy and paste the link directly into the body of the message and then when the message is sent the link will automatically be shortened and appear as a Team Engine link.

🌎Translating Messages

Team Engine can translate messages into almost any language 🌐 using built-in AI.

Type in English → click Translate → choose the target language → send!

Perfect for multilingual workforces 🙌

Hiding Messages

Users now have the ability to hide a message! Occasionally, contacts will text in sensitive information like direct deposit details, driver’s license numbers, or other personal data to quickly complete an HR task. In the past, users had to reach out to Customer Support and Engineering to remove these messages. Now, they can do this themselves!

By clicking on the three dots menu on a message item and selecting "Hide Sensitive Message," users can obscure the message. It will be replaced with:

"(This message was hidden by {user's name} or Team Engine)"

This ensures that the message details are no longer visible to them or other users.

This helps maintain privacy and compliance ✅

Surveys

A survey is a special type of announcement where you can ask a question and request a response. Team Engine will collect all responses in one easy-to-see place and send reminders to people who have not responded.

For more detail on surveys, see: Employee Surveys

☎️ Setting Up Call Forwarding

Your Team Engine number is text-only, but you can still receive calls 📞!

  1. Go to Company Settings ⚙️
  2. Enter your preferred Employee Forwarding Phone Number
  3. Any calls to your messaging number will automatically forward there.

FAQ

  • What phone number do messages come from?
    • There's one phone number for employee messages and announcements, and one phone number for surveys. You can view these two numbers at the top of the "Directory" and "Surveys" tabs.
  • How do employees know who it is texting them?
    • We recommend sending an initial announcement to employees telling them it's you (and including the company name). You can also send employees a contact card so they can add the number to their contacts with one click. In the future, all texts will come from the same number. 
  • How does texting work?
    • The Inbox is designed to work just like the other texting tools you are used to. Your messages in purple/blue, and the recipients in gray. As soon as a new message comes in, you'll get an email notification if you are signed up to receive incoming employee messages.
  • Are responses to announcements visible to all recipients?
    • No. When you message a group of employees, and someone responds, that response only goes to you. At that point, it becomes a one-on-one conversation between you and that employee, not a group chat.
  • Phone Number Type Checking
    • What is it?
      • We now check the line type of phone numbers for any contacts you message in Team Engine.
    • Why is this important?
      • This prevents failed messages by letting you know upfront whether a number can receive texts.
      • If a number cannot receive texts, Team Engine will automatically fall back to email (if available) instead of failing the message.
    • How does it work?
      • ✅ Mobile numbers – Can receive texts as usual.
      • ❌ Landlines – Cannot receive texts; you’ll see an indicator before sending.
      • 🤓 Non-fixed VoIP numbers (Twilio, Google Voice, etc.) – Can also receive texts.
    • This feature improves message deliverability and ensures your communication reaches the right people effectively!

📱 Advanced Features

  • Recurring messages: Automate reminders and updates (daily, weekly, etc.)
  • Automations: Trigger messages based on custom fields (e.g., license expiry dates)
  • Mobile app: Message, translate, and manage employee communication on the go
  • Shared inbox: Manage messages from multiple channels (text, email, WhatsApp) in one place
  • Call employees directly from profiles using your Team Engine number
  • Templates: Save and reuse common messages
  • Phone number type check: Team Engine now detects if a number can receive texts

Mobile → text-enabled

Landline → no texts; fallback to email

VoIP (Google Voice, etc.) → text-enabled

💎 Best Practices

✅ Send an intro message with your company name

👥 Use employee groups for targeted messaging

🗳️ Use Surveys for questions that need responses

🕒 Automate recurring tasks (reminders, deadlines, etc.)

🔐 Hide sensitive data immediately if received

📬 Monitor your shared inbox regularly

🌍 Test translations for clarity

📞 Check fallback logic for non-text numbers

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