What do you do when you have too many work chats and notifications?

Why there are so many notifications

Over time, the number of chats keeps growing: a project chat, a news channel, a chat with a monitoring bot. Each one sends notifications, and once there are hundreds of unread messages, people stop opening them and miss what matters. And if the team hasn't agreed on when to expect a reply, messages keep coming in the evening and on weekends.

You can set all of this up in Pachca in about ten minutes.

How to sort chats into folders in Pachca

Leave chats you no longer need to be in. Sort the rest into folders, like My team, Projects and Bots and news: just drag a chat into a folder. Only you see your folders.

Turn on the Unread folder. It collects every chat with new messages, so you don't have to open each folder.

Pin the chats you need every day: right-click a chat and choose Pin to chat list.

How to turn off notifications for a chat

In Pachca, the easiest way is from the chat list: right-click a chat and choose Disable notifications. The messages stay in the chat, you just won't be notified about them.

If you need a different mode, click the chat name, and Pachca opens its information. The bell button has three options:

• Messages and threads: every message plus comments in new threads.
• Messages only: new messages and threads you've subscribed to. A good fit for your team's chat.
• Without notifications: for news channels, the lunch chat and chats with bots.

Even with Without notifications on, you'll hear about replies to your messages and about mentions of you, your tag, @all and @here. If a teammate urgently needs you, they can @mention you.

How to pause notifications

In a meeting or want to focus? In Pachca, click your profile in the bottom-left corner and choose Disable notifications. Pick 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, until tomorrow or a date of your own. When the time is up, Pachca turns notifications back on by itself.

So teammates know why you're not replying, set a status like In a meeting.

Flexible notification settings in Pachca

In the same profile menu, open Notification settings. These settings apply to every chat:

• Messages and threads: all, only direct messages and mentions, or nothing.
• Reactions, reminders and video call starts are turned on separately.
• Schedule: the days and hours to send notifications, for example weekdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

How to get notifications only from important chats

A mode you pick in the chat itself overrides the general settings. Say your general settings allow only direct messages and mentions, and your team's chat is set to Messages only. Then you get notified about that chat but not the others.

All these chats are listed on the Exceptions tab in the notification settings in the desktop app.

This is handy before a vacation: turn everything off except the direct message with your manager and the incidents chat.

How to agree on messaging rules with your team

Settings only change notifications for you. To cut down messages for everyone, pin a few rules in a shared chat:

• Put your thought in one message instead of three in a row.
• React instead of writing "thanks" or "ok." Only the author gets notified.
• Reply in a thread, not in the main chat.
• Use @all and @here only for urgent things. They reach people even when notifications are off.
• Writing in the evening? Schedule the message for 9 a.m.
• Keep bot messages from Jira, monitoring and your CRM in their own chats. We covered how in the use case "How do you get Jira and release notifications?"

More rules are in "Business etiquette for team chat apps".