Three small tools do a lot of work in a busy channel. Mentions get a particular person's attention. Reactions let people answer without adding another message. Pins keep the important messages easy to find. This guide covers all three, plus the link previews Tandem App adds to messages.
Mentioning someone
- In the message box, type
@followed by the start of a name. - A list of matching people appears. Use the arrow keys and Enter, or click, to choose one.
- Finish your message and send it.
The person you mention gets a notification: it goes into their Notifications inbox, to their devices if they've turned on push notifications, and into their email summary if they haven't looked at it after a few minutes. Mentioning someone in a thread also makes them follow that thread.
Only people who can see the conversation are notified. Mentioning someone who isn't in a private channel won't show them its messages.
Use mentions when you need a specific person to act. For a general announcement, a plain message in the right channel is usually enough, and it's kinder to people's notifications.
Reacting to a message
- Point at the message and click React.
- Choose one of the quick reactions: 👍 ❤️ 😂 🎉 👀 ✅ 🙏 😮.
- For anything else, click + to open the emoji picker and choose any emoji.
Reactions appear under the message with a count. Click an existing reaction to add yours; click it again to take it back. Your own reactions are highlighted.
Some teams agree a few conventions, for example 👀 for "I'm looking at it" and ✅ for "done". They save a lot of "thanks" and "on it" messages.
Pinning a message
Pin the messages people keep asking for: the meeting link, the brief, the agreed deadline.
- Open the message's ⋯ menu.
- Choose Pin to conversation.
Pinned messages are marked Pinned, and a bar at the top of the conversation shows how many there are. Open it to read them all at a glance. To remove a pin, choose Unpin from the same menu. Anyone who can post in the conversation can pin and unpin.
To find pinned messages across all your channels, search with has:pin.
Link previews
When a message contains a link, Tandem App fetches a preview of the first one, showing the page's title, site name and description where the page provides them. The message is sent straight away and the preview appears a moment later for everyone who can see the message.
Other things you can do with a message
- Save it to come back to, or set a reminder. See reminders, saved messages and scheduled messages.
- Copy link to share a direct link to the message.
- Forward… it to another channel or conversation. Forwarded messages show where they came from, with View original.
- Edit or Delete your own messages. Press ↑ in an empty message box to edit your last one.
For longer back-and-forth about one message, reply in a thread: see using threads.