Chat moves quickly, and the message you meant to come back to is soon a long way up the screen. Tandem App gives you four ways to keep hold of things: save a message, set a reminder about it, schedule your own message to send later, and keep unsent drafts. All four live on one page, Saved and later, in the sidebar.

Saving a message

Point at any message and click Save. The button changes to Saved, and the message is listed on the Saved tab of Saved and later. Click Saved on the message again to remove it.

Saving is private: nobody else can see what you've saved, and nobody is notified.

Setting a reminder

  1. Open the message's ⋯ menu.
  2. Under Remind me, choose In 20 min, In 1 hour, In 3 hours, Tomorrow or Next week.

Tomorrow means 9:00 tomorrow, and Next week means 9:00 next Monday, both in your own time zone. When the time comes, the reminder goes to the top of your Notifications, with a link to the message. Until then it's listed on the Reminders tab, where you can remove it.

Your time zone is set under My account → Details. Check it if reminders arrive at odd hours.

Scheduling a message

Write a message now and have it sent later, for example so it lands at the start of a colleague's working day.

  1. Type your message as usual, but don't press Enter.
  2. Click the ▾ next to the Send button.
  3. Choose In 1 hour, Tomorrow at 9:00 or Monday at 9:00, or pick a date and time and click Set.

Times are in your time zone. Scheduled messages are text only, so send files separately. The message is sent as you, at the chosen time, in the same channel, conversation or thread.

While a message is waiting, the conversation shows that you have something waiting to send there. The Scheduled tab lists everything you've scheduled, with Send now to send one straight away and Delete to cancel it.

Drafts

Anything you type and don't send is kept as a draft for that conversation, and it's still in the message box when you come back. Conversations with a draft are marked in the sidebar. The Drafts tab lists them all, so a half-written reply doesn't get forgotten.

Things to know

  • Everything on Saved and later is private to you.
  • If you leave a channel, or lose access to it, its saved messages, reminders and drafts stop being listed.
  • Reminders still arrive while do not disturb is on; they wait in Notifications without buzzing.

A simple routine

  • Save anything you'll need again, such as instructions, links or decisions.
  • Set a reminder on anything you need to act on, rather than leaving it unread.
  • Schedule messages to colleagues in other time zones, so they arrive in working hours.
  • If a message turns into real work, make it a task instead: see turning messages into tasks.