Chat & Messaging
Secure chat is how your team and your clients talk between visits — questions, check-ins, photos of a meal or a rash — without resorting to unsecured texting or email. Staff reply from the Messages page in the platform; clients read and write from their mobile app or the client web portal, and get a push notification the moment you answer. This page covers day-to-day messaging, the Chat Blast for announcing something to many clients at once, Atlas's reply drafting, and how appointment-reminder texts (and the client's right to opt out) work.
One bright line to know up front: Atlas never messages your clients on its own. It can draft a reply for you, but a staff member always reviews, edits, and presses send.
Where staff read and reply
Open Messages in the sidebar. The left panel lists every client conversation, with a search box (Search conversations...) that filters by client name or email. Unread conversations sort to the top with a blue count badge, and the Messages item in the sidebar carries a running unread count so you notice new messages from anywhere in the platform.
The inbox: unread conversations float to the top; the open thread shows read receipts and the composer.
Click a conversation to open the thread, type in the message box (Type a message...), and press Enter to send — Shift+Enter adds a line break. The paperclip attaches files; images your client sends render inline and open full-screen with a click. A single check on your message means it was sent; a double check means the client has read it.
To message someone for the first time, click the New Chat button above the list, search for the client, and select them — the conversation opens ready to type into.
When you send a message, the client gets a push notification on their phone (if they have the app installed). There's nothing to trigger — replying is enough.
Hover any client message, open its menu, and choose Assign as Task. The message text pre-fills a task you can assign to a teammate with a due date — handy when a chat request ("can you resend my invoice?") needs follow-through by someone else.
Atlas also quietly triages your inbox: conversations can carry a category chip (scheduling, refill, symptoms, and so on), and messages flagged urgent get a red marker and sort above everything else — so a "chest pain" message never sits below a rescheduling request.
Let Atlas draft the reply
For routine replies — explaining a lab result in plain terms, answering a scheduling question, a check-in nudge — Atlas can write the first draft so you're editing instead of composing from scratch. The draft is grounded in the conversation and the client's record, and it never leaves your screen without you.
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With the conversation open, click the sparkle button in the composer (Draft a reply with Atlas). Atlas reads the thread and proposes a reply.
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The draft appears above the composer in an Atlas draft card. When Atlas drew on the client's record, the card lists what it used (for example a recent lab or note), so you can judge the grounding at a glance. Click Regenerate if the first attempt misses the mark.
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Click Use draft to drop the text into the message box. Edit it like anything you typed yourself, then send. Dismiss throws the draft away — nothing is ever sent to the client automatically.
The draft stays on your side of the glass until you choose to use it.
Announce something to many clients — Chat Blast
A Chat Blast broadcasts one message to many clients at once, delivered into each client's secure chat as if your clinic wrote to them individually — new hours, a flu-shot clinic, a program launch. It's in-app chat only: a blast never sends SMS or email, so there's no compliance exposure and no per-message cost.
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On the Messages page, switch to the Blast tab and stay on Compose.
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Choose the audience. Instead of ticking names, you build conditions — clients matching all of them receive the blast. Click Add condition and combine Membership (has one, doesn't, or specific types), Status (Active / Paused / Inactive), Payer type (Insurance / Self-pay), and Service behavior (booked, confirmed, no-showed, or canceled a given service at least N times in the last D days). With no conditions, the blast reaches every client. A live count — Sending to N clients — updates as you refine. Conditions narrow the audience; the recipient count updates as you add them.
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Write the Message (up to 5,000 characters) and click Review. The review screen shows the audience summary, a View all recipients list, and a preview labeled As the client will see it — the message arrives authored by your clinic's name, not an individual staff member.
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Click Send blast. You'll see a confirmation with the delivered count, and the Sent tab keeps a history of every blast — who sent it, when, to how many — with a Duplicate action to reuse a past blast's message and filters.
The review screen is your last stop — once sent, the message is in every recipient's chat and can't be recalled. Check the recipient count and preview before confirming.
What clients use
Clients don't log into your staff platform. They message you from:
- The mobile app — a chat thread with your clinic, including photo and video attachments, plus push notifications for your replies and blasts.
- The client web portal — the Messages page shows the same secure thread with your clinic. (The web portal supports text messages; attachments are an app feature.)
Either way, it's one conversation: whatever surface the client uses, your team sees a single thread per client in Messages.
Client chat is a per-clinic setting. You can have it fully on, make it view-only (clients see your messages but can't reply), or turn it off entirely — in which case the client's app tells them to reach you through other channels.
SMS reminders and texting STOP
Separate from chat, the platform can text clients appointment reminders — short transactional SMS like "Reminder: your Initial Consult appointment at Demo Clinic is on Tue, Mar 4 at 2:05 PM." You configure them under Settings → Scheduling in the Appointment Reminders card: turn on Enable appointment reminders, then add rules — each rule is N hours before the appointment on your choice of Email, SMS, and Push. A common setup is an email at 72 hours, email + push at 24 hours, and SMS + push at 2 hours. Reminders are off until you enable them.
Texting law gives clients an always-available exit, and the platform honors it automatically:
- If a client texts STOP (or any of the standard opt-out words) to your clinic's number, they immediately receive a confirmation and all further texts from your clinic stop — including appointment reminders. You don't need to do anything, and you must not re-add them manually.
- Texting START opts them back in.
- Marketing texts (for example, growth sequences) are held to a stricter bar than reminders: they require the client's explicit recorded opt-in, respect nighttime quiet hours, and carry "Reply STOP to opt out" language.
An opt-out applies to that client's phone number for your clinic only — it doesn't affect their in-app chat, push notifications, or email. If a client says they stopped getting reminder texts, check whether they texted STOP at some point; they can text START to resume.
Atlas can help you work the inbox and audience questions:
- "Draft a reply to this client explaining their appointment prep." (use the sparkle in any conversation)
- "How many active members would a blast about Saturday hours reach?"
- "Which of my clients have unread messages from us older than a week?"
Next steps
- Set up appointment reminders → configure hours-before rules and channels in Availability & Scheduling so no-shows drop without front-desk effort.
- Get clients into the app → chat only works once clients are onboarded; see Invite & Onboard Clients.
- Automate outreach beyond announcements → for scheduled multi-step campaigns (rather than one-off blasts), explore the Growth Suite.