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Must know
  • When a family replies from their portal, it threads right into your conversation here — no matter which channel you used — so it never costs them a text or bounces back out over SMS or email.
  • Replies that land in your thread arrive live: the moment they come in, the thread, the conversation list, and the unread badge update on their own.
  • Opening the conversation marks it read and clears its unread badge.
When a family replies from their portal, their reply is added to the conversation like any other message — on the family’s side of the thread, with a timestamp. It shows up on its own, right away: the moment they reply, the open thread, the conversation list, and the unread count all update live, so you don’t have to refresh or wait. (If the connection ever drops, the inbox catches up on its own as soon as it reconnects.) An unreplied message raises the conversation’s unread count. You’ll see that count as a badge on the conversation in the list and on the Chat item in your navigation, and because it now has unread messages the conversation jumps toward the top — the list shows unread threads first, then the rest by most recent activity. As soon as you open the conversation, it’s marked read and the badge clears everywhere. One thing that surprises coaches: how a family’s reply reaches you depends on how they send it. When they reply from their portal, it threads right back into this conversation — no matter which channel the chat uses — so it never costs them a text and never lands on your phone or in your email. A Web & Email chat behaves the same way even when they reply straight from the email: it routes back into this thread. The exception is Web & SMS: if a family replies by texting back from their phone, that text lands in your club’s main chat inbox instead of here — so if you’re waiting on a reply in this thread, ask families to reply from their portal. That way, the thread stays the complete, single record of the exchange. Related: What is the chat inbox in the coach portal?, Why doesn’t a family get notified of a Web Only message?, How can I tell if my message was delivered?