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Pulse guide · Updated 5 November 2026
What is a team chat app, and how does it work?
A team chat app is a shared messaging space for people who work together. Conversations are organised into channels by topic, team or client, with direct messages for one-to-one talk and threads for side discussions, so the whole team can follow work as it happens instead of digging through email.
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Everything Pulse ships with.
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Channels, DMs & threads
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Mentions, pins, saved & reminders
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Canvas docs
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To-dos
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Workflows, bots & webhooks
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Search, files & meetings
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How is a team chat app organised?
Three building blocks do most of the work. A channel is a named room for a topic, team, project or client; anyone who should follow it joins, and a private channel is open only to its members. A direct message is a conversation between two people, or a small group. A thread is a reply chain hanging off one message, so a side discussion doesn't bury the channel.
On top of those sit the signals that pull you in: @mentions, unread counts, reactions and notifications. Good team chat lets you follow what matters and mute what doesn't.
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How is team chat different from email?
Email is addressed to people; team chat is addressed to topics. A message in a channel reaches whoever is in that channel today, including someone who joins next month and scrolls back. Replies arrive in seconds and everyone sees the same conversation, rather than a dozen forks of one email chain.
Email still wins for messages to people outside the company and for formal records. Most teams use both: chat for working conversation, email for the outside world.
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Which team chat features matter most?
Threads
Side discussions kept off the main channel.
Search
Find an old decision by a word in it, limited to what you're allowed to see.
Mentions and notifications
A way to reach a person, and control over what reaches you.
File sharing
Screenshots, PDFs and recordings dropped into the conversation.
Integrations
Alerts and updates from other tools posted into the right channel.
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What do teams add on top of chat?
Conversations produce decisions, documents and follow-ups. Many teams keep those in separate tools: a docs app, a task tracker, an automation service. That works, but the decision and the reason for it end up in different places.
Some team chat apps build these in. Flaxxa Pulse, for example, has canvases (shared docs that can belong to a channel), a team to-do list with an owner per item, and no-code workflows that post into a channel when something happens.
FAQ
Team chat apps: common questions
A channel is organised around a topic and people join or leave it; its history stays for whoever joins later. A group chat or group DM is organised around a fixed set of people.
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Pulse features for this
Channels & Messaging
Team messaging with public and private channels, one-level threads, reactions, drafts, read state and forwarding, all updated live over WebSockets.
DMs & Mentions
Direct messages and group DMs of up to 8, @name, @channel and @here mentions with their own inbox, thread following and alerts you can mute per channel.
Search, Presence & Meetings
Full-text message search limited to what you can see, online presence and typing indicators, a member directory and one-click Google Meet from any chat.
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