Company setup, end to end
This page follows one workspace from nothing to running, in the order you actually do it. It is the detailed version of the three steps on the HushChat website — set up your workspace, invite your team, start communicating — extended through the whole administrator lifecycle.
A few words first, so the rest of the page reads cleanly:
- Your company is a workspace. HushChat has no separate "company" object. The workspace is the company: it holds your people, their conversations, and your settings.
- Your clients are customers. Where other tools say "client", HushChat says customer, and it is a role you assign to someone. This page uses the product's word from here on.
- Every stage below is administrator work. If you are not a workspace administrator, most of these screens are not shown to you.
The single most common setup mistake is inviting clients before turning on Customer mode. Doing it in that order means re-roling every one of them by hand afterwards.
1. Create the company
Two screens have confusingly similar names. Only one of them creates a workspace.
- Create a workspace is the one you want. It asks for:
- Workspace name — required.
- Description (optional) — "What's this workspace for?"
- Then select Create workspace.
- Register creates your personal account, not the workspace, despite living at a similar address. If you are asked for a first name, last name and username, you are on the account screen.
Two things worth knowing before you type the name:
- The workspace name is permanent in practice. It doubles as the workspace's internal identifier, and it is what everyone types on the Choose a workspace screen every time they sign in. Choose something short that your team will not mistype.
- You become the workspace's first administrator automatically. No extra step.
When can people start using it?
- If your account is allowed to create workspaces outright, the workspace is prepared and becomes active immediately — you can sign in and start inviting.
- Otherwise the workspace is created in a pending state and waits for approval. A pending workspace cannot be signed in to, including by you. If sign-in fails right after you created it, this is usually why.
2. Add your agents
Agents are the people on your side of the conversation — the ones who will talk to your clients.
Adding one is two separate actions: invite the person, then set their role.
Invite them
- Open Settings → Invite.
- Enter their email addresses. "Separate with commas, spaces, or press Enter." — each becomes a chip, so you can invite several people at once.
- Send the invitation.
Invite is only on the web app. It is in the Settings sidebar in a browser, but it is not in the Admin tab on iOS or Android. Do your inviting from a browser.
Sending an invitation records it, but no email is sent — the notification step is currently disabled in the backend. You have to tell the person yourself, and they need the exact workspace name to get in. Without it they cannot reach your workspace at all.
Your invitee finishes the job themselves: they sign in, type the workspace name, and HushChat routes them into registration. They become active once they complete it.
HushChat has no list of outstanding invitations. The Users list only shows people who have finished registering, so an invitation you sent five minutes ago and one that was never opened look exactly the same from your side — invisible.
Set their role
You cannot choose a role while inviting. Everyone arrives on a default role, and you change it afterwards.
- Settings → Users.
- Select the person.
- Under Role, choose the role you want.
The four roles, as the app describes them:
| Role | What it means |
|---|---|
| Admin | Full workspace management, sees everyone |
| Member | Regular user, sees everyone |
| Agent | Sees only assigned customers and admins |
| Customer | Sees only assigned agents |
HushChat asks you to confirm — "Are you sure you want to make {name} an agent of this workspace?" — and then Make Agent. You cannot change your own role.
Until you turn on Customer mode in stage 3, an agent behaves exactly like a member. And when Customer mode is on, "Agent" is not a promotion — an agent can no longer chat with ordinary members, or with other agents. Only with their assigned customers and with administrators.
3. Turn on Customer mode — before inviting any clients
Customer mode is what turns a workspace into a two-sided one: your team on one side, your clients on the other, each seeing only who they should.
- Settings → Workspace Settings.
- Turn on Customer mode. It saves immediately; there is no confirmation step.
It is off by default, and the app describes it as: "New invites join as customers, and agent/customer visibility rules apply: customers only see their assigned agents, agents only their assigned customers."
Do this before you invite your clients. With Customer mode on, everyone you invite from that moment on arrives already holding the Customer role. With it off, they arrive as ordinary members who can see your whole company, and you have to change each one by hand.
Turning it on does not disturb anyone
This surprises people, so it is worth being explicit: switching Customer mode on changes nothing by itself. Nobody is re-roled, nobody's view narrows, and no conversation disappears. Administrators and members keep seeing everything exactly as before.
The rules only start applying to a person once that person actually holds the Agent or Customer role.
What the rules are
Once roles are assigned:
- A customer sees only the agents assigned to them.
- An agent sees their assigned customers, plus all administrators.
- Administrators and members continue to see everyone.
- Customers can only have one-to-one conversations. They cannot be added to groups, and any groups they were in disappear from their conversation list.
Three consequences that catch people out:
- Agents cannot message ordinary members, or each other.
- Administrators cannot message customers at all. If you need to reach a customer yourself, give your own account the Agent role and assign yourself to them.
- Members can still see customers when searching, but cannot start a conversation with them.
Visibility is worked out fresh every time a screen loads. Unassigning someone hides a conversation rather than deleting it, re-assigning brings it back with its full history, and turning Customer mode off restores everyone's view immediately.
4. Onboard your clients and assign them
With Customer mode on and at least one agent in place, bring the clients in.
Invite them
Same as stage 2 — Settings → Invite, enter their addresses, send. Because Customer mode is on, they arrive holding the Customer role already. Nothing more to do.
Assign each client to an agent
- Settings → Users.
- Select the client. Confirm their Role is Customer.
- An Assigned Agents section appears below the role. It only shows up when Customer mode is on and the person is a customer.
- Select one or more agents. Each row reads Assign, and flips to Assigned.
- Select Save Assigned Agents. The button only appears once you have actually changed something.
A client can have several agents, and an agent can carry as many clients as you like.
Whatever is selected when you save becomes the complete set of that client's agents. To unassign someone, deselect them and save. Saving with nothing selected is allowed, and leaves that client able to see and message nobody at all.
If the section tells you "No agents in this workspace yet. Set a user's role to Agent first.", you have skipped stage 2 — go back and give someone the Agent role.
Three limits to plan around
- You assign from the client's screen, never the agent's. There is no "assigned customers" list on an agent. Giving one agent ten clients means opening ten clients.
- The agent picker only reads the first 200 people in the workspace. In a larger workspace, some agents will simply not appear in the list.
- The change is not pushed to the client's app. The moment you save, the server is correct, but a client who already has HushChat open keeps their old list until the app refetches. Ask them to reopen or refresh if they say they cannot see their new agent.
5. Disable a user account
HushChat calls this Suspend, and it is not the same as Remove. Both live on Settings → Users → the person, and the difference matters a great deal.
| Suspend | Remove | |
|---|---|---|
| Use it when | Someone is on leave, off-boarding, or under review | Someone is gone for good |
| Reversible | Yes — Unsuspend at any time | No |
| Their messages | Stay, still attributed to them | Stay, but re-attributed to "Deleted User" |
| Their account elsewhere | Untouched | Untouched — removal only affects this workspace |
Reach for Suspend unless you are certain. Removal anonymises the person's profile permanently and cannot be undone.
Suspending
- Settings → Users → the person.
- Under Account Status — showing Active or Suspended — select Suspend.
- Confirm: "Are you sure you want to suspend {name}? They will lose access to the workspace."
Unsuspend reverses it, and "They will regain access to the workspace."
What a suspended person experiences:
- They can still sign in — suspension does not disable their login.
- They cannot get into your workspace. Choosing it shows "Your access to this workspace has been suspended. Please contact support."
- Everyone else sees a Suspended badge next to their name, and nobody can start a new conversation with them or add them to a group.
You can also suspend someone directly from a report, under Settings → Reports.
Removing
Remove User sits under Danger Zone on the same screen, and warns you: "Their messages will be anonymized and they will lose access. This cannot be undone."
Removal affects this workspace only. Their sign-in still works, and any other workspace they belong to is unaffected.
You cannot suspend or remove your own account, and the last administrator of a workspace cannot be removed. Members who want to leave entirely can do it themselves from Profile → Delete account, which removes them from every workspace and deletes their sign-in — a different thing from you removing them from yours.
6. Review activity and history
HushChat records administrator actions internally, but there is currently no screen, export, or search that lets you read them back. If you need a per-action audit trail — who suspended whom, and when — HushChat cannot show you one today.
What you can review:
Analytics — the closest thing to an activity overview
Settings → Analytics on the web; the Admin tab → Analytics on mobile.
- Three ranges: 7d, 30d and 90d. Thirty days is the default, and there is no custom range or date picker.
- Six figures at the top: Members, Conversations, Messages, Reactions, Calls and Storage used. Several carry a % vs prev comparison against the previous period of the same length.
- Charts underneath cover messages and active members per day, your most active conversations and members, message types, calls and their outcomes, reactions, and a Busiest times heatmap by day and hour.
This is a workspace-wide summary, not a per-person history. Two of the charts name individuals, but they are read-only leaderboards — you cannot open a person and see what they did.
Reports — moderation history
Settings → Reports, with Users and Messages tabs. Every report ever filed, newest first, each showing who reported it and when. Suspend a reported user or delete a reported message from here.
Group messages — read a group's history
Settings → Groups → pick a group → Messages. The group's whole history, marked Read-only — viewing as admin. Groups only — there is no administrator view of one-to-one conversations.
Call history — personal only
The Calls tab shows your own calls. There is no workspace-wide call log, so you cannot review anyone else's calls from here.
Where to go next
- The workspace-wide switches in detail: Workspace settings overview
- Signing in and finding your way around: Getting started
- Day-to-day messaging: Send a message