Creating a group
- On the Messaging page, click + (New group) beside the Chats and Crew Members tabs.
- Enter a Group name (up to 120 characters).
- Under Members, search (Search crew) and pick at least one person. Anyone from the yacht's crew list can be chosen, including office users.
- Click Create. The group opens straight away and appears in everyone's Chats list, even before anyone has written in it.
You are the group's Owner. If creation fails with The group could not be created. Check that everyone is still on this vessel., the usual cause is that someone you picked is no longer on the yacht.
There is no way to delete a group once it is created, though members can leave it.
The Group info panel
Open a group and click the three-dots button (Chat info) at the top right of the chat to open Group info. The chat header also shows how many members there are and their names.
In Group info:
- Mute notifications — silences push notifications and unread email digests for this group (see Unread counts, Online status and notifications).
- Members — shows the member count (for example 3 members) and lists every current member, with Owner beside the owners' names and You for yourself.
What the Owner can do
Only an owner can rename the group or change who is in it:
- Rename — click Edit name under the group's title in Group info, enter the new Group name (up to 120 characters) in the Rename group window, and click Save.
- Add — pick people under Add someone, then click Add. If everyone on the yacht is already in, the panel says Everyone is already in this conversation.
- Remove — click Remove next to a member and confirm in Remove member?. They immediately stop seeing the group.
Other members can open Group info to see the member list, mute notifications or leave, but cannot rename the group or add and remove anyone.
Leaving
Anyone, owner or not, can click Leave group in Group info and confirm in Leave group?. The group disappears from your list and you can no longer read it. The last remaining member cannot leave.
If the only owner leaves, ownership passes automatically to the member who has been in the group longest.
Joining late: history starts when you are added
New members see messages from the moment they are added, not the earlier history. Someone added to an existing group sees only messages sent after that moment — not the earlier conversation, and not the files and photos in it.
The same applies to someone who leaves or is removed and is later added back: they see messages from their new start onwards, and the messages from their earlier time in the group are no longer shown to them.
Notices in the chat
Every membership change or rename is written into the chat as a small line everyone in it can see, for example Anna added Tom and Maria, Anna removed Tom, Tom left or Anna renamed the group to ‘Deck Team’. These notices are part of the group's record and cannot be deleted.
Sample vessel groups
On a company's sample vessel, two groups — Vessel ↔ Office and Bridge & Engineering — are pre-populated with sample messages and linked records between the sample crew. Anyone who opens Messaging on the sample vessel is added to these two groups automatically, with the full sample history visible and the last two messages marked unread so you can explore the thread right away. If you leave a sample group, you will not be added back automatically.