The group room: settings, reports, what the office sees

On Pro, each departure can have a group: one text-only thread where the travelers who have the app, the guides and your office write to each other. It is off for every departure until you turn it on, your guide and your office moderate it, the Inbox stays the receipted channel for anything that must reach everyone, and the group becomes read-only when the trip ends and is deleted 30 days later.

Where it is, and what it needs

Open a departure and choose the Group tab, between Updates and Who's ready. Turning the group on needs three things, and the switch tells you which one is missing in a plain sentence:

• A Pro plan, or the trial. On Companion the switch answers "The group room is part of Pro. Upgrade to turn it on." A plan that lapses later does not switch a running group off — you can still read and moderate it, and travelers keep writing — it only stops you turning a new one on.
• A published departure. "Publish this departure before turning on its group."
• Not the public demo. The demo trip on our homepage never has a group.

Flip the switch labeled Group chat — the text-only group for this departure, off until you turn it on, moderated by your guide and your office, gone 30 days after the trip — to On under Settings at the foot of the tab. "The group is on. Travelers see a Group tab in the app at their next sync." Switching it Off removes the tab from every phone at its next sync; the messages stay on the dashboard.

Settings

• Who can post. Everyone — travelers, guides and the office all write in the group. Travelers ask, guides answer — travelers write questions only the guides and the office can read; each traveler still sees their own; guides answer in the group, or with an update. Guides only — travelers read; guides and the office write. Switching modes never exposes an old question: a question written under "Travelers ask" stays private after you switch to "Everyone".
• Quiet hours. 9:00 PM – 7:00 AM, trip time, unless you change them. No phone buzzes for the group between those hours. Updates you send are not affected — an urgent one still rings.
• Closes. Read-only for travelers and guides from the day after the trip's grace day, or as soon as you mark the departure Complete. You can still moderate, pin and export.
• Kept. 30 days after the trip ends the group is deleted — messages, reports and memberships — on the date shown. It is never in the print packet, the trip bundle or any export but this tab's.
• Blocked words. A fixed list Cordelle keeps — slurs and the strongest profanity. A message with one is refused before it is stored and the writer is asked to reword it. There is no per-agency list to edit.

The thread

Every message, newest first, live while the tab is on screen ("Live — new messages appear here as they land"), with a search box for a word or a name. Each message shows who wrote it — a traveler as "Margaret H.", a guide with a Guide chip, your staff with an Office chip, your connected system with an API chip — plus Question · unanswered or · answered, Pinned, and, under "Travelers ask", Only guides and the office see this. Under each message:

• Reply — your reply quotes it.
• Pin / Unpin — one pinned message at a time, shown above the thread on every phone. A guides-only question cannot be pinned.
• Remove — Margaret H.'s words are gone from every phone at its next sync and "Removed by your tour company" stands in its place (guides see "Removed by the office"). It cannot be undone. The thread keeps a line saying which role removed it — the writer, a guide or the office — and when.
• More, on a traveler's message — Stop Margaret posting (for 24 hours, 3 days, or the rest of the trip; they can still read, and their app says their guide has paused their posting), Let Margaret post again, Remove Margaret from the group (they stop seeing the group and cannot write in it; their app says the tour company removed them and to call the guide; their earlier messages stay unless you remove those too), and Let Margaret back in.

To write as the office, use the box above the thread — "Write to the group, as the office". It goes out under your name. The hint beside it is the rule: need everyone to see it, with receipts? Send it as an update instead. A group message has no receipts and no exception list.

Reports, and the 24-hour clock

A traveler or a guide can report any message with one of four reasons: Rude or abusive, Selling something, Not about the trip, Something else. When one is made:

• The departure's guides get a notification on their phones — "A group message was reported" — with no words and no names.
• Every owner on your account is emailed ("A group message was reported — trip name"): the trip, the reason, whether the message is already hidden, how many reports wait, and a link to the Group tab. Never the message's words, the writer's name or the reporter's name.
• The same email goes to [email protected]. The app stores hold Cordelle, as the publisher of the app, to a prompt decision on reported content whether or not your office is awake; App Review has asked for action within 24 hours, and that is the clock the dashboard shows.
• The Group tab gets a red dot, and a Reports queue appears above the thread: "Reports (2) — respond within 24 hours."
• A message that two different people report is hidden from the group at once, pending your decision. The writer sees "Removed by your guide"; the guide's phone shows "Hidden after reports — the office is reviewing it".

Each entry in the queue shows who reported it and why, the message as it read when it was reported, and one row of decisions: Remove message, Put the message back (only for one hidden by reports — restored exactly as written), Stop Robert posting, Remove Robert from group, and Dismiss (nothing else happens; a message hidden by reports stays hidden unless you put it back). One decision closes every open report on that message. Handled reports stay listed below the thread.

What the office sees that travelers don't

• Reporter names — in the reports queue only.
• Questions under "Travelers ask, guides answer" — every one, with the writer's name; other travelers never see them.
• The text of a reported message after it is removed — kept with the report until the group is deleted.
• Which role removed a message, and when — the writer, a guide, the office, or a hide after two reports — as a line in the thread, and in the export. It is the role, never a name: with two guides on a departure, the record does not say which one.
• The export — Export as spreadsheet downloads every message in order, with the writer, the time, the kind, who it replied to, and any removal. It is the office's own record; it is not the print packet, and the trip bundle never carries it.

And what the office is not told: who has read a message (there are no receipts in the group), who has left the group (leaving tells nobody), and who has blocked whom (a block only hides that person's messages from the reader who set it, and the server tells nobody). A traveler who needs separating from another is your call, made on what you can see: the messages and the reports.

Cordelle's part

Cordelle can close a group without you, and will if a report goes unanswered past the 24-hour clock or content must come down at once. The tab then says "Cordelle closed this group on date. Write to [email protected] to reopen it." The messages stay for your review and export, and the switch stays shut until we reopen it. This is the developer account's obligation to the App Store and Google Play, and it is the reason every report is copied to us.

Notifications

The group never puts a message's words in a notification. A traveler's phone gets a count — "Group: 3 new messages" — at most once every two hours by default, never in quiet hours, on its own quiet channel; a reply to their own message or their question being answered gets its own heads-up, still never in quiet hours. Each traveler can choose Every message, A few times a day, Only when someone answers me or Never, and can quiet the group for a night or for the rest of the trip. None of that touches your updates.

Your duties as the operator

• Moderate the group you turn on. The Terms (§8) make that yours; the guide's phone and this tab are the tools. Answer reports within a day.
• Health facts volunteered in the group are health data you now hold. The rules card every traveler accepts says "Please don't post medical details — call your guide." If someone does, remove the message and treat what you read as you treat the roster's care notes. The Data Processing Addendum (§5) says more.
• Deleting a traveler removes their words. Every message of theirs is blanked on every phone before the record goes.

Your own system

With the full API, your booking system can read a departure's group, switch it on or off with the same rules as this tab, post under its key's name marked "(API)", and remove a message; and your webhooks hear room.post.created and room.post.reported — ids and the reason, never the words. Reports are handled here, where the reporter can be named. Details on the developer page.

Billing

The Billing page's Features list reads Group chat — on (the same group: text only, one per departure, off until you turn it on, moderated by your guide and your office, gone 30 days after the trip) on Pro and the trial, and not available on this plan on Companion. A running group keeps going whatever your plan does later.