Messages

A private line to whoever handles the thing you are asking about.

Topics, not one inbox

Your community defines contact roles: Maintenance, Billing, Architectural Review, whatever it actually has. You pick the topic, and the message reaches the admins assigned to it rather than landing in one shared pile.

Every community also has a General thread for anything that does not fit. It always exists and cannot be removed.

Each topic is its own conversation with its own history, so a billing question from March is still under Billing in June.

Topics on the left, the conversation on the right. General always exists.

Broadcasts

You may also have a read-only feed of group broadcasts: messages an admin sent to a group you belong to. You cannot reply there, which is why it is separate from your own conversations. If you need to respond to something in it, open the relevant topic and say so.

Read state and notifications

Unread counts are per conversation, and they sync across the web and the mobile app. New messages notify you unless you turned that category off.

Being blocked

A community can block an individual from sending messages, usually after abuse. If it happens to you, the page tells you rather than silently dropping what you send.

Messages compared to the other channels

Use	When
Messages	You need a specific answer from a specific person
Issues	Something is broken and needs work
Feedback	You want the board to consider something, possibly anonymously
Community Board	You want to talk to your neighbours