Messages: completely new!

Communication with the childcare organisation now feels like an actual conversation. We rebuilt Messages from the ground up. Keep reading to find out all the new things about the new and improved Messages.

One conversation per child, and per group
No more one-off messages, but ongoing conversations. Every child gets a personal conversation with the staff, plus a conversation with the group your child belongs to. These are there by default, so a conversation may well be empty at first. As soon as a staff member sends something, or you ask the first question yourself, the conversation gets going. You see who's writing, with name and photo, exactly like you'd expect from a chat.

The organisation can also send you messages about specific topics, for example about your contract or about invoices and payments. You'll recognise those by the topic shown at the top of the conversation. You can't reply to those just yet, that's coming in a future update.

Find the right conversation fast
Filter your overview by All, My children, Childcare groups or Organisation. Unread messages show up right away as a badge on the Messages tab.

📎 New: send attachments yourself
This is one of the biggest changes: you can now send photos and documents yourself. A photo of a filled-in form, the doctor's note, the birthday party invite. Tap the Paperclip icon button, pick from your camera, your photo library or your files, and your attachment goes along in the conversation. Everything stays together in one place, so you'll never have to work out where you sent that photo again.

Settings per conversation
Inside a conversation, tap the name at the top to open the "Conversation Info" screen. There you'll find the participants, and there you can switch off notifications with a single tap when you'd rather not get push messages for that conversation. Notifications off? You'll see it in your message overview, with its own icon, just like the second parent one. So you always know where you stand without opening the conversation.

Second parent reads along
Per chat you decide whether the second parent reads along. The icon in your overview shows the status at a glance.

Please note: By default, both parents are part of all conversations. The first parent must explicitly set in the Octopus Parent App, for each conversation, that the second parent is not part of that conversation. This applies to both Backoffice messages and conversations with the Group.

📣 Announcements
Messages from the organisation now have a place of their own, all in one list. Handy for closing days, newsletters and other notices.

🔔 A dedicated inbox for your requests 
Was your extra care request approved or declined? You'll find it here, with the child, the status and any note from a staff member. No more digging through your messages.

📷 The timeline stays the timeline
The timeline now pulls daily activities and photos from the new system, and loads noticeably faster.

📦 Archive
Your old messages are still there. You'll find them under "Archive", where you can read everything back at your leisure. Replying happens in the new conversations from now on.

Over to you 💜 This is only the first step. We'll keep building on it, and we'd much rather do that with your experience to guide us. What works well? What's still missing? What would you like to see next? Let us know via your Profile → Feedback. We read everything, and your message helps decide what we pick up next. Thanks for all your feedback!