This article is for Community Leaders and group admins. It covers the permissions behind Messages, reaching the whole community or a group in one message, choosing who a message is from, and setting up a group's shared inbox. For the basics of reading, writing, replying, and archiving, see Sending and Reading Messages. For the HOA's own inbox, see Using the HOA Shared Inbox.
Each part of Messages is its own permission, set per role in Roles and Permissions:
Send New Message: start new messages. Needed for every option below that starts with "Send."
Send Direct Message to Non-Leader Members: pick residents by name. Without it, only community leaders appear as individual recipients.
Send Message to All Leaders at Once: the All Leaders recipient.
Send Message to All Members at Once: the All Members recipient.
Send Message to All Heads of Households at Once: the Head of Households recipient.
Send Message to a Group at Once: member groups as recipients.
Send New Message as HOA: send a new message under your community's name.
Reply to Messages: reply in Communitrak.
Delete Message: archive and restore conversations. Nothing is permanently deleted.
View HOA Shared Inbox: read and answer the Shared HOA Inbox.
The Community Admin and Community Leader roles start with all of these. The Resident role starts with Send New Message, Send Direct Message to Non-Leader Members, Send Message to All Leaders at Once, Reply to Messages, and Delete Message. Some options may be unavailable or appear differently depending on your level of account access.
The To list in New Message only shows the recipients your role allows:
Your community's name: writes to the Shared HOA Inbox. Available to anyone who can send.
All Members: every active and pending member of the community.
All Leaders: every member marked as a community leader.
Head of Households: the head of each active household.
Groups: each member group, listed by name. Everyone in the group receives it.
People by name: leaders always, and residents if your role allows it. Their address shows under their name if your role can see member addresses and they haven't hidden theirs.
All Members, Head of Households, and groups are worked out when the message sends, so a scheduled message reaches whoever is in that audience at the time it goes out.
25 people by name. A role that can't message groups or all members can pick up to 25 people by name per message. Roles with either of those permissions have no limit.
Groups that don't take outside messages. If a group's Allow non-members to message this group setting is off, it only appears for its own members, community leaders, and anyone who can message all members.
Inactive members. A member whose household or membership is inactive can still read and reply, but can only start messages to leaders by name or to the HOA.
While your community is being verified. A new community can message its leaders and up to 10 people at a time. All Members, Head of Households, and groups are unavailable until Communitrak finishes verifying the community, and the New Message window says so when you pick one.
Unconfirmed email. Someone who hasn't confirmed their email address can't send messages until they do.
If you can send as someone other than yourself, New Message shows a Send As field next to Reply Options:
Your name: the message comes from you.
Your community's name: the message comes from the HOA and lives in the Shared HOA Inbox. Requires Send New Message as HOA. See Using the HOA Shared Inbox.
A group's name: the message comes from the group. See Send as a group below.
The Send button names the sender, such as Send as HOA or Send as Jordan, so you can check before it goes. Who the message is from never widens who you can send it to. The To list still follows your own role.
For a message to many people, the reply option matters more than usual:
In Thread: every reply goes to everyone who received it. On a message to All Members, that means one resident's reply reaches the whole community.
New Thread: each reply starts a private conversation between that person and the sender. Usually the right choice for announcements that invite questions.
No replies: for notices that don't need an answer.
On a message you sent to more than one person, you see totals, such as "Delivered to 180 of 212 · Read by 96 of 212." If you staff the Shared HOA Inbox, or you're a member of the group that sent it, you can click those totals to open Message Receipts, which lists each recipient with when it was delivered and read, and whether they read it by email or in Communitrak. A recipient marked Not delivered has an email address that's blocked after an earlier bounce or spam complaint. They can still read the message in Communitrak.
A group can keep its messages as a shared record, so a board's conversations pass from one board to the next. A group admin, or anyone with the Manage Member Groups permission, turns this on.
Open the group and click the Settings tab.
Check Share message history with current members.
Click Update Privacy Settings.
Once it's on:
The group appears under Group Inboxes in Messages for each of its members, listing every conversation sent to the group alone, including ones from before they joined.
Members who weren't on the original message can read it but not reply.
Anyone who leaves the group loses access to its conversations, including messages they sent. People outside the group who wrote to it keep their own conversations.
A message sent to the group plus other people, or to several groups, stays a regular conversation and isn't part of the record.
A group with a shared inbox can also write as itself, so a board or committee can contact a resident or vendor with one voice.
A current member of the group who is its admin, or who has the Manage Member Groups permission, sees the group under Send As. The group only appears while it shares its message history.
Recipients see the group as the sender, in Communitrak and in their email. They don't see which member wrote it.
The conversation belongs to the group and appears in its Group Inbox. Each current member gets a copy, already marked read and without an email.
When the recipient replies, every current member is notified, and any current member can answer, as the group or as themselves. The Reply window's Reply As field starts on the group when you open the conversation from the group's inbox.
Members see which member sent each message for the group, marked "sent by" with their name, and the recipients' read receipts.
New Thread isn't available, because the group answers in one shared conversation.
If you leave the group, you can no longer see or answer its conversations. The people it wrote to keep theirs.
Messages from community leaders, the HOA, and a group writing as itself are notified under each recipient's New messages from Leaders setting. Everything else uses New messages from Members. Someone who has turned a row off still sees the message in Communitrak.
Turning off Messages in Community > Preferences removes it from the main navigation menu.
You can also start a message from a member's profile or a household page with Send Message. From a household, it starts addressed to everyone in the household.
If you have questions or need help, chat with Communitrak Support from any page using the messenger icon in the bottom-right corner.
