---
title: "Message your team"
summary: "Start a conversation, send a message and attach a file. Messages reaches colleagues in the practice you are working in, and nobody else."
source: https://practor.app/en-za/help/messaging/message-your-team
published: 2026-09-14T06:45:13.803Z
updated: 2026-09-29T07:14:58.942Z
category: "Messages and notes"
---

**Messages** is your practice talking to itself. You can reach colleagues in the practice you're working in, and nobody else.

> [!NOTE]
> Patients can't message you here, and you can't message them. A conversation needs two people in the same practice, so anything patient-facing gets sent by [appointment reminders](/help/scheduling/send-appointment-reminders) or however your practice normally reaches them.

## Start a conversation

**New conversation** asks for a name. Type a colleague's name or role, pick them from the matches, and **Start conversation** opens the thread. It searches the practice you're working in, so anyone it finds is someone you can write to.

![The new conversation dialog, with a name typed and a colleague matched](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/messaging/new-conversation.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#1440x900 "Nobody is listed until you type.")

You're both in the same practice by definition. Switch to another practice and you get that practice's conversations instead.

> [!NOTE]
> **Messages** is in the sidebar for a practitioner profile. A practice support profile doesn't carry it.

## Send a message

Type and send. A message reads **Sending…** while it's in flight and swaps to the time it arrived once it's through. One that didn't leave says **Failed to send**, with the reason and a button to try again.

A message takes 10,000 characters. The composer starts counting down at the last 500.

Your colleague sees when you're typing, and the unread count on **Messages** in the sidebar tells them something is waiting.

![A thread, with the attach control beside the composer](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/messaging/composer.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#1440x900 "Each message says where it got to.")

## Attach a file

**Attach file** takes a file up to 10MB. PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, CSVs, plain text and zip files, and images as PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP or AVIF.

Anything else comes back with **That file type cannot be attached. Send a PDF, image, document or spreadsheet.** SVG is refused on purpose, because an SVG can carry script.

Everything shared in a thread also collects under **Shared files** beside it, split into **Images** and **Documents**, so a document from three weeks ago doesn't need scrolling back to.

> [!WARNING]
> A message thread is not a clinical record. Anything that belongs in a patient's history belongs on their [encounter](/help/patients-and-records/record-an-encounter), where it's kept, audited and visible to whoever treats them next.

## Find an old message

**Search messages** at the top of the conversation list looks inside the messages themselves, so a half-remembered phrase finds the thread. It reads **No messages match** when nothing does.

## Related

- [Invite your team](/help/getting-started/invite-your-team)
- [Record an encounter](/help/patients-and-records/record-an-encounter)
- [Write and share a note](/help/messaging/write-and-share-a-note)