As an educator, you have the flexibility to choose which types of conversations are enabled for your experience. This allows you to define how learners, employers, and educators communicate within projects, ensuring that conversations align with your experience's structure and needs.
Main benefits of customizing conversation settings:
Tailor communication to fit project needs.
Keep conversations up to date with automatic syncing of team and employer memberships.
Set clear removal timeframes for better access and privacy management.
General
Conversation types
Experience administrators can enable or disable the following conversation types for their experience:
Team-only:
Private chats within individual teams (available only for team-based experiences). Ideal for team collaboration and communication throughout the project.Team + Employer:
Direct conversations between individual teams and their employer. Useful if the employer wants to keep each team working on the match separate due to different tasks or responsibilities.All Teams + Employer:
A shared conversation that includes all teams working on a match and the employer. If you enable "All Teams + Employer," you can set a timeframe for when teams are removed from the conversation after completing their project. Default removal time: 15 days after project completion. Teams will be notified of their removal timeframe in their final submission email. Once removed from the match conversation after the set timeframe, learners will no longer be able to send or receive messages within the conversation.No conversations:
Educators have the option to disable all conversation types. In this case, there will be no communication between team members and employers. This option is suitable for experiences where there are a large number of learners working on each project, and communication will only occur between the educator and the employer.
Conversation membership
Conversations will automatically sync with team and employer membership, including:
Adding or removing teams as their status changes (e.g., active, cancelled, deleted).
Adding or removing employers based on their access level granted by the project admin.
Updating team members in the conversation as they join or leave teams.
Learners cannot leave a "Team + Employer" or "All Teams + Employer" chat unless they leave the team itself.
Summaries
As part of conversations, AI generated summaries can be enabled. These summaries will take all messages sent between the conversation members and generate an overall summary as well as an overall sentiment. The sentiment ranges between:
Positive
Slightly positive
Neutral
Slightly negative
Negative
If summaries are enabled, automatic flagging for conversations can also be enabled based on the sentiment associated with the summary. For example, a flag can be generated for any conversation which has a "Slightly negative" summary or lower. These summaries combined with their sentiment can make for faster assessment of conversations allowing you to take any actions as necessary faster and more efficiently.
Any user with access to see the conversation will also be able to see the summary.
Summaries can be configured to be generated based on an numeric interval of weeks or months with a default of once a week. Summaries are always generated on the interval based on the team's start date. For example, if a 1 week interval is set and the team's start date is January 1st, a summary will be generated on January 8th, January 15th, etc. Summaries will continue so long as they are enabled and the team remains in an active state.
Summaries are available only for the "Team + Employer" conversation type.
How to
Manage conversation settings
To set or update your experience’s conversation settings, follow these steps:
Navigate to your experience settings.
Select the “Features” tab.
Scroll down to the "Conversations" section.
Select which conversation types should be enabled.
Save your changes.
Update conversation settings
You can update the conversation settings on an existing match if no teams have been created for that match yet. To update conversation settings on an existing match:
Navigate to your experience.
Click on the “Matches” tab and select a match.
Go to the match settings and click on the “Features” tab.
View or update the conversation settings as needed.
If teams already exist on the match, you will not be able to change the conversation types.
Enable / disable and configure summaries
Summaries for conversation can be enabled and configured with the following steps:
Summaries cannot be enabled if "Educator conversation access" is set to "No access".
Navigate to your experience settings.
Select the “Features” tab.
Scroll down to the "Conversations" section.
For the conversation type, check or uncheck the "Generate AI summaries" checkbox.
Set the interval for the summaries to be generated.
Click "Save"
Enable / disable sentiment summary flags
Automatic flags for conversation summaries can be enabled with the following steps:
Conversation summaries must be enabled for this feature.
Navigate to your experience settings.
Select the “Features” tab.
Scroll down to the "Conversations" section.
For the conversation type, check or uncheck the "Sentiment flags enabled" checkbox.
Choose the "Sentiment threshold"
Click "Save"
Flags will only be generated for survey responses whose summary sentiment is at or below the configured threshold. Example, if neutral is chosen, neutral, slightly negative, and negative summary sentiments will generate flags.
Best practices
Enable Team + Employer conversations for structured communication between teams and employers.
Use All Teams + Employer to foster cross-team collaboration, especially for multi-team projects.
Set a reasonable conversation removal period to balance access and privacy concerns.
Inform learners early about the chat settings and removal policies to set expectations.
FAQs
Can I change the conversation settings after a match is created?
Yes, you can update the conversation settings at any time, but changes will only apply to new matches. Existing matches will retain their original settings.
What happens if I do not set a removal timeframe?
If no timeframe is set for "All Teams + Employer" conversations, teams will remain in the conversation indefinitely unless manually removed.
Can learners opt out of conversations?
Learners cannot leave a "Team + Employer" or "All Teams + Employer" conversation unless they leave the team itself.