Messaging will be a critical part of your journey. Whether you are a learner completing a project and communicating with the project's employers, or are an educator finding the right project to match with your experience, you'll be sending messages.

Conversations will automatically be generated between users when certain actions are taken.

* Participants may vary depending on permission levels of members

When sending a message, you will be able to use standard rich text elements such as links, lists, text decoration and more.

When sending a message, you will be able to attach files to send along with your message.

When you receive a new message, you will also receive an email notification about it. You can simply reply to that email and your reply will be sent as a message in the conversation. No need to leave your inbox!

You can also attach files to your reply to have those files be added to the message in the original conversation as well.

Conversations can be used as a complete timeline of events based on the context in which they are created. For example, if you are a learner or employer completing a project together, you'll see system messages when milestones are complete, submissions are made and more.

Right from one of your conversations, you are able to book meetings with the other participants. These meetings allow you to keep track of participant attendance, can be integrated with your favorite video conferencing tools, and show up in your in-app calendar to keep you organized.

Read more about meetings here.

You can access your conversations via the inbox (chat icon in the top navigation) or the Messages widget found in the bottom right corner of the screen. You can view up to 2 conversations at the same time without having to leave the page you're currently on.

To view any conversation you are participating in:

If you wish to stop receiving notifications regarding a specific conversation, or just wish to hide that conversation in your message center:

To un-archive a conversation:

If you want to be reminded to revisit a conversation later, you can mark it as unread so a notification badge will appear next to it and in the chat bubble icon at the top of the page.

To mark a conversation as unread from the inbox:

To mark a conversation as unread from the messages widget:

If a conversation is already marked as unread, you can follow the same steps to mark a conversation as "read".

You can mark multiple conversations as read or unread all at once using the bulk mark as read/unread feature.

To mark multiple conversations as read/unread from the inbox:

Note: if you select conversations that are in different states, the action will default to "mark as read".

To mark multiple conversations as read/unread from the messages widget:

Note: if you select conversations that are in different states, the action will default to "mark as read".

If for whatever reason you need to permanently leave a conversation, you can follow these steps:

You can set an auto-response for incoming messages directly from your inbox — useful for when you're out of office or temporarily stepping away from a project. To set an away message:

To update or remove your away message, return to the same ellipsis menu at any time.

Note: Context-specific auto-responses — such as application replies and match request responses — will take priority over your away message when applicable.

Yes. All message occurs over encrypted web traffic and your personal details are never shared with the receiving participants.

We will automatically strip out your email signature from the message.

In some cases an email signature might make it through and we may need to make an update to catch more variations on signatures. Submit a post to feedback.riipen.com if you notice this.

Attachments to your email will be included as attachments in the message.

To reply via email, you need to be using the exact same email address your reply is being sent from as the email address associated with your Riipen account. If you have an email alias, or are using multiple email addresses funnelled into a single inbox, reply via email may not work for you.