Messaging Clients

Messaging is the working channel between you and your Clients on a Case. It is built for the kinds of exchanges PI work actually requires — quick status updates, document hand-offs, scheduling questions, "did the deposition get pushed to Thursday?" — without dropping anything onto a personal phone or a third-party app where it is hard to retrieve later.

Where Messages live

Messages live in the Messages area of your dashboard, organized by thread. Each thread is tied to a relationship — typically you and a single Client — and persists across Cases you share with that Client. Inside a thread, messages appear in order with timestamps, read receipts, and any attachments inline.

Starting a conversation

If you have already invited a Client to a Case (see Inviting a Client when creating a Case), they will appear in your Messages area as soon as they accept. You can also start a thread from the Case Members tab. From the Marketplace side, a prospective Client can open a thread with you from your public profile or search result; that flow is documented in Starting a message thread from search.

What you can send

• Plain text. Most Messages are short and conversational — keep it that way. Use Reports for the long-form deliverable.
• Attachments for context. For anything that has to be retained as Evidence, upload the file to the Operation it belongs to instead. See How Evidence upload and integrity work.
• Links to the Case, an Operation, a Report, or a public page.

Notifications and badges

New messages produce an unread badge in the Messages area and a notification on the dashboard. The Client sees the same on their side. For more on the broader notification surface, see Investigator notifications and unread badges.

What the Client sees

Clients only see Messages between you and them. They do not see your other threads, internal team coordination, or any Operation Comments. To control what a Client can see beyond Messages — Operations, Evidence, Reports — see Controlling what Clients see on Operations and Case roles: Owner, Admin, Investigator, Viewer, Client.

Tone and content

Messaging is convenient, which makes it easy to forget that the thread is a record. Treat Messages the way you would treat email a litigator might subpoena. That does not mean stiff — it means specific, factual, and appropriate. A few practical guidelines:

• Write what you would be comfortable having read aloud.
• Avoid speculation about a Subject. Operational facts only.
• If a question requires you to reveal Evidence, share the relevant Operation and let visibility do the work — do not paste Evidence into chat.
• Confirm scheduling decisions in Messages even if you discussed them on a call. The thread is the system of record.

Voice and video

For real-time conversations, schedule a call instead of trying to do everything in chat. Video calls are documented in Scheduling and joining video calls for the investigator side and Joining a video call as a Client for the Client side.

If a connection fails

NearbySpy's chat infrastructure is built to recover from transient network issues automatically. If a thread fails to connect or you see persistent errors, follow Troubleshooting failed chat connections. Most failures resolve within seconds, but the troubleshooting page covers what to do when they do not.

Best practices

• Use thread subject lines or pinned summaries when a thread spans many weeks. It saves the Client from scrolling.
• Move long updates into a Report and link the Report from the thread. Messages are better at "FYI" than at "here is the deliverable."
• If the Client uses a different name on their account than you know them by, do not try to relabel the thread — leave the names as they are and let the platform stay consistent with the Client's account.