What is a team chat app? Plain answers, before you pick one.
These guides answer the questions small teams ask about chat at work: what it is for, how to choose, how to keep it tidy and how to bring clients in. They are useful whatever you use today. Connect is not built yet; where a guide mentions it, it describes the design.
not shipped · wave 36 guidesuseful before Connect shipsno sign-up needed
Product design preview · Connect has not shipped. All features, screens and prices are proposals.
Connect has not shipped yet.
Everything on these pages — the screens, the features, the prices — is Centilio Connect as designed, not a product you can open today. Connect is in the third wave of Centilio tools: there is no app, no beta and no launch date yet, and we would rather show you the whole design and say so than publish a page that says "coming soon" and nothing else. Join the waitlist and you will hear first.
Guides
The six things people ask first.
Useful whatever you use today. Where a guide mentions Connect, it describes the design.
What a team chat app is, in plain words
Messaging for work, organised so the right people see the right conversation.
It is messaging for a team rather than for friends: channels for topics, teams or customers, direct messages for one-to-one, and threads for a single question.
It replaces long internal email chains. Email stays for customers and formal records; chat is for the quick back-and-forth that gets work done.
It keeps history. A good one lets you search what was said months ago; a poor one makes you scroll.
It controls who sees what. Members, guests and roles decide whether a client sees a channel, or only their own.
Connect adds one thing to that list: the conversation can belong to a customer, a project or a document, so the record remembers it.
How to choose a chat tool for a small team
Start from what goes missing, not from the longest feature list.
Write down where your team loses things today: decisions, files, client messages. Pick the tool that fixes those.
Price it at your real size, including the people who only read and the clients you will invite.
Check what the free plan leaves out. History limits and guest rules decide whether it works for a real team.
Check how guests work before you invite a client into anything.
Try it on one real project for two weeks before moving everyone.
How to set up channels that stay tidy
A few rules on day one save a clean-up every quarter.
Name channels by what they are for: a customer, a project, a team. Do not let "general" become everything.
Archive a channel when its project ends. Archive, do not delete; the history is the point.
Keep decisions visible. Pin them — in Connect, mark them — so nobody has to scroll for them.
Agree one rule for urgent messages, so the rest of the chat can stay calm.
Once a quarter, close the channels nobody reads.
How to bring clients into chat without the mess
One client, one channel, one role.
Give each client their own channel, never a shared one.
Invite them as guests, not members, so they see only their channel.
Say in the first message what the channel is for and how fast you reply.
Keep files in one shared document place, not scattered through the conversation.
When the work ends, archive the channel and remove the guest.
How to turn a chat decision into a task
"We should" is not a task. An owner and a date are.
Write the decision in one sentence, in the thread where it was made.
Name one owner and one date.
Move it to where tasks live. In Connect that is one click to Track, with the thread attached.
Close the loop in the same thread when it is done, so the next person can see it happened.
How to move off the chat apps you already have
Move the work that is live; leave the archive where it is.
List where your team talks today: the chat tool, personal messaging, email threads.
Pick the conversations that matter now: active customers and projects.
Run both for two to four weeks, then set a date when the old tool becomes read-only.
Move clients last, with a short note on why and how.
Export the old history before you cancel anything, and keep the export.
Questions
Quick ones.
What are team chat apps?＋
Team chat apps are messaging tools built for work: channels for teams and topics, direct messages, threads, file sharing and search, with controls over who can see what. They replace internal email chains and personal messaging for work conversations.
Can I invite clients?＋
Yes, as guests in specific channels with their own role. A guest sees only the channels you invite them to. Guests are proposed for Pro and above.
Does Connect replace the chat apps we use for work?＋
For work conversations inside your business, yes; it keeps them next to the records they concern. Personal chats stay personal.
When is Connect available?＋
Connect is in the third wave of Centilio tools. There is no date yet; join the waitlist and you will hear first.
Is my team too small for team chat?＋
If you are one person, probably. Once two or three people share customers or projects, a shared, searchable conversation saves the time you now spend asking each other what was agreed.
How do I get help with Connect?＋
Connect is not built yet, so there is nothing to support. Questions about the design, the proposed prices or the waitlist go to a person through the contact page.
Contact
Ask a person.
Questions about the design, the proposed prices or the waitlist go to a person, not a bot. Tell us how your team talks today and what goes missing; it shapes what we build.
Connect is in the third wave. Join the waitlist and you will hear before the announcement. One login, one record, and the next tool already waiting inside: Account and Drive, the two tools Connect is designed to sit on, are live today.