Contents:
1. What is workspace messaging?
2. How can I enable workspace messaging?
3. How can I use workspace messaging?
4. How can I message an entire participant group?
5. What happens if I have an existing conversation with a participant or participant group?
6. How do message notifications work on workspace messaging?
What is workspace messaging?
Workspace messaging is a collaborative feature that allows your entire team to view and respond to participant messages in a shared environment. With this feature enabled, all team members can send group messages and respond to participant inquiries from a single inbox, ensuring consistent communication and faster response times.
With workspace messaging, you can:
- View and respond to all workspace messages collectively.
- Access shared message history across the team.
- Enable seamless cross-team collaboration.
This shared messaging system enables faster communication with participants, improving task clarity, data quality, and speed of data collection.
Note: This is an optional feature that you can opt into, and is not available to all users by default. Once you’ve enabled workspace messaging, we are unable to roll back the change for the specific workspaces.
How can I enable workspace messaging?
- Contact your Prolific representative to enable this feature
- Once enabled, access ‘Messages’ to view both ‘Workspace’ and ‘Personal’ tabs
- Use ‘Workspace’ messages to communicate with participants or groups
✋ Before you enable:
• This is a permanent change affecting all team communications
• Once enabled this cannot be reversed
• Inform your team about the change as all members will have access to view and respond to messages
• Review privacy considerations and establish team guidelines before enabling
How can I use workspace messaging?
Once enabled, you can:
1. Access messages through the sidebar, where you can view your all your messages
2. Switch between two main views:
- ‘Workspace messages’ - Shows messages shared with your entire team
- ‘Personal messages’ - Shows messages specific to you
3. Use the unread messages filter to quickly find and respond to participant queries
4. View team member responses in message threads - you can see who from your team has replied to each conversation
5. Send messages in three ways:
- Direct message to one participant
- Bulk message to multiple participants
- Group message to an entire participant group
How can I message an entire participant group?
Participant group messaging is a feature, available to all Prolific users, that allows you to:
- Send announcements to entire participant groups at once
- Clarify instructions during active tasks and studies
- Manage reminders for follow-up tasks and studies
💡 Without workspace messaging enabled, only the team member who sent the message/announcement can view or respond to the thread.
Check out our 'Sending messages to participant groups’ article for more information including instructions on how to use the Participant Group Messaging feature.
What happens if I have an existing conversation with a participant or participant group?
Whilst we get you set up on Workspace messaging, if you have an existing thread with a participant:
- A new thread will be created under the ‘Workspace’ tab mentioned above.
- You’ll be able to identify the conversation via the same ID as seen in your ‘Personal’ messages
- After Workspace Messaging has been enabled, any responses sent via your personal thread will no longer be displayed there, and will be sent from the workspace thread.
- A pop up will notify you of this, with a button that will redirect you to a Workspace tab
How do message notifications work on workspace messaging?
You can monitor workspace activity through the unread message counter, which displays the total number of unread messages in your workspace inbox. The counter automatically updates whenever a new message is received.
You won't receive emails or notifications for messages in your workspace inbox. This helps keep your inbox clean and prevents it from being flooded with messaging activity from your team.