Messages
Every homeschool group runs on small conversations. A question about a nut allergy. A change of meeting spot. A thank-you after a field trip. Until now those lived in five different places. Messages puts them in one.
One list, newest first
Messages is a single inbox for everything people send you in Famlo. A note from an organizer, a reply from an organization you wrote to last week, an update about tomorrow's hike — all of it lands in the same list, sorted by whatever happened most recently.
Three filters keep it from getting loud: All, Unread, and Archived. Search runs across every thread you are in, so you can find the message about the museum deposit without remembering who sent it. Archiving moves a finished conversation out of the way without deleting it.
Write to an organization, not a person
When you message an organization, you are writing to the organization — not to whoever happens to be listed as the owner. Anyone on their team with permission to answer sees the thread and can reply, so your question does not sit unread because one person is on holiday.
Organizers get the other half of that: one shared inbox for the whole team, with a running history of everything a family has asked. No more forwarding screenshots to a co-leader.
It also means the answer does not disappear when a volunteer steps back at the end of a term. The thread belongs to the organization, and so does everything in it.
The activity is right there
A conversation that started from an activity keeps the activity beside it — when it runs, where it meets, and what you booked. You do not have to go and look it up mid-sentence to answer "what time again?"
That context is why an inbox beats a group text. A text thread knows nothing about the field trip it is about. This one does.
React without replying
Some messages do not need a reply. Someone confirms a time, or says they will bring the extra chairs, and "got it" would just be one more thing to read.
React to a message instead. It closes the loop without adding to anyone's unread count — a small thing that quietly removes a lot of noise from a busy term.
Where to find it
Messages lives in the main navigation, with an unread count when something is waiting, and the bell in the top bar opens the same place. It works the same on a phone as it does on a laptop: on a small screen you see either the list or the conversation, and on a wide one you see both.
Start a conversation from the Message button on any organization's page, or from the inbox itself.
One thing worth knowing before you write: the composer's search finds people and organizations you already have a connection with. It is not a directory of every family on Famlo, and it is not meant to be — organizations reach their members, and members reach the organizations they have joined.
What we left out
We did not build a feed. There is no wall to post to, nothing to scroll, and no algorithm deciding which family you hear from today.
That was deliberate. The conversations that matter in a co-op are small and specific — a question, an answer, a plan for Tuesday. A feed makes those compete with everything else for attention, and the thing most likely to lose is the one about the nut allergy.
If you want to reach everyone registered for an activity, that is what an announcement is for. If you want to ask one person one question, that is this.
Getting started
Nothing to switch on. Open Messages from the navigation and it is there, with any conversations you already have.
If you run an organization, it is worth deciding who answers. Team members can be given access to every conversation, only the activities they are assigned to, or none at all — so a teacher can answer questions about their own classes without being handed the whole roster.
Read more in Messages, or, if you run an organization, Members, roles, and messaging.