So I need a chat for Discourse where users can send messages to a selected few people, but not each other. Is there a feature like this? The chat would be open only on certain hours and would let you know how many people there are in line before you in the chat.

Welcome Juho :tada: I’d say yes to an extent. However, at the moment only signed up users can use it. So an anonymous user wouldn’t be able to access it for support. [image] Juho: users can send messages to a selected few people, but not each other. I don’t think that is currently possible …

We have been looking at different ways people would like to use chat, so I’m tagging our PM here @lindsey to take note of your request!

Needing an account is not a deal breaker.

@Juho There are a number of barriers between what chat supports today and the robust system you describe here, as @ondrej points out, but one additional option — we recently introduced the ability for a user to DM a group in chat. You could create a Discourse group (let’s call it support) and ask u…

[image] Lindsey Fogle: so it might be tricky for the support team to understand who’s handling the issue Might I suggest having that group be allowed to use whispers, and then adding a whisper per-PM for who’s handling it?

Is there an option to use Discourse Chat as a customer service type of chat?

Support

merefield (Robert) January 23, 2024, 8:41am 4

This is already a use case I’m exploring with clients and Discourse Chatbot 🤖

The main limitation currently is that your customer needs to have an account already.

Topic		Replies	Views
Restrict chat for certain groups Support chat	4	121	December 4, 2025
Better Control Over Incoming Chats Feature chat	7	505	January 3, 2024
How does group messaging work in Discourse? Support	8	356	June 21, 2025
Create chat channels connected to a group Feature chat , completed	7	1375	February 5, 2024
Improvements to group chats — add users to existing chats, easily create new groups, name your group chats Announcements chat , new-feature	8	2135	November 13, 2024

Is there an option to use Discourse Chat as a customer service type of chat?

Related topics