Keeping Your Team Connected: The Staff Messaging Guide 📣💬
Effective communication is the backbone of a smooth-running restaurant. The Messages page in the NX Portal gives managers a centralized dashboard to broadcast important announcements, mandate read receipts for critical updates, and track down precisely who has viewed a notice.
Whether you are announcing a shift in holiday hours, updating your menu guidelines, or sending out a quick policy reminder, you can compose a message once and deliver it straight to your team via the POS terminals and the NX Mobile app!
📊 Navigating the Messages Dashboard
To get started, look at the left-hand navigation column in your NX Portal. Expand the Labor section and click on Messages.
🔓 A Note on Permissions: Everyone in your organization can open this page to read active notices and view read receipts. However, composing a new announcement, editing scheduled posts, or permanently deleting an entry requires dedicated Send Permissions. If your profile doesn't have this, the action buttons will look greyed out or be hidden.
The primary dashboard displays every announcement sent across your organization with a complete tracking checklist:
✍️ How to Compose and Send a New Message
Ready to broadcast an update? Click the purple + New Message button in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen to slide open the composition panel.
1. Fill in the Content 📝
Subject (Required): Write a short, punchy title (e.g., "Holiday Hours").
Message (Required): Type the body of your update. This text box fully supports Markdown formatting, allowing you to use simple shortcuts like asterisks (
bold text) for clear, scannable spacing. A live preview generates below the text box so you can see exactly what your staff will see before you hit send.Require Read Acknowledgement (Optional): When toggled on, this acts as a hard stop. Employees will be completely blocked from using their POS terminal screens on shift until they tap to formally acknowledge the notice. Use this sparingly and save it strictly for must-read compliance updates!
2. Choose Your Targeted Audience 🎯
Your recipient options are completely customizable and automatically scale based on the properties you select:
Venues (Required): Pick one or multiple restaurant locations to receive the notice.
Audience Filters: You can toggle on Everyone in selected venues, or narrow the broadcast down by checking specific Jobs (e.g., only Servers) or choosing specific Employees from the dropdown menu.
As you fine-tune your targets, a live blue indicator box will instantly calculate the reach (e.g., “~23 employees will receive this”), automatically removing any duplicate names.
3. Timing & Expiration ⏱️
Timing: Select Send Now to blast the update immediately, or choose Schedule to program a future date and time block (matching your venue's local time zone).
Expiration Date: By default, messages are set to archive automatically after 30 days. You can easily select a custom calendar expiration date or toggle this off completely to keep the message live indefinitely.
🔍 Auditing Read Receipts
Once a message goes out, you don't have to wonder if your staff saw it. Click the list icon on the right side of any message row to pull open the Receipts Panel.
At the top of the panel, you will get an instant analytical summary tracking your total Recipients, Read %, and Acknowledged % (if a read requirement was forced). Below that summary sit itemized rows detailing exactly which employees have opened the note, their job location, and the precise timestamp they tapped to acknowledge it.
🗑️ Managing and Deleting Notices
Editing Scheduled Posts: If you schedule a message for a future date, you can freely reopen, edit, or cancel the draft anytime before it officially deploys.
Sent Messages are Locked: Once a message is officially "Sent," its content cannot be altered or edited to preserve an un-manipulated record of communication.
Deleting an Active Notice: You can delete a message at any point by clicking the red trash can icon. If the announcement has already gone out, deleting it from the portal clears your dashboard ledger but may not retroactively pull it from terminal screens or mobile apps where staff have already loaded it. The portal will flash a helpful confirmation safety warning before letting you lock in a deletion.
Need Help? 💡
Can I use this page to send a private direct message to just one single server?
Yes! While the tool is fantastic for broad restaurant announcements, you can easily use it for individual check-ins. When composing a new message, leave the Everyone and Jobs filters unchecked, and simply use the Employees dropdown parameter to pick the single team member you want to reach.
My scheduled message didn't fire at the exact minute I set it for.
Double-check your venue parameters! Scheduled times rely entirely on the local time zone assigned to the selected venue in your platform settings. If your corporate office is on the East Coast but you are scheduling a message for a West Coast kitchen terminal, verify the time zone offsets match.