What's the Difference Between the Support and Internal Messaging Chats

Overview

PartBay has two separate chat features — a support chat for communicating with the PartBay team, and an order chat for internal communication between the location and central parts team. Understanding the difference between these two helps ensure your questions and messages reach the right people.

Support Chat — External

The support chat is the dark blue chat icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

When to use this: The support chat is the right place for technical issues — orders not going through, parts not showing up, things feeling stuck. If you've reviewed the support documents and confirmed your settings are correct but something still isn't working, reach out here.

One helpful detail: PartBay can see the screen you're on when you send a message. If you're viewing a specific order when you ask a question, the team will already know which order you're referencing, which helps them respond faster and more accurately.

Order Chat — Internal

Every order in PartBay also has its own chat, accessible via the message icon in the top bar or within an individual order. This chat is internal to your shop — PartBay does not see these messages.

The order chat is designed for communication between estimators and the central parts team about a specific file. Central parts can view messages across all files, while estimators only see messages on their own files.

You can use @mentions to tag specific people — for example, an estimator can tag the central parts person they've been working with, and central parts can tag the estimator involved in a file.

Quick Reference

Below is a table summarizing the difference between the support chat and the order chat.