Smart Group Chats

Smart Group Chats (SGC) automate the process of keeping chat memberships in sync with your team structure – no more manual work creating and maintaining group chats. Whether it’s due to team changes, turnover, or shifting responsibilities, Smart Group Chats ensure the right people are always in the right conversations.

What Are Smart Group Chats?
A Smart Group Chat is a group chat that’s directly linked to a group in your Dashboard. Membership in the chat updates automatically based on changes to the group – so you never need to manage the chat separately.

Unlike standard group chats, where admins manually add/remove users, Smart Group Chats follow the group structure as the single source of truth.

⚙️ How It Works – Functional Overview
Here’s how Smart Group Chats behave and what you should know:

1. 🔗Group-Chat Link

• A Smart Group Chat is always tied to a single group in the Dashboard.
  One group = one Smart Group Chat. 
• You can't create multiple Smart Group Chats for one group.
• You can’t have multiple groups feeding into one Smart Group Chat.

💡 Tip: Want to combine teams from different groups into one Smart Group Chat? Use Smart Groups to merge them into a single group first – then create the SGC based on that.

2. 👀 Admin Visibility & Permissions

• Only admins with visibility on the group in the Dashboard (Global, Group, or Location Admins) can create and manage Smart Group Chats.
• They don’t need to be members of the group to create an SGC — but they won’t see or access the chat in the app unless they are.
• When a Smart Group Chat is created, all existing Group Admins of the linked group are automatically assigned the Chat Admin role in the chat.
• The Chat Admin role works the same as in standard group chats, except for user management — adding or removing members is only possible via the group in the Dashboard, and only for admins with the right permissions. Chat Admins in an SGC can:
  • Assign or remove the Chat Admin role for other chat members
  • Edit the chat’s title, image, and description

• 💡 If no Chat Admin is assigned, any chat member can claim the Chat Admin role.

3. 👥 End-User Behavior

• End-users can’t leave a Smart Group Chat – but they can still archive or mute it.
• All changes to the chat membership – when someone is added or removed – are immediately visible to everyone in the chat.
  These updates appear as system messages directly in the conversation thread, so participants always know who joined or left.

Suspended users are not shown in Smart Group Chat participant lists and do not count toward the participant limit.

When a user is suspended, they are automatically removed from the Smart Group Chat. If the same user is activated again and still belongs to the connected group, they are automatically added back to the Smart Group Chat.

Automatic membership changes are shown as neutral system messages in the chat, for example:

User removed: [username]
User added: [username]

4. 👮‍♂️ Membership Rules

• Only group members can be in the chat. No external users or “guests.”
  To add or remove someone, you need to update the group itself in the Dashboard.
• Smart Group Chats sync members regardless of how users are added or removed — whether it’s manual edits, Smart Groups, user sync, SFTP, or Workflows.

Smart Group Chats include only active users from the connected group. Suspended users are excluded from the chat automatically.

If a suspended user becomes active again, they will be added back to the Smart Group Chat as long as they still belong to the connected group.

🛠️ How to Create a Smart Group Chat

1. Go to Dashboard → Groups.
2. From the dropdown menu (⚙️ gear icon), select Create Smart Group Chat.
3. Add a name and description, then confirm.
4. Once the SGC is live, you'll see a “Connected” label next to the group.

To open the chat later, use the “Go to Chat” option in the same dropdown menu.

✅ You'll only be able to access the chat if you're a member of the group — if you are, you'll be added to the chat automatically.

🔄 Disconnecting a Smart Group Chat

If you need to unlink the chat from the group:

• In the same dropdown, select Disconnect Smart Group Chat.

🚨Once disconnected, the chat will stop syncing with the group and this can’t be reversed even if the group size goes back under the limit.

💡 Tip: You can also use this flow as a quick way to create a group chat without manually adding users. Just create a Smart Group Chat, then disconnect it. Just keep in mind: once you disconnect, sync can’t be restored.

🔢 Participant Limits

• Smart group chats follow the same user limits as normal group chats: 260 users.
• Suspended users do not count toward this limit in Smart Group Chats. Only active users from the connected group are counted as chat participants.
• If group exceeds the limit:
  • Chat synchronization stops immediately.
  • A ⚠️ icon appears in the chat header, along with a message in the chat details.
  • Once the group is within the limit again, syncing will automatically resume.

🚨Note: In some cases, sync might stop even before the limit is fully reached. This happens because users are added in batches. If a full batch would exceed the limit, it will be rejected, and sync may pause at a lower participant count (e.g. 255), even if the actual group size appears slightly above the limit (e.g. 262).

Make sure to keep the group size within the allowed range to avoid interruptions.

Please keep in mind: the group should always contain the correct number of users, as the group itself is considered the source of truth for synchronization.

If you're managing dynamic teams and want to bring all your frontline communication into one place, Smart Group Chats are a great first step.

They help you scale communication in a structured, automated, and reliable way — so Beekeeper becomes the single hub for keeping your teams connected. 

Managing inactive accounts in existing Smart Group Chats

For Smart Group Chats created before this improvement, inactive accounts may still appear until the chat is cleaned up. Chat Admins and Group Admins may see a cleanup action that allows them to remove all inactive accounts from that Smart Group Chat at once.

Please note:

• Admins cannot select specific inactive users.
• The cleanup action removes all inactive accounts at once.
• After cleanup, newly suspended users will no longer appear in that Smart Group Chat.
• If a removed inactive user becomes active again and still belongs to the connected group, they will be automatically added back.
• Regular chat members do not see this cleanup option.