Messages, channels & reach credits

Messaging

Messages, channels & reach credits

Messages (left nav) is where your business talks to the businesses you buy from and sell to. Your sidebar splits conversations by who can read them:

Team inbox — your business talking to another business: one-to-one threads with a company, group chats, shared channels, a thread about one store, and event rooms. Your team can read these, and so can the other business's team.
Direct — private messages between people. Only the people in the conversation can read them — nobody else at either company, including yours.
My Org — your own team channels, which only your team can read.

PLUG is pinned at the top, and the channels — the trade town square that used to live under "Community" — sit below.

Who can see this

The top of every conversation says who can read it, worked out from the same rule that decides access — so it can't promise privacy the conversation doesn't have:

A business thread: "Your team and Tri-County's team can see this." A thread about one store names the store — "Your team and Famous Wine & Spirits' team at Pershing can see this."
A private message: "Only you and Bobbi Singh can see this," or in a group, "Only the 3 people here can see this."

Next to a business thread's line, Who's on my team? lists exactly which of your teammates can read that thread. It's not your whole roster: it's the people with the Message other businesses permission, narrowed to finance roles on a finance-only thread and to the people who work that store on a store's thread. Every row in the sidebar also carries a Team or Private tag, so you can tell them apart in Starred, in your own sections, and in search.

Every button that opens Messages names where it goes. Message Tri-County (on an order, an invoice, the catalog, a business profile, or your brand's stores) opens your Team inbox thread with that business. Message Bobbi privately (on a person's card) opens a Direct conversation with just them.

Team inbox

A message to a business is shared with your team. When you message a company, the conversation is between your company and theirs, so anyone on your team who handles it sees the same thread — nothing gets stuck in one inbox. (A private message to a person is the exception — it lives under Direct and says so at the top of the thread.)
Who on your team sees it. Conversations with other businesses — DMs, group chats, shared channels, and your PLUG threads — are for teammates with the Message other businesses permission: owners, managers, bookkeepers, reps and brokers by default. Floor Staff and Warehouse see your team channel and order threads only. Grant it to anyone else with a custom role under Team → Roles & Permissions.
Unread is yours, not the team's. When a teammate reads a business thread, it stays unread for you until you open it yourself — so a reply the owner glanced at still waits for the rep who handles that account.
You still see who's speaking. Each message shows which teammate sent it (for example, "Jane · Skycity Grill"), so a shared inbox stays personal. Click the person's name to see their job title and role; click the company name or its logo to open its profile.
Order & invoice chat. Every order and invoice has a Message button naming the business, which opens (or continues) your Team inbox thread with them, with that order set as context.
A specific store. Some businesses have more than one location. When you message a multi-location business, DISTRYB asks "Which location?" so you reach the right store — e.g. Famous Wine & Spirits · Pershing. Messaging from an order picks the store that order ships to automatically. At that business, a teammate assigned to other stores doesn't see the thread, isn't notified about it, and can't open or reply to it; owners and managers see every store's threads.

Group chats

Start a group chat to pull several businesses into one room — a broker looping a brand and a buyer, say. From any group you can add more businesses, remove someone, or fork a new group to split off a side conversation without losing the original.

Adding someone to a direct message starts a new group with the three of you. The original one-to-one stays private and untouched, so the newcomer never sees what was said in it.
Adding someone to an existing group brings them into that room as it is — they can scroll back through the conversation's earlier messages, not just the ones sent after they joined. If that history shouldn't travel, fork a new group for them instead.

Channels — the trade town square

Channels are platform-wide rooms every DISTRYB business can read — share deals, what you're sourcing, and industry news with your peers.

Public channels are open to all verified businesses.
Industry channels are scoped to a role — retailers-only, distributors-only, producers-only, and the like — so a conversation for one tier isn't visible to the others. You only see the industry channels your business qualifies for.
Verified businesses can post; every business can read. Reply to any post, react, and edit or delete your own. Report anything off — DISTRYB staff can remove posts or restrict repeat offenders.
Posts are signed. A post is your company speaking, but the trade sees who wrote it — "Vanessa · GB Distillers Inc". Click the name to see that person's title and role. Set your own name under Account Settings.

Who you're talking to

Business details. In any conversation, the Details button (or the logo or name at the top) opens that business's card: their logo, location, what they do, a short bio, the brands they own, and links to their trade profile, public profile, and store. Click the logo again to see it full size.
Every hat they wear. A business can be more than one thing — a distiller that also owns brands shows as Distiller · Brand Owner, not just one.
Your own name. Set it under Account Settings → Your name & title. It goes on every message you send and every channel post. If you haven't set one, DISTRYB falls back to your account name so your messages are never anonymous.
Job titles are assigned by your business, not chosen. A title on a person card is a claim of authority to whoever is reading it — a rep shown as "CEO" misrepresents who a customer is negotiating with. So whoever manages your team sets titles, under Team; you'll see yours in Account Settings.

Tidying your sidebar

Your sidebar is yours — what you do here changes nothing for your teammates and nothing about the conversation itself.

Star anything you want pinned to the top, drag rows between sections, and make your own named sections.
Hide a row you're done with (the ⋯ menu on the row). It leaves your sidebar; the conversation, your access, and everyone else's view are untouched. A hidden conversation comes back on its own when someone sends something new — anything already waiting when you hid it doesn't count, so hiding always sticks. A hidden trade channel stays hidden until you bring it back. Either way, type its name in the search box and it's there. A "3 hidden · show" line under the search box tells you what's tucked away.
Notifications for one conversation, from the same ⋯ menu: All messages (the default), Mentions only, or Nothing. Trade channels offer the last two — they have never notified on every post, and with every business on DISTRYB reading them they can't. Anything below All messages dims the row, drops its badge, and stops a hidden row from coming back. Your choice is yours alone; it changes nothing for your teammates.
Hiding is not leaving. Orders, brand-claim reviews, and the trade channels are records you keep — hiding just gets them out of your way.

Your trade channel default lives under Account Settings → Notifications, not Company Settings — a notification reaches a person, not a business, so you and a colleague can each choose your own. Set it to Mentions only or Muted; a level you pick on a single channel overrides it.

Rich messages & files

Format with bold, _italics_, lists, and links, and attach files — PDFs, spec sheets, images. Documents (PDF, Word, Excel, CSV and text) can be up to 25 MB and images up to 15 MB; each file shows how far its upload has got. Images are scanned before they post. Paste a link to another message you can both see and it unfurls as a quoted preview.

Threads & your Activity inbox

Reply in a thread to keep a side-conversation tidy under the message that started it. The Activity button (top of Messages) is your catch-up view:

Threads — every conversation you've replied in or started, newest activity first.
Mentions — recent @mentions and replies to you, each linking straight to the message.

Mentions, notifications & PLUG

@mention a handle to notify that business or person; the notification names the conversation or store so you know where you were mentioned. Mentioning a business in a public channel is always free.
@plug in any thread to ask PLUG for help. In a shared thread PLUG only handles how-to and navigation — it never reveals one business's private account details in a conversation another business can read.

Messaging a person, not just a business

A message to a business goes to the company's Team inbox — whoever there handles messages sees it, and the thread outlives whoever happens to answer. A message to a person is private and lives under Direct: just the two of you. No company is in it, including yours and theirs. The top of the thread says Private and "Only you and … can see this," and, in a one-to-one, names the other person's company. In New message, the business row reads Message the business's name, and its people are listed under Direct — private. A private message lives in DISTRYB only — it never appears in the Bottl.Service app, even for someone who also uses Bottl.Service.

Search a name to find someone, or open a business to see its locations and its team. Tick more than one name to start a group, and everyone in it can see who else is there. There is no in-between where a thread is "for" one person but readable by their colleagues.

To bring somebody into an ongoing private conversation, use Add people. That starts a new conversation rather than changing the old one, and you choose what travels with it — nothing, the last 50 messages, or the last 200. Everyone in the original is told what you shared and who with. "Start fresh" is the default.

You only see the team of a business you've already traded with. Reaching a person passes the same door as reaching their company: if a business takes messages from existing partners only, naming someone who works there doesn't get round that.

The one exception: brand owners. The owner of a brand a store carries — on its own shelf, or bought through a distributor — may send that store a direct message even when the store takes messages from existing partners only (Seller Agreement §10A). It covers a direct message to the business and nothing else: not a group, not adding the store to a conversation, and not a private message to someone who works there. A store that blocks the brand owner, or accepts no new messages at all, still can't be reached.

Reach credits — starting new conversations

Replying to anyone, and messaging a business you already work with, is always free. What's metered is cold outreach — the first message to a business you've never dealt with:

Each cold conversation spends one reach credit. Your plan includes a monthly allotment (unlimited on Growth and up), and you can top up.
Refund on reply. If they write back, you get that credit returned — good outreach costs nothing; only ignored cold messages stay spent.
Only outreach that sells is metered. Asking someone to carry, stock or buy your product is what spends a credit. Sourcing is free — a distributor looking for brands, or a retailer looking for someone to buy from, is never charged. That's the work that makes the market liquid, and taxing it would be backwards.
Messaging a creator on Bottl.Service is free, cold or not. They opted in by becoming an affiliate; starting that relationship isn't cold outreach at a business.
Naming a person costs the same as naming their company — no more, and no less. A private message to somebody at a business you've traded with is free, like any other message to a partner.
Who viewed you. On Growth and up, see which businesses have viewed your profile — warm leads to reach out to. (Platform staff and admins browsing never show up as viewers.)
Once two businesses have talked, they're partners — future messages between you are unmetered forever.

Message settings

Under Company Settings → Messaging you control:

Who can message you — anyone, existing partners only (owners of brands you carry can still send you a direct message — see above), or no new messages.
Block a specific business — they can't DM you, add you to a group, or request an intro.
Per-store staff — a teammate assigned to specific store(s) only sees those stores' conversations: they aren't notified about another store's threads and can't open or reply to them.

These are company settings, so only owners and managers — or a custom role with Manage store / brand page settings — can change them. Everyone else on the team sees them read-only.

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