Your members’ messenger just got a lot better

The private messenger here has been quietly growing, and it’s turned into something worth stopping to tell you about. It started as a simple way to send another member a direct message. It’s a lot more than that now.

You can still send a plain message, one-on-one or to a group. But when typing isn’t practical — say you’re standing over a monument and it’s easier to just talk — you can send a voice note instead, or a short video message. When you’d rather have an actual conversation, you can place a voice or video call, one-on-one or with a few people at once. Talk a tricky boundary through with a colleague, or pull a small group together to hash something out.

And you can share the files email chokes on — plats, drawings, PDFs, and photos — right in the conversation, without bouncing them off some third-party service.

Here’s the part I care about most. All of it is private, it’s surveyor-only, and it runs on our own servers. No ads. Nothing tracked. Nothing mined to sell you something later. That’s the whole difference between doing this here and doing it in the other places you might be tempted to — and it’s the same reason RPLS.com exists at all.

It works right in your browser, on your desktop or your phone, and it’ll nudge you when someone replies so you’re not sitting there refreshing.

The messenger is part of every membership. If you’re already a member, just sign in and open it — it’s ready to go. If you’ve been reading along from the free side, this is one more good reason to pull up a chair.

— Wendell, RPLS.com Admin