Where your chats are kept

Where a chat is kept depends on which place it belongs to.

In an organization

A chat in an organization is the organization's record of the work, like any other business record. After each turn, your device sends the chat's record to your organization's account: your messages, the assistant's replies, the steps it took, including steps that were refused, the cards, and the buttons you tapped. Secrets are never in it; only their outcomes are. Your organization keeps it for as long as it chooses, and can review it later.

Your device keeps its own copy only for a while, for the period your organization sets. Older chats are removed from the device when you next open the app. Deleting a chat from your device does not delete your organization's record.

If your access ends, or you sign out, or you leave the organization, its chats, sign-ins and setup are removed from your device. See Access ended (TS-2).

On this device (free)

A chat on this device is yours, and it never reaches our servers. Keep chats for in Settings → Accounts → On this device says how long chats are kept: Until I delete them (the first choice), A year, 90 days or 30 days. Choosing a shorter time removes older chats at once.

Syncing with your own iCloud

Under Settings → Accounts → On this device → iCloud are three switches, each off until you turn it on, and set on each device on its own. Sync is free and goes through your own iCloud, end-to-end encrypted; nothing reaches our servers.

• Sync keys with iCloud: your model keys, through iCloud Keychain (the same switch as in the Vault, FR-5). Sign-ins never sync.
• Sync streamlines with iCloud: your streamlines, briefs and themes, and their order in the sidebar, on every device signed in to your Apple ID that has the switch on. When the same streamline is changed on two devices, the later change wins; a deleted one stays deleted. To change the order, press and hold (or right-click) a streamline in the Library and choose Move Up or Move Down; your other devices follow. A device that turns the switch on takes the order your other devices already use.
• Sync chats with iCloud: your chats on those devices. A chat you carry on on another device says Continued on your Mac (or iPhone, iPad). Files you send in a chat stay on the device you sent them from: the others show On your iPhone in their place.

What you have read is the same on every device: a reply you haven't seen yet shows as unread everywhere, and reading the chat on one device marks it read on the others. Archived and finished chats never turn unread. When a device first turns chat sync on, the chats it receives arrive read, except ones still unread on your other devices. A new chat started on another device, or one with a new reply waiting, opens as a tab here too (without taking you to it), unless you closed that chat's tab on this device: closing a tab keeps it closed here until you open the chat again.

While chat sync is on, Keep chats for is one setting for all your devices: change it on one and the others follow (its card says Shared with your devices through iCloud), and chats older than it are removed from every device and from iCloud. A device that turns chat sync on takes the setting your other devices already use and says so once (Chats are now kept for 90 days, as on your other devices). With chat sync off, each device keeps its own setting again.

Turning a switch off stops that device sending and receiving; what is already in iCloud and on your other devices stays. Turning it on again catches up, without doubling anything.

The line under the switches says how sync is doing: Up to date, Syncing…, or what stopped it. Nothing on the device is lost in any of these:

• iCloud is off on this iPhone: sign in to iCloud in the system's Settings and sync carries on by itself.
• Your iCloud is full: changes wait on the device and go when there is room.
• Signed in to a different Apple ID: sync stops, so two people's streamlines and chats never mix. Sync with This Apple ID carries on with the Apple ID now signed in: where both have a file, iCloud's version is kept, and what only this device has goes up.
• Waiting for the network: changes go when it is back.

Remove from iCloud…

Remove from iCloud… deletes your streamlines, your chats, or both from your iCloud, after you confirm. Nothing is deleted on any device: each keeps its own copy. On this device the switch turns off; your other devices turn theirs off when they next look, and say removed from iCloud on another device. Turn a switch on again to start afresh: the first device sends its copy, and the next ones take it and add what only they have.

The demo

The Meridian demo keeps its chats on your device only. They are not real, and nothing in them leaves the device.