Important Rules & Restrictions

The following are cross-cutting rules users should know about while using the platform.

Access & Authentication 

• Almost all features require the user to be signed in. Only a small set of health and public routes work without authentication. 
• The admission portal integration uses its own separate authentication for system generated messages. 
• Each user is associated with a tenant (for example, a state or region). Users only see data belonging to their tenant. 

Messaging 

• Subject and body are always required when creating or sending a message.
• Sender type must be one of Organization, Employee, School, Student, or Authority.
• A message being sent must have at least one recipient. Drafts may be saved without recipients. 
• Only the original author of a draft can edit that draft. 
• Message status flows through Draft → Sent → Delivered → Read, with Archived and Deleted as additional states. 
• Message sending is asynchronous — the platform confirms acceptance and completes delivery in the background. 

Folders 

• Reserved folder names cannot be created, renamed to, or deleted: inbox, sent, drafts, outbox, spam, and junk. 
• Deleting a custom folder moves its messages back to the Inbox; messages are not lost.
• Broadcast messages that were sent before a user's registration date may not appear in that user's Inbox or All Mails view.  

Broadcast

• Either an existing message or an inline message must be provided when broadcasting, but not both. 
• A scope or target must always be specified. 
• Broadcasts are processed asynchronously in batches (default batch size is 10,000).
• Default estimated counts are applied automatically based on the scope (for example, ALL defaults to 1,000,000 recipients). 
  

Chats

• Chat type must be direct or group. 
• Direct chats require exactly one other participant besides the creator. 
• Group chats must have at least one participant and a name. 
• The chat creator is automatically added as an admin. 
• Chat message type is limited to text, file, or system.

Attachments 

• The maximum allowed size per attachment is 10 MB. 
• File name, type, size, and path are required for every attachment. 

Rate Limits and Availability 

• The service applies rate limits per tenant, per user, or per network address to protect availability. Exceeding a limit produces a "too many requests" response and the request should be retried later. 
• Large or heavy requests may be accepted and processed asynchronously; the platform confirms acceptance without necessarily completing the work immediately.
• Individual request size is limited (approximately 5 MB per request), which is separate from the per-attachment limit. 

Data Scope

• Users can only see messages, folders, and chats they are authorized to see.
• Draft messages are visible only to their author. 
• Sender-side details (like read status of recipients) are visible to the sender; recipient-side details are visible to each recipient individually. 

This user guide describes only the functionality that is fully available in the current version of the Communication Service. Some finer role-based permissions (for example, exactly which roles can initiate broadcasts, or which roles are allowed to delete another user's chat message) are enforced by the system but are not fully described here — please consult your administrator for the specific policies applied in your organization.