"Conversations" are now PMs or private messages again!

Not too much of a shift but PMs are a thing of the past! We now have Conversations which show up in your profile much as visitors posts used to except that, like PMs, these are private.

You can have them one-on-one or with group of people. Just put their names in the box separated by a comma ','

The "Start a conversation" can be found in many locations; here are three I have found thus far

At the InBox




Clicking on the other person's avatar. This is what it known as an Overlay - or in more familiar words, a pop-up!



In your In-Box, under the list of previous conversation titles, there is a fourth place to start a new conversation.




Now you are taken to the new message page where you can add other member's names and apply other controls like allowing your invitees to invite others into the conversation or locking it so no further comments can be made



when you Start the conversation, the persons you have added to the address list will be sent alerts advising them to come and join in

You will observe that this ends up looking just like a thread except only you and your invitees can see it.

When somebody replies to your post, you will get an email alert which you SHOULD NOT REPLY TO
It's merely an alert sent out by the forum robot and if you reply with it, your message will not be seen by your fellow correspondents in the Conversation. Such an email looks like this and you can see two places which are links that will take you to the conversation.

The process is the same only from today, where it said "Conversations" it now says "Private Messages" again.

Very good, makes more sense now