Team Messaging for NDT Companies: Discuss App
Team chat and channels, threaded onto jobs and records. Request a demo. Affordable. Accessible. Fully customizable. Quote on request.
The problem with running jobs on personal chat apps
Most NDT companies run on personal chat groups. There’s one group per client, one per shutdown and one for the whole crew, plus private messages between the operations manager and every technician. Photos of indications, calibration block readings, “are you on site yet?”, client requests to add three more welds to the scope and a Level III’s answer on an acceptance question all end up in the same scrolling thread on someone’s phone.
It works in the moment, and it fails afterwards. Two weeks later, when the client disputes the extra welds, the message approving them is on a technician’s phone, and that technician has left the company. When an auditor asks why a report was revised, the reason is in a chat nobody can find. When a new supervisor joins, there’s no history to read.
Discuss in Atlantis NDT ERP is the standard Atlantis ERP Discuss app, set up for an NDT company. It gives you channels and direct messages like any team chat. The difference is that it sits inside the same system as your jobs, reports, procedures, equipment and technicians. Conversations about a record can live on that record, where they’ll be found later.
Discuss won’t replace every phone call, and it doesn’t need to. The aim is simpler: decisions that matter for a job, a report or a procedure get recorded where the work is, not on someone’s personal phone.
This page covers how Discuss works, how NDT companies use it day to day, how it connects to the other apps, and what setup looks like.
What the Discuss app does
Discuss has two halves, and both are standard Atlantis ERP features.
Team messaging. Channels for groups and topics, direct messages between people, and small group chats. Messages support @mentions, file and photo attachments, reactions and search. Discuss also supports voice and video calls with screen sharing, which is handy when a Level III needs to see what a technician is looking at. Notifications arrive in the ERP inbox and in the browser, including on phones.
Chatter on records. Almost every record in the ERP, whether it’s a job, a report, a procedure, an instrument, an employee, a quote or an invoice, has a chatter panel alongside it. There, people can:
- Log a note, an internal comment visible only to your staff.
- Send a message to the record’s followers, which can include external contacts by email. Replies by email come back into the chatter.
- Schedule an activity, such as a call, a to-do or an upload, assigned to a person with a due date.
- Attach files that stay with the record.
- Follow the record, so they’re notified when it changes.
The chatter also logs tracked changes automatically, such as a status moving from review to approved and who moved it. Put that next to the conversation and you have the history of a record in one place.
Teams usually get the most out of Discuss when channels handle quick coordination and the chatter holds anything that needs to be on the record.
Channels for jobs, teams and bases
Channels are where day-to-day coordination happens. For an NDT company, a sensible channel structure usually looks like this:
- A channel per major job or shutdown. Everyone mobilised to a turnaround joins it: technicians, supervisors, the project manager and the Level III. Mobilisation updates, daily plans, permit delays and quick questions go here. When the job closes, the channel is archived, not deleted.
- A channel per method or discipline. For example UT and PAUT, RT and radiation safety, or surface methods. Technical questions go to the people who can answer them without flooding everyone else.
- A channel per base or branch, for companies with more than one location.
- An operations channel where schedulers, supervisors and the operations manager coordinate crews and equipment.
- A QA channel for the QA manager, Level IIIs and reviewers.
Channels can be public inside the company or private and invitation only. Private channels work well for management or for sensitive client matters.
Direct messages cover the rest: a supervisor checking in with one technician, or accounts asking a project manager about a PO number.
A practical rule of thumb we suggest: if a message would matter to someone reading the job file in six months, it belongs in the chatter of the job or report, not in a channel. Channels are for coordination. Chatter is for the record.
Chatter on reports, procedures, equipment and jobs
This is where Discuss becomes more than a chat app for an NDT company. Here’s how the chatter gets used on the records that matter most.
Inspection reports
Reports in the NDT Reports app move through draft, in progress, review, approved and sent. When a reviewer sends a report back, the reason goes in the chatter, where the inspector sees it and the next reviewer can read it. When a client queries a result, the discussion sits on the report itself. If you also use Atlantis’s Digital Twin Reporting Software to place results on a 3D model of the asset, the report record in the ERP is still where the review conversation lives.
Procedures
Procedures move through draft, submitted, reviewed, approved and published, with prepared, reviewed and approved by fields and full revision history. Reviewer comments and rejection reasons on a new revision sit in the chatter. When an auditor asks why revision 4 changed the scan plan, the answer is right there.
Equipment
An instrument that comes back from site with a cracked probe housing gets a note on its record, alongside its maintenance log and calibration records. The next person to issue it sees the history.
Jobs and assignments
Scope changes, client instructions, permit delays and demobilisation notes go on the job, where the project manager and accounts will find them at invoice time.
Approvals and notifications that people actually see
Much of the delay in an NDT company is waiting. Reports wait for review, procedures wait for Level III approval, and quotes and expense reports wait for sign-off. Often nobody is refusing to act. They just haven’t noticed.
Discuss helps in three ways.
Inbox notifications. When you’re mentioned, assigned an activity or following a record that changes, it shows up in your Discuss inbox. It doesn’t get buried among supplier newsletters.
Activities with due dates. A reviewer can be given a “Review report” activity due tomorrow. Overdue activities are highlighted, and managers can see who has what outstanding. The Certificates app uses warning tasks the same way, creating them 90 days before a certificate or vision test expires.
Email where it belongs. The Procedures app sends email notifications and reminders to approvers for pending approvals. Messages sent from a record’s chatter reach followers by email, and replies come back into the chatter. People who live in their inbox still take part, and the conversation still ends up on the record.
We’d rather be honest about the limits. Discuss notifies people. It doesn’t make them act. What it does is make the waiting visible, so a supervisor can see that a report has sat in review for three days and ask why. How you set up activity types, and who follows what by default, is agreed with you during implementation.
The result you should look for is qualitative: fewer reports sitting unnoticed in review and fewer approvals chased by phone.
Office to field: using Discuss on site
Technicians in the field aren’t sitting at a desk, so Discuss has to work on a phone.
Discuss runs in the phone’s browser as part of the ERP, and notifications can reach the phone. A technician can read the day’s plan in the job channel, reply to a supervisor, attach a photo and answer a question on a report they submitted, all from the same login they use for timesheets and expenses.
Some practical points for field use:
- Connectivity. Discuss needs a connection. The ERP’s offline field app is built for inspection reports and syncs drafts and photos later. Discuss isn’t offline. Technicians catch up on messages when they have signal.
- Photos. Photos that are part of the inspection record belong in the report, captured through the field app. Photos in Discuss are for coordination, such as “is this the right line?” or “the scaffold isn’t ready”.
- Calls. A quick video call lets a Level III look at a setup or indication through a technician’s camera, then note the outcome on the report.
- Keeping it tidy. Technicians only join the channels for their current jobs and their method, so their phone doesn’t buzz for every job in the company.
You may still keep personal chat apps for emergencies or social chat. Many companies do. The point is that job decisions move into a place the company owns and can search.
Who uses Discuss
| Role | How they use Discuss |
|---|---|
| Field technician | Reads job channels, replies to supervisors, answers review comments on their reports, joins calls with a Level III. |
| Crew supervisor | Posts daily plans, coordinates the crew, logs site issues on the job record. |
| Level III or QA manager | Answers technical questions, reviews reports and procedures, records decisions in the chatter. |
| Operations manager or scheduler | Coordinates crews and equipment, flags conflicts, follows every active job. |
| Project manager | Records client instructions and scope changes on the job, messages clients by email from the chatter. |
| Accounts | Asks about PO numbers and recharges on the job or invoice record, not by phone. |
| Owner | Follows key jobs and sees the history of any decision. |
Everyone with a user account gets Discuss. Access to records, and so to their chatter, follows the same access rights as the rest of the ERP. A technician can’t read the chatter on an invoice they can’t open.
How Discuss connects to the rest of Atlantis NDT ERP
Discuss is built into every app, which is why it’s worth using over a separate chat tool:
- NDT Reports. Review comments, send-backs and client queries on each report.
- Procedures. Reviewer comments, rejection reasons and approval reminders on each revision.
- Team Assignments and Project. Coordination, scope changes and site notes on each job.
- Asset Management. Notes on instruments alongside maintenance and calibration history.
- Certificates. Warning tasks before certificates and vision tests expire, as activities in the inbox.
- Quotations, CRM and Invoicing. Client correspondence by email, logged on the lead, quote or invoice.
- Employees and Time Off. Leave approvals and HR notes, with notifications to approvers. See the Time Off app.
- eLearning. Admins can coordinate with learners, including those using Practical NDT, the 3D practice platform available to enrolled learners.
Because it’s all one database, searching Discuss for a weld number or a client name finds messages on every record where it came up. A separate chat app can’t do that.
For the full list of apps, see the Atlantis NDT ERP apps overview or the NDT ERP page.
What setup looks like
Discuss works out of the box. Most of the setup is about habits, not software. Atlantis NDT deploys and configures the ERP, and for Discuss we work through:
- Channel structure. Which channels to create at go-live, such as operations, QA, each method group and each base, and a naming convention for job channels.
- Who follows what. Default followers on reports, procedures and jobs, so the right people are notified without everyone being notified of everything.
- Activity types. Review report, approve procedure, return equipment, send crew documents, and whatever else matches your workflow.
- Email settings. Making sure messages to clients go out from your domain and replies come back into the chatter.
- House rules. A one-page guide on what goes in channels, what goes in chatter, and what stays on the phone.
- Phone setup. Getting technicians logged in and receiving notifications.
Anything beyond standard Discuss is scoped and configured as part of the customization agreed with you. Pricing is quote on request, and the ERP is built to be affordable and accessible for NDT companies of every size.
To see how it looks on a live report and job, book a Discuss demo.
Frequently asked questions
Is Discuss a replacement for our chat groups?
It can be for work conversations. Discuss has channels, direct messages, attachments and calls. Its main advantage is chatter on each record, so decisions stay with the job, report or procedure they relate to.
Can technicians use Discuss on their phones?
Yes. Discuss runs in the phone browser as part of the ERP, with notifications. It needs a connection, unlike the offline field app used for inspection reports.
Can we message clients from Discuss?
Yes, through the chatter. Sending a message from a record emails its followers, including external contacts, and their email replies come back into the chatter.
Can a Level III see what a technician is looking at?
Yes, with a video call in Discuss. The technician shares their camera, and the Level III records the outcome on the report afterwards.
Who can read the chatter on a record?
Anyone who can open that record under their access rights. Log notes are internal. Sent messages also go to followers.
Is Discuss included in Atlantis NDT ERP?
Yes. Every user gets it, and it’s built into every app. Pricing for the ERP is quote on request.
Keep job decisions where the job lives
The most important conversations in an NDT company are about scope, results, revisions and approvals. They belong on the record, not on somebody’s phone. Discuss in Atlantis NDT ERP keeps them there, and still gives your crews a quick way to talk.
Tell us how your office and field teams communicate today. Request a quote for Atlantis NDT ERP and we’ll show you a job, a report and its conversation in one place.
Works with
- Employees: Technician records, levels, documents and contracts.
- Time Off: Leave requests and allocations, visible to crew planners.
Send an enquiry about Discuss · All ERP apps · Atlantis NDT ERP
Built for any business that runs on operations
Most companies do not fail at their craft. They lose time, margin and goodwill in the gaps between the tools they use to run the place — a quoting spreadsheet that does not talk to the job sheet, a job sheet that does not reach accounts, and a compliance folder nobody can search when a client asks. Atlantis closes those gaps by putting the whole operation on one platform, so information is entered once and everything downstream stays in step.
What you can run on it
- Sales and CRM — leads, quotes, follow-ups and the pipeline that tells you what next month looks like.
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Affordable, accessible, fully customizable — and we mean each word
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Industries we configure for
Service businesses and contractors, manufacturing and fabrication, trading and distribution, laboratories and testing houses, engineering consultancies, construction and facilities, and asset owners across energy, marine, aerospace and infrastructure. Inspection and testing is where we started, and it remains the sector we go deepest in — but the platform underneath is general-purpose, and most of what it does has nothing to do with inspection at all.
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