June 06/5/26 Tech Tips

How to keep up your firm's communication within Longbow One using texts, chats, and emails.

Every Conversation, One Place: Communications in Longbow One

If you've ever bounced between your texting app, Outlook, a separate team chat tool, and a help desk ticket just to move one case forward, you already know the problem Longbow One set out to solve. Communication shouldn't live in four different windows. Here's a quick tour of the four communication systems built right into Longbow One — and how they keep everything tied back to the case it belongs to.

Text Clients Without Leaving the Case

The built-in SMS inbox lets you text clients directly from Longbow, with every message linked to the case and saved to the timeline. Open the firm-wide inbox under Communications → SMS for a two-panel view with conversations on the left, and active thread on the right; or jump to the SMS tab on any case to see just that client's history. Filters for Unread, Flagged, Assigned to Me, and Unlinked help you stay on top of a busy day. Due to inbound texts being auto-matched to your contacts by phone number, a client's reply lands on the right case automatically.

When a client texts a photo of an accident scene, a medical bill, or an insurance card, the attachment saves straight into Case Documents. You can reply with reusable templates that fill in merge codes like the client's name, file number, and next event date. You can schedule a message with Send Later so you're not texting at 9 pm, and even send a PDF for signature. Clients can sign on their phone, and the executed document drops back onto the case. STOP/START opt-outs are tracked automatically to keep you compliant.

Your Outlook Inbox and Calendar, in Context

Longbow One connects to Microsoft 365 through the Graph API, so your Outlook mailbox lives inside the app. Browse your folders, read and search messages, and compose, reply, or forward with attachments. Search also runs against your whole mailbox, and attachments download with a click.

On the calendar side, events you create in Longbow sync to your Outlook calendar in real time. A background retry processor makes sure your two calendars stay in agreement without you babysitting them. This means emails and appointments show up right alongside everything else on the case timeline, in the order things actually happened.

A Team Chat that Knows Your Cases

For internal coordination, Longbow One has a real-time team chat built in with no extra login. Create a channel for a specific case, a practice group, or general firm chatter. The three-pane layout keeps the channel list, the conversation, and channel details (members and shared files) all in view, and it collapses gracefully on a tablet or phone. Because channels can be tied to a case, the conversation about a matter stays connected to the matter itself, not buried in someone's DMs.

Built-In AI Help, Right When You Need It

Finally, there's an AI assistant tucked into the chat panel that answers questions without making you go hunting through a manual. Ask something like "How do I link an email to a case?" and it responds based on your firm's own help content plus general knowledge. It's also context-aware, so it knows which page you're on and offers relevant quick tips before you even ask.

The assistant remembers the thread of conversations and allows reactions or a quick thumbs up to a message. Administrators can curate that content from the Help Content management page, tailoring answers by role so attorneys, paralegals, and staff each see what's relevant to them.

One System, Fewer Tabs

Texts, email, calendar, team chat, and AI help — four tools that used to mean four windows, now living in one place and all pointing back to the case. That's the whole idea behind Longbow One's communications: less app-switching, less copy-pasting, and a complete, audit-ready record of every conversation right where the work happens.

Want a closer look at any of these? Each one has its own settings area — and the AI assistant is always a click away in the chat panel if you get stuck.

-The Longbow Team