# How letters work

What a letter holds, its three states, which employee details each way of sending reads, the language of what leaves, who sees which letters, and what Letters does not do by itself.

A letter is an administrative circular kept as a record of the **Employees** app: it has a number, a state and a chatter, and it leaves only when a manager chooses how to send it. Letters stores no address of its own: every recipient is reached through what their employee form holds.

## What a letter holds {#what-a-letter-holds}

- a number such as LET/00001, given when the letter is first saved, from one numbering shared by all companies;
- a **Main Subject** and a **Description**, the text, in rich text;
- a **Date**, today by default, printed on the PDF and quoted in the WhatsApp message;
- its recipients: the employees listed in **Employees**, or every employee when **Send to all** is ticked;
- the **Template** it started from, if any, shown to managers only;
- the person who wrote it, kept without being shown on the form, and the company it was written in;
- its chatter, which records the creation, every change of a field, the change of state and each send.

A template only fills the subject and the text when it is chosen; after that, the letter and the template live apart. [Prepare letter templates](letter-templates) covers them.

## States {#states}

| State | What it means | What follows |
|---|---|---|
| **Draft** | Being written; nothing can be sent | **Approve** or **Cancel** |
| **Approved** | Ready; the three sends are offered | Any number of sends, or **Cancel** |
| **Canceled** | Withdrawn | Nothing brings it back; the sends are still offered |

Any manager approves, the writer included: there is no second approver and no request for approval. Approving does not lock the letter, whose fields stay editable with every change recorded. A canceled letter is issued again by duplicating it, as [Cancel a letter and issue it again](cancel-a-letter) shows. Archiving is separate from the states: it hides a letter in any state.

## Who receives what {#recipients}

Each way of sending reads a different detail of the employee form ([How employee records work](/docs/employees/how-employee-records-work)):

| Way | Reads | Skips |
|---|---|---|
| E-mail | **Work Email**, through the contact that carries it | Employees without a work e-mail or without a matching contact |
| Discuss | **User** | Employees without a user |
| WhatsApp | **Work Mobile**, else **Work Phone** | Employees without either number |

The e-mail window proposes its recipients and you confirm them; it leaves **To** empty and omits the first employee in alphabetical order, so check it as [Send a letter](send-a-letter#email) says. With **Send to all**, Discuss and WhatsApp count the active employees of every company, and the e-mail those of the companies you are working in. A letter with neither employees nor **Send to all** reaches nobody through Discuss or WhatsApp, while its e-mail window proposes every employee.

## Languages {#languages}

The e-mail, its PDF and the WhatsApp message use the language of the person who wrote the letter, whoever sends it. The Discuss message and the notes in the chatter use the language of the person who clicks. The subject and the text can hold one version per language, as can the name, subject and text of a template; each user writes and reads the version of their own language.

## Who sees what {#access}

The privilege **Letters** offers two access rights, set on the user form ([Create a user and set access rights](/docs/general-settings/create-a-user-and-set-access-rights)):

- **Manager** sees every letter of the companies the user works in, writes, approves, cancels and sends them, and manages the templates.
- **User: Own Documents Only** reads the letters sent to all and those naming the user's employee, in any state, drafts included, without any button and without templates.

A user without either right does not see **Letters** in the **Employees** menu and cannot open the letters. The templates menu sits under **Configuration** of **Employees**, which needs the **Administrator** access right on **Employees**; a manager of letters without it reaches a template from the **Template** field of a letter.

## What Letters does not do {#does-not-do}

- It sends nothing by itself: no scheduled job and no automation, and approving sends nothing.
- It does not record who read a letter, nor ask the employees to acknowledge it.
- It does not stop a second send of the same letter, nor the send of a canceled one.
- It does not put the letter's text in the body of the e-mail: the e-mail carries a short fixed text, and the letter travels as its PDF.
- It does not tell anyone when a letter is canceled.

The WhatsApp side is described in [WhatsApp in HR](/docs/whatsapp/whatsapp-in-hr#hr-letters), and the chatter in [Follow a record](/docs/essentials/follow-a-record-with-the-chatter).

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- Source: https://jaah.app/docs/hr-letters/how-letters-work
- Updated: 2026-10-28
- Version: Letters 19.0.1.0.5