# Your first letter

Write an administrative letter from a ready template, choose the employees who receive it, approve it and send it to them through Discuss, then read what the letter's chatter recorded.

**Letters** keeps the administrative circulars of the company in the **Employees** app: a notice about office hours, a move, a new rule. Each letter gets a number, is approved before it leaves, and is sent to the employees by e-mail, through Discuss or by WhatsApp, with a PDF copy that can also be printed. This walk-through writes one letter from a template, sends it to two employees through Discuss and checks what the letter recorded.

## Before you start {#before-you-start}

- Writing, approving and sending letters needs the **Manager** access right on **Letters**. The other right, **User: Own Documents Only**, only reads the letters sent to everyone or naming the user's employee. [Create a user and set access rights](/docs/general-settings/create-a-user-and-set-access-rights) shows where to set it.
- The demo holds the template **Office hours notice** and two letters: **LET/00001**, approved and sent to all employees, and **LET/00002**, a draft made from the template.
- Discuss reaches only the employees whose employee form names a **User**: [How employee records work](/docs/employees/how-employee-records-work).

## Step 1: open the letters {#open}

Open **Employees/Letters**. Each card shows the number of the letter, its subject, its date and its state, with the badge **All** when it goes to every employee; a letter for chosen employees shows how many instead. The list view, from the button at the top right, shows the same letters in rows.

![The company's letters, one card each with its number, subject, date and state.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15951-7960f34e/hr-letters-your-first-letter-letters_kanban-en.png)

## Step 2: start from a template {#template}

1. Click **New**. The letter has no number yet: it receives the next one, such as LET/00003, when you save it. **Date** holds today's date; change it when the letter takes effect another day.
2. In **Template**, choose **Office hours notice**. Its subject fills **Main Subject**, and its text fills the **Description** tab.

![Choosing the template Office hours notice fills the subject and the text of the letter.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15955-16e6dc12/hr-letters-your-first-letter-template_filled-en.png)

3. Everything the template filled stays yours to change. Replace the subject with `Letters demo: Office hours from Sunday`, and edit the text as you would any rich text. Choosing another template later replaces both again.

## Step 3: choose who receives it {#recipients}

1. In **Employees**, add **Rawan Al-Wahmi**, then **System Administrator (Demo)**.
2. Leave **Send to all** unticked. Ticking it hides **Employees** and addresses the letter to every employee instead.

![The two employees who receive the letter; Send to all stays unticked.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15959-bf90c9a7/hr-letters-your-first-letter-recipients-en.png)

3. Save. The letter takes its number, and the chatter records that it was created.

## Step 4: approve it {#approve}

A new letter is a **Draft**: it cannot be sent yet. Open **Actions** at the top of the form and choose **Approve**.

![Approve in the Actions menu of the saved draft.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15963-02318334/hr-letters-your-first-letter-approve_entry-en.png)

On a phone, **Actions** sits at the top of the form, beside the **+** button.

The state at the top right turns to **Approved**, and the chatter records the change. Approving does not lock the letter: its fields stay editable, and the chatter keeps every change.

![The letter is Approved; the chatter records the change of state.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15965-5338511e/hr-letters-your-first-letter-approved-en.png)

## Step 5: send it through Discuss {#send}

1. Open **Actions** again. An approved letter now offers **Send by Email**, **Send by Discuss** and **Send by WhatsApp**, then **Cancel**, and under the printer icon **Letter**, its PDF.

![The three ways to send an approved letter, then Cancel and the print of the letter.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15969-933b9699/hr-letters-your-first-letter-send_entries-en.png)

2. Choose **Send by Discuss**. Each chosen employee who has a user receives, in a direct chat with **Bot**, the message "A new Letter LET/00003 with subject Letters demo: Office hours from Sunday has been added.", whose number opens the letter.
3. A note from **Bot** in the chatter names the employees reached.

![The note in the chatter names the employees who received the letter in Discuss.](https://jaah.app/web/image/15971-ee6bed41/hr-letters-your-first-letter-discuss_note-en.png)

An employee whose notifications are set to arrive **By Emails** also receives the message in their mailbox, as [Choose your notifications](/docs/discuss/choose-your-notifications) explains.

## What you have done {#what-you-have-done}

You wrote a letter from a template, chose its recipients, approved it and sent it to them through Discuss, and the chatter now keeps each of those steps. [Send a letter](send-a-letter) covers e-mail, WhatsApp and the printed copy, [Prepare letter templates](letter-templates) builds your own templates, [Cancel a letter and issue it again](cancel-a-letter) handles a letter that must be withdrawn, and [How letters work](how-letters-work) explains who sees and receives what.

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- Source: https://jaah.app/docs/hr-letters/your-first-letter
- Updated: 2026-10-28
- Version: Letters 19.0.1.0.5
- Verified: 2026-10-28